New York-New York casino visitors create a shrine to fallen firefighters

Michael Weissenstein

Monday, Dec. 31, 2001 | 9:52 a.m.

The T-shirts flutter in the breeze beneath the neon and the fake New York skyline, their messages in black marker beside dozens of fire department insignias.

"Your sacrifice, your courage, brought our nation together," reads a retired Chicago firefighter's inscription. Another shirt proclaims: "Canadian firefighters will never forget 9-11."

The fence in front of the New York-New York casino on the Las Vegas Strip became an impromptu shrine of flowers, flags and handwritten notes in the first weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Now, as the wilting flowers and rain-soaked paper messages are cleared away, this busy corner of the Strip is becoming a larger, longer-lasting memorial.

More than 60 T-shirts from fire departments across North America hang on the fence before a mock New York Harbor with water-spraying fireboats and a 150-foot Statue of Liberty. Firefighters on pleasure trips are leaving some of the shirts; others are being mailed from across the country as word of the shrine spreads.

The stretch of sidewalk has become a rare, solemn spot on a street dedicated to fun -- a memorial that, visitors said, affirms firefighters' solidarity.

"It makes me feel like we're all still alive and doing well," said 73-year-old Al Will, a retired member of FDNY Rescue Co. 3, which lost five men at the World Trade Center.

Around the corner, Ohio firefighters Matt Preuer and Mike Hart hung a Stow Fire Department T-shirt on the spikes of the fence. Many firefighters bring department T-shirts or patches on trips where they might meet and trade with others in the field, the men said.

In Las Vegas, dozens of those shirts have taken on a more serious purpose.

Smiling tourists slow and grow thoughtful as they pass T-shirts with messages from California, Illinois, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, including some remembering individual New York firefighters and police officers.

"We saw this and we were like, 'Oh man.' It brings a tear to your eye," said Preuer, of the Lakewood Fire Department.

Hotel staff were surprised several weeks ago when T-shirts began to arrive by mail, addressed simply to the New York casino. Maintenance workers have been hanging the shirts on the fence and keeping up the memorial.

"We really didn't quite know to react when people started to do it, but it was obviously a spontaneous public reaction and it was very positive," said Micah Richins, vice president of hotel operations. "It gave something to gather people together."

Firefighter Mike Vinall and other members of Ontario's Chatham-Kent Fire Service went to Las Vegas last month for a colleague's wedding. Vinall left an FDNY T-shirt with the signed message of Canadian support for New York firefighters.

"You may not know them but we all understand and appreciate what they must have been feeling at the time," Vinall said by phone from his fire station. "It was a little bit of therapy for all of us."

The casino might place the T-shirts on permanent display inside the casino, perhaps as part of a new memorial wall, Richins said.

For many tourists, the fence is the first Sept. 11 memorial they have seen in person.

"It's a touching tribute," said Janine Hagle, a 49-year-old drugstore sales representative from Atlanta.