Ex-FDNY firefighter to speak at Davis County 9/11 exhibit: “We can’t forget it”
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- Steve Casquarelli, a retired Fire Department of New York firefighter who responded to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City, will speak with students at Davis Remembers: The 9/11 Project. The exhibit goes from Sept. 7-10, 2022, and will be held at the Legacy Events Center in Farmington.
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- A student from Davis Technical College assembles one of the frames on Aug. 30, 2022, that will hold the oversized photos that are part of the Davis Remembers: The 9/11 Project. The exhibit will be held Sept. 7-10, 2022, at the Legacy Events Center in Farmington.
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- Visitors look at the exhibits at Weber Remembers: The 9/11 Project in 2021, held at the Weber County fairgrounds. This year, the exhibit, renamed Davis Remembers: The 9/11 Project, is being held from Sept. 7-10, 2022, at the Legacy Events Center in Farmington.
Steve Casquarelli, then a lieutenant in the Fire Department of New York, remembers — firsthand — the horror of the 9/11 attacks.
Soon after the Twin Towers fell, Casquarelli began working as a firefighter with the search for survivors in the mass of rubble in and around ground zero. Fires still raged, the threat that other structures would collapse loomed and the rubble underfoot would shift as first responders poked around for survivors.
“It was chaotic,” said Casquarelli, now retired from the fire department and a volunteer with the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, a nonprofit group. “No one was sure if things were going to collapse next to us, on top of us. … But everybody did their job despite these other possibilities of more accidents happening.”
As the 21st anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks loom, he’s on a mission to make sure the tragedy doesn’t fade from the public mind. The North Ogden-based Major Brent Taylor Foundation is organizing a 9/11 exhibit in Farmington — Davis Remembers: The 9/11 Project — and Casquarelli will be a featured speaker, addressing students and others who visit.
“We can’t forget it ever. This happened on American soil. They came to us. We can’t forget that,” he said in a phone interview with the Standard-Examiner from New York City, where he still lives.
The country needs to be vigilant against future attacks, he said, while wistfully recalling the unity Americans exhibited to one another in the aftermath of 9/11. Indeed, apart from recalling 9/11, he also makes a plea for the public to remember that solidarity — “just to be kind to one another, understand one another.”
The Davis County exhibit, going from Sept. 7-10 at the Legacy Events Center in Farmington, represents a repeat of the Major Brent Taylor Foundation 9/11 exhibit last year at the Weber County Fairgrounds — with some modifications. The elaborate multimedia exhibit, free to the public, features more than 600 large-sized images, 24 television screens broadcasting video related to 9/11 and much, much more.
“We will be highlighting the various cities in Davis County this year, and we’ve added several new photo boards and video segments,” Jennie Taylor said. Taylor, who helped spearhead creation of the exhibit, is the widow of Brent Taylor, the former mayor of North Ogden who was killed in late 2018 while deployed with the Utah Army National Guard in Afghanistan.
The exhibits largely focus on the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The terrorists involved hijacked another plane, but passengers onboard fought with them, crashing the craft in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. That plane, United Airlines Flight 93, is also featured.
Beyond that, the exhibits last year contained information about Weber County from 2001 to help put the 9/11 attacks in historic perspective and this year’s version in Farmington will be more Davis County-centric.
Thousands of visitors are expected, many of them school children, who Casquarelli will address, offering firsthand accounts of the tragedy. He helped with the search for remains and cleanup for four months after the attacks.
“We anticipate upwards of 5,000 students coming through the exhibit on field trips,” Taylor said. Most are expected from the Davis School District, though some will also be coming from Weber and Morgan counties and beyond.
Casquarelli addresses gatherings around the country focused on 9/11 as part of his volunteer duties with the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, formed to honor the sacrifice of firefighters and other first responders who died while responding to the attacks 21 years ago.
“They understand it. They definitely get it. I urge them to speak to their parents or older people who were alive at the time,” he said.
The Major Brent Taylor Foundation 9/11 exhibit was originally created to mark the 20th anniversary of the attacks last year. The group had no plans to repeat it, but then shifted gears after the success of last year’s event. Now Taylor is eager to let more people experience the exhibit, created with the help of a large pool of volunteers.
“Davis county has 80,000+ students who could either attend on a field trip or conveniently come with their families. Davis county is also right in the middle of so much of the Wasatch front!” she said in an email.
She’s also thinking of the possibilities in the years to come, writing, “Perhaps we will visit a few other areas for the next couple of years and then come back to Weber County for the 25th anniversary. It will be exciting to see what happens next — and where we end up!”
The exhibit will be open from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. from Sept. 7-10. Also included will be an exhibit featuring various first-responder vehicles in the Legacy Events Center parking lot, a community resource fair featuring local first responders and more. Go online to majorbrenttaylor.com/davis-remembers/ for additional details.
