A 21-foot steel beam recovered from the World Trade Center's South Tower made a stop in Indianapolis last month as part of a nationwide "Steel Across America" tour marking the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Organised by the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, the tour is designed to let Americans, particularly younger generations with no memory of the attacks, connect physically with an artefact of the tragedy before it returns to New York for a Sept. 11 commemoration.

The beam, weighing nearly 17,000 pounds, is touring more than 10,500 miles through 21 states and Washington DC, with the Indianapolis visit marking its 31st stop at the Indiana War Memorial and Museum on 19 August. The ceremony featured a colour guard, a bagpipe procession and remarks from local fire officials, and highlighted Indiana's own losses, including nine residents killed on 9/11 and six Indianapolis rescuers who later died from illnesses linked to their work at Ground Zero. The tour will conclude with stops at West Point, Boston and Washington DC before the beam returns to New York, where Tunnel to Towers chairman Frank Siller and his family will carry it through the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel on 11 September, retracing the route his brother Stephen Siller took 25 years ago.