Community members and local leaders gathered at the Sept. 11 memorial outside the Berks Military History Museum and Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Mohnton to pay tribute to the victims and emergency personnel lost during the 2001 terrorist attacks. The observance provided an opportunity to reflect on the national tragedy and hear firsthand accounts from those who traveled directly into the disaster zone in the hours immediately following the collapse of the Twin Towers.
State Representative Mark Gillen, who established the Mohnton educational facility in 2014, stood beside the memorial to recount his memories of the morning the attacks occurred. Describing the universal sense of shock and paralysis that gripped the country, Gillen noted how the initial report of an aircraft striking the World Trade Center initially appeared to be a catastrophic aviation accident. That perception vanished moments later when the second airliner hit, confirming that the United States had suffered a coordinated assault.
Gillen possessed a unique combination of emergency services training that made him uniquely suited to respond to the crisis. Having gained experience in interior structural firefighting, certified emergency medical technician duties, and professional law enforcement across university policing and corrections departments, he felt a strong calling to provide active assistance rather than remain a distant observer.
Determined to assist in the rescue operations, Gillen quickly secured protective turnout gear from a fellow firefighter based in Mohnton. Packing what supplies he could into his personal vehicle, he departed Pennsylvania and began an urgent drive toward Lower Manhattan without fully knowing the exact conditions awaiting him upon arrival.
Traveling eastward along Interstate 78, Gillen encountered electronic transportation warning signs flashing messages that New York was officially closed to traffic. Undeterred, he presented his emergency services credentials at various police checkpoints along the interstate corridor, eventually navigating past road closures until he reached the waterfront in Jersey City, New Jersey.
With the region operating without established precedent for a disaster of such scale, standard transportation networks had ceased normal operations while harbor vessels coordinated movements across the Hudson River. Gillen managed to secure passage onto a working harbor tugboat, utilizing the maritime transit to reach the shores of Manhattan and link up with deployed emergency management teams.
Upon his arrival in the city, emergency response leaders assigned Gillen to accompany a canine handler tasked with searching through the smoking ruins for survivors. He spent the night of Sept. 11 and the early morning hours of Sept. 12 walking amidst the wreckage, searching through collapsed building infrastructure during the initial phase of the recovery effort.
The visual destruction on the ground far exceeded any televised or photographic documentation of the disaster. Crushed emergency vehicles, including pulverized ambulances and overturned fire apparatus, littered the perimeter of the disaster site. As search teams navigated the complex debris field, they began the somber task of flagging human remains, noting the catastrophic loss that ultimately claimed the lives of 343 New York City firefighters.
Gillen described the environment as completely overwhelming, requiring responders to maintain intense discipline to stay focused on locating signs of life. Surviving firefighters worked frantically under extreme conditions, digging by hand and with basic tools through dense layers of mangled structural steel, crushed office equipment, and building materials to find their missing colleagues after identifying a discarded helmet or personal badge.
The haunting experiences at Ground Zero stayed with Gillen for years and inspired him to include the Global War on Terror when establishing the local history museum. He founded the Berks Military History Museum within the historic 1873 Cyrus D. Hornberger Wagon Works building on Main Street, aiming to preserve authentic physical remnants of the nation's military and domestic crises.
In 2016, Gillen completed an extensive administrative application process to secure legitimate artifacts directly from the World Trade Center site. His efforts resulted in the acquisition of a 600-pound section of train track rail from the Port Authority transit station beneath the towers, which had been severely warped by the immense downward force and heat of the structural collapse.
Transportation company Trans Logistics of Birdsboro provided the logistics to move the heavy steel artifact from the storage site to Berks County. During the transport coordination, Gillen also managed to secure a signage artifact from World Trade Center Five that was facing disposal as the primary artifact warehouse was being shut down.
Rather than navigate another lengthy round of bureaucratic paperwork, Gillen agreed to take immediate custody of the building sign as storage facilities closed. The World Trade Center Five marker was placed in temporary offsite storage, with museum organizers planning to formally incorporate it into the public exhibition halls alongside the warped transit rail.
Reflecting on the passage of a quarter-century since the disaster, Gillen observed the profound cultural and social shifts that have transformed the country since September 2001. In the weeks immediately following the attacks, patriotism and unity surged across communities, creating widespread shortages of American flags in Berks County while citizens gathered publicly to pray in response to their shared vulnerability.
Looking toward the future, Gillen voiced concern regarding modern ideological divides that threaten the sense of shared purpose forged during earlier crises. He cautioned that political discourse has increasingly framed domestic opponents as internal enemies, warning that such fragmentation distracts the American public from navigating complex geopolitical challenges across the globe.
The Mohnton museum maintains its commitment to honoring the victims and first responders through its regular commemorative services. Each year on Sept. 11, community members gather at the outdoor memorial precisely at 8:46 a.m., marking the exact moment the first hijacked airliner struck the North Tower and keeping the memory of the fallen alive.
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