Alex Aprea, 14, Sacramento
Alex, a freshman at Jesuit High School, has grown up in a world where airline passengers must remove their shoes and belts to pass through security lines at U.S. airports.
He has never known a time when fans could bring backpacks into concerts or baseball games without uniformed officers searching them for bombs and other weapons.
He has lived most of his life in a time of war.
Alex has studied the events of Sept. 11, 2001, in history books and read about them in media reports. But the day's significance really sank in two years ago, when he visited ground zero in New York.
There he met Lee Ielpi, who lost his son, a firefighter, at the site, and he witnessed a father's grief.
"I started thinking about my Eagle Scout project, and I knew I had to focus on this," Alex recalled.
When he got home, Alex began sketching a design for a memorial sculpture, and asked Ielpi to help him obtain a piece of steel from the wreckage of the twin towers to include in the structure. The project has been placed in Cesar Chavez Plaza in downtown Sacramento and will be dedicated at a ceremony today marking the 10th anniversary of the attacks.
Alex also has organized a panel of speakers representing various religious faiths, including Catholics, Muslims, Mormons and Jews.
He hopes his efforts will have a lasting effect.
"I'm very proud and very happy about how it all came out," Alex said of his efforts. "I want people to take away the fact that, even though the attacks didn't happen here in California, they affected us all.
"It definitely affected me. I realize now that no matter how bad a day I'm having, it's not nearly as bad as those who lost lives and loved ones that day."
© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.
• Read more articles by Cynthia Hubert
What You Should Know About Comments on Sacbee.com
Sacbee.com is happy to provide a forum for reader interaction, discussion, feedback and reaction to our stories. However, we reserve the right to delete inappropriate comments or ban users who can't play nice. (See our full terms of service here.)
Here are some rules of the road:
• Keep your comments civil. Don't insult one another or the subjects of our articles. If you think a comment violates our guidelines click the "Report Abuse" link to notify the moderators. Responding to the comment will only encourage bad behavior.
• Don't use profanities, vulgarities or hate speech. This is a general interest news site. Sometimes, there are children present. Don't say anything in a way you wouldn't want your own child to hear.
• Do not attack other users; focus your comments on issues, not individuals.
• Stay on topic. Only post comments relevant to the article at hand.
• Do not copy and paste outside material into the comment box.
• Don't repeat the same comment over and over. We heard you the first time.
• Do not use the commenting system for advertising. That's spam and it isn't allowed.
• Don't use all capital letters. That's akin to yelling and not appreciated by the audience.
• Don't flag other users' comments just because you don't agree with their point of view. Please only flag comments that violate these guidelines.
You should also know that The Sacramento Bee does not screen comments before they are posted. You are more likely to see inappropriate comments before our staff does, so we ask that you click the "Report Abuse" link to submit those comments for moderator review. You also may notify us via email at feedback@sacbee.com. Note the headline on which the comment is made and tell us the profile name of the user who made the comment. Remember, comment moderation is subjective. You may find some material objectionable that we won't and vice versa.
If you submit a comment, the user name of your account will appear along with it. Users cannot remove their own comments once they have submitted them.
Order Reprint
About Comments
Reader comments on Sacbee.com are the opinions of the writer, not The Sacramento Bee. If you see an objectionable comment, click the "Report Abuse" link below it. We will delete comments containing inappropriate links, obscenities, hate speech, and personal attacks. Flagrant or repeat violators will be banned. See more about comments here.