Twenty-five years after one of the nation’s darkest days, community members gathered to celebrate a milestone.
The Pentagon 9/11 Memorial Fund broke ground Saturday on the new $100 million Visitor Education Center, a project that has been in the works for more than two decades.
It will be located near the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial.
This model shows what the project will look like:
“It’s critical the more time that passes, the more important the visitor education center becomes,” board member Karen Maude told News4. “There’s just too many people who don’t have a memory of that day.”
Jim Laychak, the founding chairman of the board, spearheaded the effort to build the memorial. He lost his brother, Dave, on 9/11. He was working in the pentagon.
“We want people to remember what happened here,” Laychak said. “We want people to remember our loved ones, we want people to remember that feeling that swept through our country after 9/11 — that feeling of taking care of all of those who were in such pain.”
The 9/11 Pentagon Memorial got some major recognition this week. The National Park Service designated the memorial as an affiliated area of the National Park system and awarded it a $2 million grant.
“This memorial that we have behind us is beautiful, it’s serene, it’s very comforting as a family member, but it’s not enough,” Maude said.
Maude lost her father, Lt. Gen. Timothy Maude, on 9/11.
“It’s not enough for the people who don’t have those memories,” she said. “We need a place for those stories to live, for them to come to life for everybody else.”
The visitor education center is set to be completed in 2029, before the 30th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. It’s being paid for using government funding and private donations.
