As the 25th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, the Oak Lawn Public Library commemorated the village’s memorial to the tragedy with a visit from its creator.
The bases of the 22-foot-tall sculptures near the Oak Lawn Metra station are pieces of the World Trade Center. Above them, Erik Blome, of Crystal Lake, etched in bronze faces and hands to represent first responders who aided in the New York City recovery efforts.
“I tried to create these sort of windows, so they’re almost like frames, like individual artworks,” Blome said Thursday, describing the 9-month process behind his intricate carvings, separated from their steel bases by a metal plate. The sculptures are juxtaposed with other beams that remain mostly untouched from the the twin towers’ collapse.
Blome’s presentation to about 30 people at the Oak Lawn library preceded a sunset pilgrimage to the memorial. He provided insight into the 9/11 project along with photos and stories about a small fraction of the hundreds of other bronze projects he was commissioned to create in 28 states and multiple countries.
They include a life-sized bust of Chicago’s first nonnative settler, Jean-Baptiste Pointe DuSable, near the Chicago River on Michigan Avenue, and a 6,000-pound elephant that stands proudly in front of the Ivory Coast embassy in Washington.
But Blome’s experience 15 years ago in Oak Lawn was unique, with the artist joking that he became suburb’s “artist in residence,” completing about half of the sculpture inside of the village’s old public works building because he lacked a studio.
“Doing it inside of public works turned out to be one of the greatest things in my career,” Blome said. “It was great to work inside of a town on something — I had never done that before.”
The 59-year-old was peppered with questions about the experience, including by Oak Lawn native Pamela Urchel.
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Urchel, 26, recalled visiting the memorial during a middle school field trip but said when she asked questions about the sculptures, her teachers lacked information.
“They said, ‘these are the beams,’ and I was like, OK!” she said. “I didn’t really notice the people, actually.”
She was excited to learn more about how the project came to be, joining others who were instrumental in making it happen.
They include retired Oak Lawn police Cmdr. Art Clark, who came up with the idea to request pieces of the World Trade Center.
The police chief at the time took the idea to former Village Manager Larry Deetjen, who supported it. Deetjen was president of the Oak Lawn Rotary when the club undertook the effort with the village to construct the memorial.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey held the wreckage from the towers and Oak Lawn wrote a proposal to use some of the beams, Clark said.
“About three weeks later, we got an email saying that we would like to send you 30,000 pounds of steel, because they were impressed with what we wanted to do,” Clark said. “There are other memorials in different parts of the country, but nobody got 30,000 pounds.”
Bits of steel cut from the art installation’s beams were given to the Children’s Museum in Oak Lawn for display.
Museum board member Bill Egan has begun traveling with the exhibit, after receiving a donated custom-made trailer for the artifact. Egan will leave for Rochester, New York, on Sept. 2, returning in time for the Oak Lawn Fall Music Fest that starts on the 25th anniversary of 9/11.
“The Fire Department has asked me to come in under escort from Chicago Ridge down 95th Street, and then into the village. We’ll do a little singing or something — and then we’ll fire up the bands after that,” he said.
Egan said he usually sleeps in fire stations or in the front seat of his vehicle when he travels, not wanting to leave the exhibit unattended.
“I’m not there to vacation,” he said, but he loves getting to show the artifacts to people around the country, especially first responders.
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“I’ve seen tears,” he said. “It’s very emotional for them and very, very moving for me to get to be able to do this.”
ostevens@chicagotribune