TOWAMENCIN — For the past two decades, a memorial outside the North Montco Technical Career Center on Sumneytown Pike has paid silent tribute to one of America’s darkest days.
On the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, a new addition honors one group who sacrificed that day — the first responders who gave their lives rescuing others.
“The firehouse represents all of the first responders that had fallen on 9/11,” said North Montco junior Matt Tomczak, son of former Allentown fire marshal Jeffrey Tomczak.
“The red represents firetrucks, and all the vehicles represent the vehicles that drive to every fire, and all the other responders,” he said.
The school’s existing 9/11 Memorial Garden is located within a landscaped bed on the lawn near the school’s front entrance. Inside the garden stands a sculpture designed by welding instructor Bill Ludlow, who has since passed away, and NMTCC class of 2003 welding student Jon Garnett.
Two dawn redwood trees stand at the rear of the garden, which are meant to represent the twin towers of the World Trade Center destroyed that day. Those particular trees were chosen because they are closely related to the Sequoia, large redwood trees grown in California, where the two flights that destroyed each tower were headed before being hijacked. Their needles turn yellow-orange each fall before losing their needles, leaving bare trees meant to evoke the two towers, and the green needles then return in spring as a reminder that life goes on.
In front of those two trees stands a five-sided patch of soil meant to represent the Pentagon building also attacked on 9/11, and planted within are shrubs commonly found in the southern U.S., and white Japanese Skimmia flowers that turn red in fall and leave evergreen foliage through the winter. The mulch bed itself contains Pennsylvania wildflowers and grasses meant to remember the fourth flight lost that day near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, with flowers that bloom at all times of year.
In the center of the bed, now just a few years younger than the lifespan of the buildings they represent, is a stainless steel sculpture of the New York City skyline before the attacks, which was designed and built by Garnett as his senior project in 2003 and dedicated on the anniversary that year.
“On 9/11, we went out and looked at it, learned what it meant, and all the symbolism of it. My teacher asked me last year if I would do this, and I said ‘Of course,’ and that’s when I started brainstorming, and it led to this,” Matt Tomczak said of this year’s addition.
North Montco Technical Career Center junior Matt Tomczak welds a fire station and firetrucks meant to be added to the school’s September 11 memorial garden. (Photo courtesy of North Montco Technical Career Center)
“It took a while, just making sure everything was the right size, to get all of the stuff — it’s a lot more than it looks like,” he said.
Starting with a template he found online, Matt modified the design with help from welding instructor Rocco Sexton and teaching assistant Esther Iglesias, then had to find metal that was the proper shape and size. Once the design was finalized — and amid classes full of safety training and skill lessons — Matt used a North Montco plasma cutter in a sweltering workshop to cut the pieces to the proper sizes, then weld them together and paint them the distinctive fire engine red.
North Montco Technical Career Center junior Matt Tomczak poses next to a firehouse and emergency vehicles he welded to pay tribute to emergency responders at the school’s September 11th memorial garden on Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026. (Dan Sokil – MediaNews Group)
“I hand cut all these pieces, welded them all up, filled in all the gaps, and then we had some spare pieces we could use for wheels, welded them all up, then made them look like fire vehicles. They’re in their permanently, they’re welded,” he said, tugging on one firetruck stationed at the ready within the sculpted structure.
“It makes me really proud, of what we’ve done,” he said.
He’s long known the importance of firefighters to the community: Matt is the son of the late Jeff Tomczak, former Upper Gwynedd firefighter and town fire marshal who served that community for nearly two decades and 25-plus years in the military prior to his passing at age 44 in 2024.
“My father was a firefighter, he joined Upper Gwynedd in 1996 and Allentown in 2009, and he was also a firefighter in the Air Force. In 2023 he got cancer from all of the smoke, from fire-related cancers, and then he battled for 15 months and in July of 2024 he passed away,” he said.
“I think he’d be really proud of me, and just knowing that it’s for a good cause. He was really motivated to make sure that their story was heard, and that it didn’t just get swept under the covers, and making sure that everyone that lost their lives that day didn’t get forgotten, and that they had a huge impact on everything,” Matt said.
What does he hope local firefighters think when they see the new addition to the memorial?
North Montco Technical Career Center junior Matt Tomczak welds a fire station and firetrucks meant to be added to the school’s September 11 memorial garden. (Photo courtesy of North Montco Technical Career Center)
“I think they would be really happy to see this. A lot of time and effort was put into this, and being from someone who spent a lot of time around firehouses, and knowing what they do for our community,” he said.
“I’ll take it into a career, everything I’ve learned in the past two years. Find something that you would be interested in, something that you would do as a hobby, and build off of that,”
As he spoke, Iglesias and North Montco school director Darin Van Norman joined the student in reflecting on living through that day, and those who sacrificed their lives to save others.
North Montco Technical Career Center Director Darin Van Norman, junior Matt Tomczak and teaching assistant Esther Iglesias pose at the school’s September 11th memorial garden, where a new firehouse welded by Tomczak was installed on Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026. (Dan Sokil – MediaNews Group)
“All the students are going to have the opportunity to come to and spend as much time out here, reflecting on it, and the great work that Matt did here — and just continuing to remember what happened 25 years ago,” Van Norman said.
“We’ve had students and teachers say ‘Hey, are we still allowed to go out to the memorial?’ And I say yes, 100 percent, we want to continue to encourage that reflection,” he said.
As his classmates among Sexton’s 46 total welding students from five sending schools at North Montco brushed up on safety qualifications, Matt strolled past a series of posters in the main hallway of the school, headlined ‘The Day that Changed America’ and showing a timeline of the day’s attacks, the subsequent memorials in New York City and the Flight 93 crash site in Pennsylvania, then highlighting the North Montco memorial garden prior to its newest addition.
“He did an excellent job. And then when he gets to be 50, or in 25 years, he’ll pass by and say ‘I did that,’ and it’ll be the 50 year anniversary. Bring your children in, and say ‘I did that,’” Iglesias said.