by Ray O'Hanlon
The canteen of the recently expanded New York Fire Department Academy on Randalls Island is as much a shrine to the fallen of Sept. 11 as it is a place to unwind and take in much needed nourishment.
The badges of fire companies that lost members in the attack on the World Trade Center towers dot the walls.
But the tribute to lost comrades is this week awaiting a final touch and that is the installation of a stained glass window dedicated to world peace. The window is the result of a collaboration between a County Wexford woman, firefighters in the English county of Cornwall, and the skilled hands of a group of Benedictine Monks.
The window, and others like it, are being installed in a number of locations around the world by a group called Flight of the Phoenix World Peace Project 2000.
In addition to stained glass windows, the group is also responsible for the existence of hybrid yellow rose called the World Peace Rose 2000, which has been planted in "peace gardens" in communities affected by violence. One such community is Omagh, Co Tyrone.
The window that will be permanently displayed at the fire department academy measures about 4 feet in diameter. At the center of it is a depiction of an eternal flame. The window also contains glass symbols of the sun, moon, stars, earth and sea.
One of the guiding hands behind the Randalls Island window project has been Joy O'Gorman, a 32-year-old native of Adamstown, Co. Wexford, who now lives in Cornwall.
O'Gorman said that the eternal flame represented the "spark of life" within all people, something that surpassed all religious, political and cultural differences.
"We feel very profoundly about it. The window is representative of us all learning to treat everyone with respect," she said.
No more so than this week, the second anniversary of Sept. 11.
"People are this week thinking about and caring for New York's firefighters," O'Gorman said.
The window was escorted to the U.S. earlier this summer by Ken Thompson, assistant chief fire officer for Cornwall.
Thompson, who was born in Belfast, said that he and his colleagues, like so many around the world, had been angered and saddened by the Sept. 11 attacks and felt they needed to do something. This they did by collecting money, but they also wanted to contribute some form of permanent memorial to their colleagues in the FDNY.
It wasn't long before the firefighters hooked up with Flight of the Phoenix and its friends, the Benedictine monks of Buckfast Abbey in south west England.
Having made the transatlantic crossing, the window rested for a while at Kennedy Airport before clearing customs. Now it is in the safe hands of the FDNY's chief architect's office in Long Island City, Queens.
"We just have to make it happen now," said FDNY Chief Ramsey Dabby. "We have a fabricator and he will soon properly mount the window in the canteen."
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