Seedling of World Trade Center 'Survivor Tree' planted in Vernon memorial

Vernon's annual 9/11 memorial ceremony this year will feature a direct link to a survivor: a sapling from a pear tree found buried under the World Trade Center rubble and nursed back to health.

The ceremony will be Saturday, Sept. 9, at 9 a.m. at Town Hall, followed by the start of the annual Vernon Street Fair.

"It's taken nine years, but now we have one," Mayor Howard Burrell said, referring to the sapling, which has already been planted by Notchwood Landscape, a state-approved landscaping company. That satisfied one of the requirements set out by the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, which provides saplings to just a handful of organizations each year.

According to the museum, it was almost a month after the 9/11 attacks when workers digging through the pile of debris found the Callery pear tree. Extensively damaged, with its roots and limbs snapped and its trunk blackened and burned, the tree was moved to a nursery run by the New York City Parks Department, where it was cared for until it could be replanted.

The tree survives to this day outside the Freedom Tower, which is 1,336 feet tall, but with a mast that brings the total height to 1,776 feet.

Each year, the museum selects three communities to receive saplings grown from seeds of the surviving pear tree. The other New Jersey recipient is Little Falls, which lost two residents in the 9/11 attack.

Vernon lost three residents in the World Trade Center attack: Dorothy Chiarchiaro, Keith Burns and Tom Linehan.

The 2022 recipients were Ukraine, which continues to fight for its freedom in a continuing war with Russia; Buffalo, New York, which had its own domestic terrorism attack at a supermarket; and the Miami-Dade County community in Florida where there was the collapse of Champlain Towers South in Surfside.

Burrell, who is serving his last of four years in office, said he worked with Vernoy Paloini, a retired schoolteacher who now works as a docent at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, for obtaining what he called "the key, special item that we wanted to obtain and use as the foundation for a permanent memorial."

He said he has seen the parent Survivor Tree in person, "and what I saw were the scars and the mangled marks of the tree. And there is a clear demarcation of how it has come back.

"Today, the tree stands as a living reminder of resilience, survival and rebirth," he added.

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Burrell said the "permanent memorial" will include stones honoring police, firefighters and EMS personnel as well as markers recognizing the three victims from Vernon.

The service will also include a Scout honor guard with the flags of American military forces.

After the bashed and battered tree was recovered from the ruins in early October 2001 and rehabilitated by the Parks Department, it was replanted in 2010 at the site of the Sept. 11 memorial, on the grounds of the new tower.

Burrell said hundreds of requests for saplings are received by the museum each year from all over the world.

The mayor said each sapling is identified by a bronze medallion as authentication that it was grown from seeds from the Survivor Tree. He added that the medallion will become part of a display inside Town Hall.

Little Falls

Former Little Falls resident Arnold Korotkin said he contacted the Township’s Council member responsible for its Sept. 11 events, Chris Vancheri. They filled out the application and held a Zoom meeting, and within days they received word that a sapling was theirs.

It took about 72 hours in all, Korotkin said.

“It was amazing. It was miraculous,” he said.

Little Falls will host its 9/11 memorial ceremony on Sept. 11 at 6:30 p.m. at Wilmore Road Park.

Staff Writer Matt Fagan contributed to this story.

This article originally appeared on New Jersey Herald: Vernon NJ Sept. 11 ceremony to feature 'Survivor Tree'