CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – As our nation prepares to remember the events of Sept. 11, 2001, on the 25th anniversary Friday, Charlottesville has a place that community members can tour at any time that serves as a museum with artifacts from the Pentagon, Shanksville Pennsylvania, and of course the World Trade Center towers.

Bringing those artifacts to Charlottesville was a vision of retired Charlottesville Fire Chief Charles Werner. As a first responder, Werner was deeply impacted by not only the tragic events of 9-11, but also by the spirit of unity that arose in the country following the tragedy. From that day on, he was driven to both commemorate the lives of the 343 first responders who were lost, and also support their families through organizations like Parade Rest and others.

So, around 2011, the 10-year anniversary of the tragedy, Werner had another idea that he felt would honor the first responders we lost right here in Central Virginia. Werner came across an opportunity to acquire a piece of the World Trade Center, and through his professional relationships he arranged to have a 4,000 pound piece of steel from Ground Zero brought to Charlottesville to be displayed during the 10th anniversary commemoration which was held on Charlottesville’s downtown mall. However, in order to transport an artifact of that size hundreds of miles securely, Werner needed a financial partner. He found one in Glenn Rust, the CEO of Virginia National Bank.

“On the tenth anniversary of 9-11, Virginia National Bank, also supported that anniversary [ceremony] where we brought the steel first for people to see it before we put it in the fire station,” Werner said on the VNB “My Forever Bank” podcast.

In 2012, Charlottesville built a state of the art new fire station, called Fire Station 10, which doubles as an emergency operations center as well as a museum home to artifacts from the 9-11 tragedy. Virginia National Bank was also a major financial contributor to the construction of the new facility.

“On the tenth anniversary what we did was put flags all the way up West Main St. through University, down McIntyre Rd. to the county office building all the way down to the mall, connecting the city, the county and the university with American flags,” Werner said. “It was a sense of trying to renew that vow of unity in our community. After 911, the giving of blood all the American flags were tremendous, it was just a tremendous outpouring of our country coming together.” Werner said.

In an effort to promote that spirit of unity, Werner along with the support of VNB established an official 911 museum at Fire Station 10.

“Our museum consists of artifacts from all three locations, so we have a piece of steel from the north tower, we have a stone from the Pentagon and we have a rock from Shanksville (Pennsylvania) the site where the plane crashed.” It took a lot of coordination to bring those pieces of history to Charlottesville, and Glenn Rust was an enthusiastic supporter of that effort.

“It’s not just a girder, [the steel beam], there is actually, if you look close on the girder, four markings if I remember correctly the NY fire department, by that girder either under or around [it] is where four firefighters were found. So that girder has a significance specifically hanging in the fire station,” Rust said on the podcast. “The other interesting part of the story as well is as the museum in the fire station starts to get built, Charles mentioned those artifacts from each of the crash areas and the hardest one, believe it or not was getting the actual piece of stone that had been impacted at the Pentagon. You know you have to be a military, almost a fort before you can have access to something like that but General Beatty at UVA really stepped up to help us sign a 50-year lease which is how we got that.”

Rust and Werner are coming together again on Friday, September 11, 2026, the 25th anniversary of the tragedy for a special event that the entire community is invited to.

“Our goal is the have the 25th anniversary rededication of the steel in the 9-11 atrium [of Fire Station 10 on Fontaine] so that we can kind of remember,” Werner said. “The whole premise of this is to never forget what happened that day. The tragedy that was, the firefighters and police officers that ran into harms way when everyone else was running out and to remember all that we lost.”

Rust also believes it is important to remember the lingering affects on those who survived that day as well.

“[It’s important to remember those] we continue to lose, many of the firefighters who were at the dedication, many of those passed on a few years later from the many of the documented lung diseases and lung problems. So it’s not just who we lost that day but who we lost gosh over the next 10, 11, 12 years still,” he said.

All of those sentiments and more will be expressed at a special ceremony on Friday morning beginning at 8:30am and continuing to 10:03 a.m. at the fire station on Fontaine Ave. in Charlottesville and the event is free and open to the public.  You can hear the entire podcast episode below: