The GI commemorates 9/11

At 9 a.m. Friday, Sept. 11, 2026, GI Director Bob McCoy and Deputy Chief Scott Raygor, University Fire Department, placed a memorial wreath in the Plant Hall, also known as Bakerville, at the site of the single wall tile memorializing the 25th anniversary of the attacks.

Also last Friday, the Geophysical Institute’s High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program facility in Gakona broadcast a Sept. 11 memorial image for 5 minutes via slow-scan television beginning at 4:30 p.m. Alaska time. The beam was directed toward Washington, D.C. and New York City. The transmission featured a nighttime photograph of lower Manhattan from the water showing the twin light beams pointed skywards where the twin towers of the World Trade Center stood 25 years ago.

The transmission was dedicated to the U.S. amateur radio community, “whose efforts 25 years ago and in the days and weeks that followed received wide praise from volunteer organizations assisting people at the stricken sites. You were there when needed, as always.”

The back story on the 9/11 tile in the hall
 Roger Smith was the director of the Geophysical  Institute in 2001. He says his habit was to rise at 6 a.m. On the morning of Sept. 11 he turned on the news and learned what was happening in New York City and elsewhere. Events were already well along by then.

When he arrived at the GI people were clustered around any televisions available in the building, trying to take it all in.

The director's office put the word out and later that morning around 50 people gathered on the stairs in front of the Elvey building. Smith knew he was expected to say some words, so he did.

There were people there from all kinds of backgrounds, all kinds of spiritual beliefs. He wanted to be respectful of that. He suggested to the group that possibly the Lord's Prayer was something most everyone knew, and he asked them to say it with him if they chose.

Then he felt that there was nothing any of them could do about things at that time.

“We just didn't know enough yet,” he said.

So he suggested everyone go back to work and check in again at lunchtime.

Smith said installation of the 9/11 tile in the Plant Hall grew out of people's desire to commemorate the day. The GI several months earlier had installed tiles further down the hall as part of a fundraiser to benefit GI employees.

It took some time, maybe a couple months, to decide on the design and get the tile made by the company here in Fairbanks that created them out of recycled glass.

It is 7 1/2 inches square, larger than the other tiles. It has the words “September 11, 2001” engraved in the glass surface, crisp white serif letters and numbers against a dark grey-green field. The tile is flanked on the wall by two smaller turquoise tiles, all placed on the diagonal. Larry Kozycki from the machine shop installed it, taking special care to attach it to the wall securely. It is a single tile on one of the building’s columns towards the Akasofu Building end of the hall, facing in.

The intention was for this tile to stand alone, Smith said, for it to be the only one on that panel. And so it has remained.