NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Mark “Sparky” Francis Broderick coached his eldest son’s Little League baseball team and served at his local parish. Liam D. Callahan was a drum sergeant for the Port Authority Emerald Society Pipes and Drums Band. Carlos Dominguez was the son of Cuban immigrants and the first of his family to go to college. Wayne John Saloman loved to drive his 1970 Pontiac GTO.
Broderick, Callahan, Dominguez, and Saloman are among 46 members of the Knights of Columbus who lost their lives in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Their names, along with brief biographies, including the council they served in, are featured in an exhibit at the Blessed Michael McGivney Pilgrimage Center, “Remembering 9/11: 25 Years Later.”
Of the 46 Knights, 12 were firefighters, six were police officers, three were passengers on American Airlines Flights 11 and 77, and two worked at the Pentagon. The remaining 23 victims were employees, visitors, or civilian emergency responders in the north and south towers of the World Trade Center, according to the Knights of Columbus.
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“The focus of the exhibit is on memorializing the people and the actual tributes that happened after 9/11,” Bethany Sheffer, the center curator, told The Tablet. “It’s important to commemorate everybody who was impacted by that day.”
The exhibit, on display until Oct. 11, features wall panels listing the names and biographies of the 46 Knights, as well as photos that narrate the events of the day and the tributes that followed. Among the photos are ones of then-Supreme Knight Carl Anderson and then-Supreme Chaplain Bishop Thomas Daily of Brooklyn visiting ground zero in New York City after the terrorist attacks.
The Knights of Columbus chose blue for the panels as an ode to Spencer Finch’s permanent artwork at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum titled “Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning.”
“We liked the concept of ‘I remember that the sky was absolutely beautiful; the weather was beautiful that day,’ ” Sheffer explained. “So, we wanted to use that particular shade of color to do the commemoration.”
Other 9/11-related artifacts are also displayed as part of the exhibit. Among those are a mask worn by Bishop Daily when he visited ground zero, rosaries that were distributed to firefighters and police officers during the rescue efforts, prayer books and programs from a Mass of Remembrance at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., a fragment from one of the towers, and a FDNY cap that belonged to Father Mychal Judge — the chaplain of the department and the first certified fatality of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Speaking on the importance of the exhibit, Sheffer noted that multiple generations have been born since 9/11 and should know what happened and how society changed because of it.
“It’s important for people to not forget what happened on that day,” Sheffer said, “and remind them about what happened the day after and unity in our country.”