IN THE NEWS

5/9/2011
Reading Eagle

Apt postscript for messages written in wake of Sept. 11

By Dan Kelly

Keith Eckert was going through his morning routine last Monday when he heard Osama bin Laden was dead.

"You come to a stop," Eckert said.

Eckert, a project manager for SMJ Contractors of Douglassville and superintendent of the renovation project under way at the Berks County Intermediate Unit, said his thoughts almost immediately went to a discovery made by employees of O'Brien Wrecking of Reading, subcontractors on the BCIU job.

Stan Kita, BCIU assistant director, said that almost 10 years ago workers were putting up a three-story addition on the rear of their building and had bricked over a large picture window.

Dr. Kevin Andreyo, BCIU innovation and fund development administrator, said he and some colleagues were in a funk over the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. When they saw the new block wall, they used it as a blank slate.

"It was going to be covered with drywall in a couple of days so we started writing on it," Andreyo said.

Andreyo drew an American flag.

"I know it's probably not accurate. It certainly doesn't have 50 stars, but it was what I could do with chalk and cinder block," Andreyo said.

Others wrote inspirational quotes and other messages with ink markers. Soon other employees and construction workers started adding to what became an impromptu memorial to the almost 3,000 who died in the terror attacks.

"It was going to be our time capsule," Andreyo said.