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Nassau's 9/11 memorial unveiled

BY BRANDON BAIN | brandon.bain@newsday.com

For nearly six years since the Sept. 11 attacks, Barbara York and her family have carried their mantle of grief to a firehouse in Ozone Park.

With no monument to rest it upon, it seemed the best place to connect with her brother-in-law, a fallen firefighter from Valley Stream.

"It's been hard," said York, of Howard Beach. "Every day, we miss him and we love him."

Sunday, she came to Eisenhower Park. With families of 343 other Nassau residents who died in the attack, she ran her fingers across Raymond York's name, etched in stone on a Nassau County memorial unveiled yesterday, and found an appropriate home for her memories and sorrow.

"It's overwhelming, it's breathtaking," she said. "Just having stuff like this, it makes life a lot easier. It's someplace to come."

Thousands of Sept. 11 families, many of them from Nassau, lined the Eisenhower Park pond to pay respects to their loved ones at the memorial. Nassau officials called it one of the largest completed Sept. 11 memorials in the nation.

It features two aluminum towers a couple of dozen feet high rising from a fountain and is flanked by two pieces of steel from the World Trade Center. The project, which cost more than $1 million, was completed largely through donations and volunteer labor.

"The passage of time has numbed some of our raw emotions, but for many the grief is as deeply felt as a fresh wound," Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi said at a brief ceremony, in which widows and children of victims read their names aloud.

In Suffolk, plans for a Sept. 11 memorial have been delayed by the death of Nassau-Suffolk Building Trades Council president Jack Kennedy in March, Ed Dumas, a spokesman for Suffolk Executive Steve Levy, said yesterday. Dumas said the county had been working on an agreement with Kennedy to have members of his group provide free labor.

The council has yet to find a new president, Dumas said, "but they remain committed to working with us." The memorial garden will go in front of the H. Lee Dennison county office building in Hauppauge.

After the ceremony, more than 3,000 family members and residents placed carnations near plaques listing the dead alongside details of the Pentagon, Shanksville, Pa., and New York crashes.

Jeff Feldman of Carle Place wept when he saw the name of his friend Jonathan Ielpi, a firefighter from Great Neck.

"It touched me," Feldman said. "We need something like this as a reminder of the tragedy and the happiness that people once lived."

Elizabeth Berry said she left her Syracuse home at 5 a.m. so she could be at the dedication. "We wanted to be here ... it's everything we hoped it would be," said Berry, who came with her brother, Michael Burke.

"I think it's great and I appreciate it because it really refers to 9/11," Burke said. "Future generations will know about 9/11."

Staff writer Steve Ritea contributed to this story.