(WBIR - KNOXVILLE) As the nation marks the 14th anniversary Friday of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the US, two University of Tennessee educators have a particularly personal story to share.
This time of year, Julie Beckman always hangs in her office photos of the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial, which she and her husband Keith Kaseman designed.
Now she is director of student services at UT's College of Architecture and Design, where her husband is also a lecturer.
On Sept. 11, 2001, however, Beckman and Kaseman were incredibly close to the World Trade Center.
The couple had just graduated from Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, in New York. That's where they met.
They were living and working in the city at the time of the attacks.
"We lived through what happened in New York on September 11th," Beckman said Thursday, standing outside the offices of the College of Architecture and Design. "I witnessed the second plane hitting the building...I saw the fireball of the second plane. I couldn't get in touch with Keith because the cell phones were down. We had to walk all the way back to 122nd Street because no bus lines and subway lines were running."
Militants with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda hijacked four U.S. passenger jets that morning and carried out the suicide attacks, killing almost 3,000 people.
"We experienced immense grief and sadness for months," Beckman recalled.
One hundred eighty-four of those died at the Pentagon in Washington.
"These were people who were on their way to work or going on a trip, and their lives ended together in this place," Beckman said.
When the Pentagon announced the following June an international competition to design a 9/11 Memorial there, Beckman and Kaseman decided to submit an entry, as a way of channeling their sorrow.
"We didn't really tell anybody, mainly because we were just kind of having this personal conversation about how design can commemorate the lives of these individuals," Beckman said. "We weren't entering the competition to win it. We were entering it as a means to use the education we had just finished getting, a means to express our grief and ideas through design and a means to work on something together for the first time, you know, outside of school."
The entries were due Sept. 11, 2002. The couple formed their own design practice KBAS for the competition.
Out of hundreds of submissions, Beckman and Kaseman's design was among six finalists.
"The way the competition worked was that it was completely anonymous, so they chose the design. They had no idea who was behind the design," Beckman said. "Believe it or not, all six of the finalists were young designers just starting out in their careers. Several of us were from New York, so, you know, we had experienced similar experiences with respect to 9/11 itself."
That's why, Beckman said, she always encourages her students to enter competitions.
Among the six finalists, Beckman and Kaseman were eventually awarded the project.
"The first exercise we did was to get to know who the victims were: understand how old they were, understand where they were from and so on and began to try to organize the site in a way that would be the most timeless way to remember these people," she said.
That was in March 2003, and the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial was dedicated in 2008.
The memorial sits on the grounds of the Pentagon. One hundred eighty-four stainless steel benches bear the names of the 184 victims who died there.
See photos of the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial HERE.
"We organized them by age," Beckman said. "We spread all 184 memorial units across the entire site to kind of express the magnitude of the event."
The youngest was Dana Falkenberg, who - at just 3 years old - was only slightly older than Beckman's own child is now.
"I do think about the fact that that will be Oscar's age soon and that, you know, you can't imagine something like this happening to such a small child, let alone five young children who were taken from us there that day," Beckman said.
Since the Pentagon Memorial's dedication in 2008, it's estimated more than 200,000 people visit the site each year.
It's open at all hours, all year round, with illuminated pools of water below the benches. Trees are distributed throughout the gravel-covered ground.
"That meant there would be a place to sit, there would be some shade and there would be the presence of water nearby as kind of a peaceful element," Beckman said. "We intended to try and create a place that is experienced differently every time you come, so there's no prescribed journey through the park."
It's a memorial designed for all seasons, as America remembers to never forget.
"Personally and professionally I attribute the memorial to helping me get into academia, and I think it's been through this trajectory that I've really seen how I can further impact the next generation of designers," she said, "being able to instill the value of what design does for a community and for society, how really thoughtful design has incredible positive impact on people."
Beckman said she and her husband have remained in touch with some of the victims' family members.
