The events of Sept. 11, 2001, are memorialized in many different ways, and for one area man, they are best remembered with a pair of whitetail deer antlers.
Those antlers were stolen several years ago, but Thomas Nawrocki, 53, of Whitehall said he will continue offering a $1,000 reward for their return as long as necessary. He took out a classified ad offering the reward, describing the plaque and listing contact information.
An avid hunter, Mr. Nawrocki was at an archery festival 11 years ago when he heard the news of Sept. 11. It wasn't until he learned of the terrorist attacks in New York City that he realized his friend of 30 years, a New York City firefighter, had not attended the festival.
"There was no cellphone or any kind of service and he didn't show," Mr. Nawrocki recalled. "Everybody thought he must have gone down with it. It just kind of took the steam out of everybody."
Fortunately for Mr. Nawrocki, his friend, Tom Conroy,, had recently retired from the New York Fire Department.
Still reeling from the unimaginable events that claimed the lives of many Mr. Conroy had served with for years, the two went for a hunt together that year.
"I shot a buck. It was a typical hunting scenario," Mr. Nawrocki said, adding that it was a turning point for the two. "It seemed like everything was going to be normal again and everything was going to be all right. Everything was going to pass."
He mounted the antlers on a special plaque in the shape of New York state, which he painted red, white and blue. It hung on the wall in his parents' home in Throop, where he kept all of his trophies, until it was stolen in 2010.
"Now it's a room I can't even go in anymore. Something is missing," he said.
The plaque and antlers have no monetary value, and Mr. Nawrocki hopes that somehow he will recover it, because it holds symbolic value to him.
"I'll put that in the paper now forever," he said of the ad. "I don't care. I can't stop thinking about it."
Contact the writer: rbrown@timesshamrock.com, @rbrownTT on Twitter