POTSDAM -- Clarkson University alumnus Michael Bielawa, who was one of a group who led the 9/11 clean-up at the World Trade Center, will speak at Clarkson's annual 9-11remembrance ceremony.

Clarkson campus community and members of the local community will gather at Clarkson's World Trade Center Memorial Sculpture from 8:30 to 9 a.m. for the ceremony. The memorial is located across the road from the Center for Advanced Materials Processing (CAMP) building.

Currently, senior project manager/safety manager and vice president of Lend Lease (U.S.) Construction LMB, Inc., Bielawa has spent nearly 30 years as a construction manager and engineering supervisor in New York City.

The day of the World Trade Center collapse, he was called to Ground Zero to help supervise the clean-up efforts. He worked there for three weeks, effectively clearing the debris and helping to recover survivors.

After his first-hand experience with the September 11 disaster, Bielawa requested that the New York City Office of Emergency Management donate steel from the World Trade Center to Clarkson to be used for a memorial. Several years of planning and fund-raising led to the installation of a memorial at Clarkson in 2005.

The steel in Clarkson’s World Trade Center Memorial is from 55th floor of the World Trade Center's south tower.

The site was dedicated as a memorial to the four alumni’s lives lost in the World Trade Center attacks. Each of the alumni’s names, Peter A. Klein, Paul R. Hughes, Richard J. O’Connor, and R. Mark Rasweiler, are engraved above a light installed in the foundation of the structure, and at night the lights shine up on the structural beams.

If the weather is inclement, the ceremony will take place in the Student Center forum.