By gloria stravelli
Staff Writer
FARRAH MAFFAI The impromptu memorial that sprang up against the wall at Riverside Gardens Park on West Front Street in Red Bank was taken down this week by order of the borough.
Some of the mementos placed at an impromptu memorial to Sept. 11 victims at Riverside Gardens Park in Red Bank will be archived by the Monmouth County Historical Association.
"We contacted Mayor [Edward J.] McKenna to see if we can have a few items to save for the future to give a sense of what the memorial was like," said Lee Ellen Griffith, director of the historical association.
"We have photos of the memorial for our archive," she said. "We want to keep a few representative things, like half-burned candles, to give a sense of what these groupings were."
Griffith said she had visited the memorial, which sprang up in Red Bank along a low brick wall that borders the park along the Navesink on West Front Street.
"I like the informal nature of it; I think it’s something worth preserving," she said.
Griffith said she focused on the memorial display in the borough because it was the best-known and the largest in the area.
The borough had asked families and friends of victims to remove items from the wall by Aug. 15 and subsequently extended that deadline to Aug. 30.
The idea was to remove the items prior to the borough’s 9/11 memorial ceremony, scheduled for Sept. 22.
Only some of the weather-worn displays were removed, and a good number remained at the wall — lined with new, miniature American flags — through the Labor Day weekend. In addition, despite the protests of borough officials, mementos have been affixed to trees near the wall and some tributes were scrawled on the ledge on top of the wall.
McKenna said Tuesday that the mementos would be saved after being removed by borough employees this week and the borough would try to contact each family to attempt to return the items.
On Wednesday, Department of Public Works staff carefully removed and boxed the remaining mementos. Photographs were taken for reference, and items were boxed separately so they could be retrieved if requests were received, according to public works Director Joseph Buonaquista.
"We will offer to archive the items at the library and will offer some to the Monmouth County Historical Association," McKenna said. "It’s not as if they’re going to be thrown out."
According to Griffith, the items will be kept at the historical association’s headquarters in Freehold.
"We don’t have any specific plans," she said. "They will not immediately be on view but will be something that is available if we choose to mount a small exhibit in the future. We try to stay aware of current events, and this is obviously a big part of our history."
In addition, Griffith said, the Monmouth County Archives has been collecting items from last year related to 9/11, such as programs for memorial ceremonies held at area churches. The items will become part of the museum’s collection.