NAPERVILLE, ILL. ? The city’s monument honoring victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks will include at least part of an essay written by Naperville native and Navy Cmdr. Dan Shanower, who was killed when a jet slammed into the Pentagon.

His essay, “Freedom Isn’t Free,” was written a few years back as a tribute to shipmates killed in a plane crash.

Jon Shanower walks the area for a proposed memorial to the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the banks of the DuPage River in Naperville, Ill. It's not clear yet what the city's memorial will look like, but it will include at least part of an essay written by Jon's brother, Navy Cmdr. Dan Shanower, who was killed when a commercial airliner slammed into the Pentagon, where he worked.

“We want this to be a place that reminds everyone they can’t forget this day, (that) no matter where they live they are not insulated from what happened Sept. 11,” said Shanower’s brother, Jon, an attorney who lives in the city. “This is not a statue of my brother.”

All across the nation communities are building or planning monuments honoring those who died in the worst terrorist attack in American history.

In South Bend, Ind., where residents know that long before Katie McCloskey went to work at the World Trade Center she was a pretty fair athlete at John Adams High School, a monument to the victims is planned.

In Stanley, N.D., there are plans to name a wellness center after native Ann Nelson, a bond broker who also died in the trade center.

But monuments also are planned in communities where the list of the dead does not include any of their own. In Riverside, Calif., where four huge American flags were draped on the county administrative building shortly after the attacks, two permanent flag poles will be erected in honor of the victims.

The Iowa cities of Cedar Falls and Waterloo are also talking about monuments. “I think even those of us in a small community in Iowa felt a tremendous impact from that event,” said Mary Huber, a Cedar Falls official involved in the community’s planned sculpture.

A monument has already been built in North Miami Beach, Fla.

“Nobody from the town died,” said Jeffrey Mischon, the mayor of North Miami Beach, where a 12-foot-by-8-foot gray marble monument was being planned within days of the attacks and dedicated on Veterans Day.

“We just felt like it was important to remember, for the children to know these things are a part of history rather than see it on TV and have it fade away from memory as time goes by,” he said.

Nor did anyone from Elmhurst, a Chicago suburb near Naperville, die in the attacks. But after Sept. 11, plans for a fountain were changed to include red, white and blue streams of water, and the words: “America, Elmhurst Remembers.”

“It impacted every community in the United States,” said Doug Kuester, who thought a fountain would help spruce up the area where his vinyl siding business is located. “So we felt it was fitting to change the design and that’s what we did.”

Such memorials aren’t new. Monuments dot the landscape all over the United States, commemorating events well known and long forgotten, from the Civil War to a fire that claimed the lives of nine Boston firefighters.

But historian Nick Capasso said the reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks suggests there is something new going on.

“There is now in contemporary American culture a prevalent urge, almost a knee-jerk reaction, to create memorials to almost anything,” said Capasso, curator of the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Mass., and expert in commemorative art.

“These monuments are a way to be a part of history,” he said. “They are a way for communities that are not physically connected to the event to feel connected.”