Robert Gray’s Transformative Visit to the 9/11 Memorial Museum

In September 2014, Robert Gray, a first responder at the Pentagon on 9/11, visited the 9/11 Memorial Museum as a stop on the Ride 2 Recovery Minuteman Challenge. This extraordinary bicycle trip took Gray through New York with a group of veterans, firefighters and law enforcement personnel, all of them struggling with profound medical and emotional injuries.

As a captain with the Arlington County Fire Department in 2001, Gray spent weeks fighting the fires at the Pentagon, helping to stabilize damaged sections of the building and searching for and recovering the remains of those killed on hijacked Flight 77 and at the Pentagon. Gray would share his story a few years later with curators from the museum who had traveled to Arlington seeking artifacts and oral histories for the future museum.

Gray specifically told them about two cherished mementos: the fire helmet he had worn throughout his career and a special yellow helmet issued to responders on Day 3 of the recovery mission who were working under hazardous conditions in the collapse zone at the Pentagon.

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By Amy Weinstein, Associate Director of Collections/Senior Oral Historian, and Jenny Pachucki, Oral Historian and Assistant Curator