WAUPUN, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – The group paying off Mitchell Lundgaard’s mortgage holds its traveling 9/11 exhibit in Waupun this weekend.
The Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation says it recounts the day’s events, and honors the fallen.
But it’s for more than those who died in 2001.
On September 11, 2001, many people watched the attack on the Twin Towers from a TV screen.
“It’s 18 years later to me it feels like it was yesterday,” said Dan Beyau
But for him, the scene looked different from Ground Zero.
“I’m a firm believer that we saved thousands of lives that day,” he said.
Beyau is a retired New York firefighter.
He spent that afternoon pulling people from the Twin Towers as two planes crashed into the buildings, 18 minutes apart.
It’s a day he’ll never forget.
“I look at the clock and it’s 9:11 or 3:43 or something triggers it off. I see pictures of my friends and I’m getting old and they’re staying the same age,” he said.
Beyau is now a volunteer with the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation, which created the ‘9/11 Never Forget’ exhibit.
The foundation supports service men and women who have sacrificed life and limb in the line of duty.
“Firefighter Lundgaard made the ultimate sacrifice while doing his job… helping people,” Waupun fire chief BJ Demaa said as the exhibit prepared to open.
“It’s an opportunity for parents to tell their kids and make sure that we don’t forget as a nation, and as a state, what happened on that terrible day,” he said.
For Demaa, that day changed his life and career.
It’s the reason he became a firefighter.
“Seeing the events of that day really it stirred within me something,” Demaa remembered. “I had to be able to give back to the community and it’s been something I’ve never regretted since.”
He says it was the graduations that took place this spring that made him realize the need for this exhibit.
“This is the first year that we’re starting to see kids are graduating high school where this was truly a historic event,” he explained. “They were not alive at the time it happened.”
“Everybody says ‘you’re a hero, you’re a hero’. I’m not a hero,” said Beyau. “The guys that died out there are heroes to me. We were just doing our job. I would go back tomorrow. I would do the same thing over again if it happened.”
Although some are to young too remember, and others weren’t yet around, groups like these serve as a reminder of what the country lost on September 11, 2001.
It’s not only for those who served at Ground Zero, but for officers like Mitchell Lundgaard… One of many we will never forget.
The exhibit ends Sunday, June 30 at 8 p.m.
