By Timothy Dwyer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 8, 2005; Page B01

They gathered in a foundry in a small Missouri town along the Mississippi River 35 miles downstream from St. Louis to watch their dream take physical shape. They stood and watched while workers using a jackhammer attached to a Bobcat loader carefully chipped away at a mold made of 75,000 pounds of sand.

Keith Kaseman and Julie Beckman, two young New York architects who were chosen to design the Pentagon Memorial, were there. Jim Laychak, who lost a brother at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, made the trip, too. So did Rosemary Dillard, whose husband was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77 and died when it was crashed into the Pentagon by terrorists. Jill Dowling, manager of the design-build team, went along as well.

After more than two hours of pecking at the mold, the moment arrived to lift the finished product with a crane. All work at the foundry stopped, according to many of those who gathered there. Everyone wanted to see. As the stainless-steel prototype of the benches that will be used at the Pentagon Memorial was lifted out of the mold, everyone applauded, except for the guys on the forklifts. They honked their horns like crazy.

Dillard fought to hold back tears. So did James Upchurch, who helped build the mold. It was Thursday morning, and Beckman remembered that it was exactly two years ago to the day that she and Kaseman were introduced at a news conference as the winners of a worldwide design competition -- their design chosen from more than 1,000 entries.

"I don't think we anticipated the amount of emotion we would feel as we were pouring this mold and shaking it out," said E.J. Kubick, president of Carondelet Corp., a division of MetalTek International, which was awarded the contract to build the benches. "I think everybody was very moved by this event. We are very proud to be part of this."

The Pentagon Memorial, which is to be built entirely with private funds, will have 184 cantilevered benches, one in memory of each of the victims of the terrorist attack. It will occupy 1.93 acres of the Pentagon's west lawn and will be 165 feet from where the jetliner hit the building.

Although there has been no groundbreaking ceremony for the memorial and there are no backhoes, bulldozers or dump trucks on site, much work has been going on -- research and development and fundraising -- that is not visible to the thousands of commuters who pass the site on area highways.

The process of getting the memorial designed and built has been very personal for many family members. Each month, they meet to go over the progress. Not quite $6 million has been raised for the memorial. Laychak, who is president of the Pentagon Memorial Fund, said about $30 million is needed to build and maintain it. Construction is expected to cost about $20 million, and family members want to establish a $10 million maintenance fund.

"We have enough money to pay for the next year and about half of 2006," Laychak said. The money has come from corporate donations, an internal Pentagon fundraiser and other contributions. Last summer, the children of Elaine Donovan, whose husband, Bill, a Navy commander, was killed in the attack, set up a Gatorade stand on the Mount Vernon bike path to raise money for the memorial. Laychak said the memorial fund is considering a plan to sell sponsorships of individual benches for $150,000 each.

Laychak said he hopes that construction can begin by fall 2006 and be completed by spring 2008. Many components of the memorial will be constructed off-site, such as the benches and the individual reflecting pools and lighting systems that will be under the benches.

The construction schedule is fluid because it depends on the pace of fundraising. It is a pay-as-you-go project. In the near future, testing will continue on the bench prototype, a second prototype will be made, and if everyone is satisfied, the production of the 184 benches will proceed. A West Coast company is continuing research and testing of the underground system of pipes and pumps that will service the reflecting pools.

The prototype was the first piece of the memorial that people could touch -- once it cooled from 2,980 degrees. During the next couple of months, it will be trimmed, polished and tested for flaws. By June, the testing may be finished and a second prototype made, incorporating changes that result from the testing.

"I am just so thankful that I was able to come out and see this," Laychak said. "Now we can come back and tell all the family members that this is going to happen. I knew we were going to get it built, but this makes it tangible and real. Now you can see it and touch it and you can imagine what 184 of them together is going to look like."

Kaseman and Beckman have spent more than two years working on the project. Until last week, the only vision they had of their design was through the window of a computer screen or on paper.

"It felt great," Kaseman said. "We have been looking at this thing and spinning it around in the computer for so long. This is the first physical thing hat we can bang our foot against and see that is physical and real."

Beckman said it was moving to watch the way the foundry workers handled the bench. "They are real [respectful] of it," she said. "They are making sure they are not manhandling it too much, making sure it is being treated as a fragile object."

The bench is made of super duplex stainless steel, used in the reconstruction of the Statue of Liberty and in catapults on aircraft carriers because it is highly resistant to corrosion. That is important because the base of each bench will be submerged in a reflecting pool. The metal will be dent-proof, easy to maintain and have a life span of more than 100 years.

The pour took a little less time than was projected, two seconds to be exact. Upchurch, who helped build the mold, missed the pour Wednesday morning because he had a doctor's appointment. He got to the foundry 10 minutes late.

"Once I got here," he said in a phone interview from the foundry, "I found out everything was over, and so I sort of rested my back against one of the pillars and everyone was coming up to me and telling me I missed it. I was pretty sad. I almost cried."

Upchurch had another doctor's appointment Thursday morning, but he canceled that one. He wanted to help break away the mold (called the shakeout) since he knew how it was built as well as anyone, knew which parts to pick away at without damaging the bench.

"When I saw it come out," he said, "I was pretty overwhelmed. And after we got all the sand off it, I was on cloud, I was on cloud 27,000. I'd say it was the biggest natural rush I have ever had."

Upchurch and other foundry workers had a chance to meet Laychak and Dillard on Wednesday and Thursday and learned firsthand what families have been going through since losing their loved ones.

Dillard said she was so emotional watching the mold come off the bench that she had trouble describing how she felt.

"I think every family member will be so proud when they see the bench of their loved ones," she said. She added that watching the bench be made has motivated her to work even harder to get the memorial built. "Oh, my God," she said. "This is going to get me knocking on doors for money. I mean, we have got to get this finished. We have got to have this money."

Last week was the first step in the production process and was an opportunity for workers nearly a half a continent away to learn firsthand the impact their work has on the families of the victims of the attack.

"I don't believe it really hit home to me until after we went out in front of the [foundry] and took a group photo," said Barry Craig, manufacturing manager at the plant. "Rosemary [Dillard] started talking about how, seeing the bench, she was starting to feel closure. She told me how she was going to go home and talk to her husband about being able to move on. At that point, it really hit home to me what the whole project meant."

This is one in a series of occasional articles. For more coverage, go to www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/specials/attacked/pentagon/