By Sophia Braccio/Cronkite News
WASHINGTON – Jennifer Jones saw smoke rising above the Pentagon from her office. Like other workers in the nation’s capital on Sept. 11, 2001, she went home and watched footage of the attacks on TV, trying to process what happened.
Within days, she was picking through the wreckage – not as a first responder but as a curator in the military history division of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, collecting artifacts that would tell the story of that awful day.
She sorted through hazmat material that still smelled of jet fuel. She found one of the black berets the Army had only recently authorized as standard headgear.
“We found the black beret singed in the debris, and it’s so iconic of the Pentagon at that moment,” said Jones, who still works at the museum, now as a curator and project director.
For months, she and colleagues flipped through their Rolodexes, looking for friends and neighbors affected by the attacks.
Congress designated the Smithsonian as the national repository for 9/11 collections three months after the hijackings that brought down the World Trade Center in New York and destroyed one side of the Pentagon.
By then, Jones and other curators had already started collecting artifacts. Today, the museum’s collection includes over 600 objects.
Some are monumental, like a twisted column from the 70th floor of the South Tower.
Others are small, personal items: a candy dispenser from a desk at the Pentagon, a briefcase from the World Trade Center, the jacket of a Univision journalist who witnessed the Twin Towers collapse. The uniform of a K-9 officer who pulled people from the smoldering Pentagon.
The collection also includes chilling remnants that tell stories about the ripple effects of 9/11, like a turban worn by Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh immigrant from India who was killed in a drive-by shooting at his gas station in Mesa four days after the hijackings.
“We find our purpose best here at the museum when we see parents using objects to explain really complicated, hard moments in history to their children, or grandparents saying, ‘Oh my gosh, this is what I was doing,’” said museum director Anthea Hartig.
From Sept. 9 to 12, the museum is hosting “September 11: 25 Years Later,” displaying around 30 artifacts from New York, the Pentagon and the Flight 93 crash site in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on tables for visitors to see up close.
Other artifacts are continuously on display.
The “Price of Freedom: Americans at War” exhibit includes an Airfone from the wreckage of Flight 93, which crashed in a field after passengers, aware of the other hijackings, banded together to prevent their plane from being used as a missile.
The 9/11 Commission determined that the White House or Capitol was the likely target.
Passengers used Airfones to call family members in their final moments.
Curators hunted for stories of 9/11 through news accounts and other historical records. They faced a delicate task, given the pain associated with artifacts. To obtain uniforms and helmets from firefighters at Ground Zero, for instance, they went through fire departments rather than approaching families directly.
Over the past 25 years, Hartig said, people have also brought artifacts from their homes to add to the collection.
“It’s really an honor to take care of,” she said. “Each one is so invested with memory and meaning.”
The Smithsonian isn’t the only group connecting the public with 9/11 artifacts and stories.
Memorials at Ground Zero, the Pentagon, in Shanksville, and in communities across the U.S. honor victims and first responders.
Over 2,000 miles from New York, the 9/11 Memorial Plaza in Gilbert displays a steel beam that once supported the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
Between 2010 and 2016, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which built the Twin Towers, sent thousands of pieces of metal and other artifacts to all 50 states and to cities around the world.
Such artifacts hold special significance for first responders. Gilbert firefighters transported the beam from New York.
It’s tilted low to the ground so children and adults can reach out and touch it.
“There’s a whole generation who only hear about this from school or from what their parents tell them, so we just want to provide those opportunities to not forget,” said Gilbert Fire and Rescue Battalion Chief Mark Justus.
The fire department and the Gilbert Police Department host a yearly remembrance ceremony at the memorial.
“Being part of what we do for our careers and serving the community, it builds a bond that creates a secondary family that we all recognize,” Justus said. “And that’s why we do everything we can to honor those who paid that price that day to give back.”
The Smithsonian’s curators are still looking for artifacts that tell new stories from 9/11.
“We continue because the story continues and history continues,” Jones said. “And history – 25 years – helps us understand a little bit more about what we didn’t understand doing the contemporary collecting during 2001 and 2002.”
