Glass artist Sean Egan spoke to Ryan Tubridy about how creating a tribute piece of art let to him becoming Waterford's connection to 9/11 and resulted in the city becoming one of only two places outside America to receive a piece of steel from the Twin Towers.

"You've got to bring yourself back to September 11th, 2001.  We watched the television and watched the horror unfold right in front of our eyes and what I noticed was all the firemen and the police officers who were rushing into the building to save peoples lives…  They actually saved 25,000 peoples lives before the building collapsed…  When you think about it, there are about 1000 people that worked in the World Trade Centre were Irish descent so I found it very humbling the way these people lost their lives trying to save other peoples lives."

Sean was so moved by watching the experience that he started to create a piece of art depicting Fr Mychal Judge, chaplain to the New York City Fire Department and the first certified fatality of the attacks, being carried out of the World Trade Centre.  While he was working, an American firefighter on holidays in Ireland approached Sean, saying he had known Fr Judge and the firefighters who featured in the piece and asking what Sean was going to do with it.

"I said, do you know what, you can have it for free.  He said don't do that, so he went back to New York to all the fire chiefs.  They invited me over…  I kept the original piece and I made a copy and I went over with the piece and I made it bigger and they blocked the streets off and they had bagpipers and the mayor was there and everyone was there and it just went down really well."

Sean went on to form a relationship with the firefighters and while creating a memorial piece for the Boston marathon bombs, he asked for and was granted a piece of steel from the World Trade Centre for the city of Waterford.

Of the heroes of the day, Sean says,

"These firefighters, they were saving everybody's lives.  Didn't care what colour you were, what religion you were…  They have survivor's guilt as they get older and they tell me now that there's as many died now through diseases they got from asbestos and through the lungs and have died since 9/11, so it's not going away."

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