On a warm Friday afternoon in mid-July, a police and fire escort rolled down Occidental Avenue toward T-Mobile Park, and the crowd that had gathered at the Hot Corner outside the ballpark fell quiet. Inside the truck was a 21-foot, 16,900-pound steel beam — a piece of the South Tower of the World Trade Center, twisted and scarred by the morning of September 11, 2001. For a few hours, Seattle became one of 35 cities on a coast-to-coast journey that the Tunnel to Towers Foundation calls Steel Across America, a campaign built around a single, sacred artifact and a promise the country made a quarter-century ago: Never Forget.
The beam's arrival in Seattle was part of a nationwide commemoration marking the 25th anniversary of the attacks. The tour launched in May 2026 and traveled through 21 states, making stops including the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania, Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, and T-Mobile Park in Seattle.
For the foundation, the journey is deeply personal. The Tunnel to Towers Foundation was born from the loss of FDNY Firefighter Stephen Siller, who on the morning of September 11, 2001, had just finished his overnight shift with Brooklyn's Squad 1 when he heard over his scanner that a plane had hit the North Tower. He called his wife, Sally, asked her to tell his brothers he would catch up with them later, and returned to the firehouse for his gear. When he reached the entrance to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, it had already been closed for security. So Stephen Siller strapped roughly 60 pounds of equipment to his back and ran on foot through the tunnel toward the Twin Towers, where he gave his life while saving others. He was 34 years old, one of 343 New York City firefighters killed that day, and he left behind five children — including Stephen Jr., who was just nine months old.
In December 2001, still grieving, Stephen's six older siblings launched the foundation in his memory, determined to turn his act of courage into a mission of service. The first Tunnel to Towers run, retracing his footsteps through the tunnel, drew 2,000 participants in September 2002; the annual event now draws tens of thousands. Over the years the organization has grown into a national force, building mortgage-free, specially adapted "smart homes" for catastrophically injured veterans and first responders — a promise that began with Sgt. Brendan Marrocco, the first U.S. soldier to survive a quadruple amputation, who received a home on Staten Island in 2011 — and paying off the mortgages of police officers and firefighters killed in the line of duty. "We didn't let Stephen just perish in that rubble and let that story end there," Frank Siller, the foundation's chairman and CEO, has said. "No, we took his act of courage and sacrifice and said, 'We're going to do good with it.'"
The steel beam that reached Seattle embodies that legacy. Recovered from the South Tower, it is, to the Siller family, more than metal. For Stephen Siller Jr., now 25 and the face of the tour, the steel represents the more than 1,000 people whose bodies were never recovered from the World Trade Center — including his father's. "Who they are is ingrained in that steel, what they did is ingrained in that steel. It holds the memory of that day," he told ABC News. "It's the most overwhelming piece of history I've ever come across." Frank Siller put it even more personally: "Ground zero is my brother's burial place, obviously. But the steel has his — embodies his soul, and the souls of so many."
At the Seattle stop, the public was invited to view the beam up close and place a hand on the twisted metal. Many who came were surprised by the force of their own reaction. "We knew what was inside the truck, but when they open the door, and you see it and read the little placard, it's overwhelming," attendee Kathi Kopak told KOMO News. Brina Sanft, another visitor, framed the day's meaning in terms of vigilance: "Things can happen again if we don't remember and prevent, but we can never forget this. Too many valuable lives were lost."
Inside the ballpark, a private ceremony featured remarks from Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes and Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins, and Stephen Siller Jr. spoke before presenting a Steel Flag — cut from World Trade Center steel — to the city of Seattle. Before the Mariners took the field against the San Francisco Giants that night, U.S. Army veteran and Purple Heart recipient Tyler Wilson threw out the ceremonial first pitch with his family. The foundation's message was aimed at honoring the heroes, families, and first responders whose lives were forever changed by the attacks.
The tour's organizers were struck throughout the summer by how many Americans carried personal connections to the attacks. In Seattle, Siller Jr. met a police officer whose uncle had been killed on 9/11. In Texarkana, Texas, a small town drew about a thousand people to see the steel. At Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Florida — where President George W. Bush was reading to students when he learned of the attacks — children begged the firefighters to lift them up so they could touch the beam, and then prayed over it. "Little kids who understand that, you know, this is a sacred piece of history," Siller Jr. recalled. "It once held up the Twin Towers, it once held floors and walls, and now it holds the gravity of that day."
After its Seattle stop, the steel moved on to the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City on July 23, continuing its journey toward the 25th anniversary. For one afternoon in Seattle, though, the beam stood at the corner of a ballpark, a stark physical reminder of the day that changed the country — and of the courage and unity that followed.