Bob Dole was out of office by the time hijackers rammed jetliners into the World Trade Center towers.

But Richard Norton Smith, director of the Dole Institute of Politics at Kansas University, says there are plenty of connections between Dole’s political and military service and the current world situation. That’s why he asked the New York City Mayor’s Office for two beams from the Trade Center rubble. They arrived Tuesday and will be incorporated into the Dole center on KU’s West Campus.

“We’re trying to make a visual connection between the sacrifices of the World War II generation and the sacrifices of the current generation,” Smith said.

The two beams – 10 1/2 feet long and 4 feet in diameter – will be kept in a West Campus storage building until a permanent memorial can be built.

Smith said he wanted to encase them in glass outdoors at the Dole Institute’s new building, which is under construction near the Lied Center. The building will be dedicated in July, but the World Trade Center memorial probably will be dedicated Sept. 11, 2003 – the second anniversary of the attacks.

Smith wants the memorial to be near the reflecting pool in front of the building, but aside from that, the details have yet to be determined.

“It should be a dramatic spot,” he said. “I envision we’ll light them dramatically at night.”

Steven Scannell, project manager for the Dole Institute of Politics at Kansas University, inspects two donated steel beams from the World Trade Center. Delivered Tuesday morning from New York, the beams will be used for a 9-11 memorial at the Dole center.

Dole, the former U.S. senator and Republican presidential candidate from Russell, requested the beams a month ago.

He also mentioned the request to Andrew McKelvey, CEO of TMP Worldwide, who also works with the Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund. That’s the fund Dole and former President Bill Clinton established for families of Sept. 11 victims. McKelvey is dating someone in New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office, Smith said.

Within a few days, workers were cutting the beams, which were at the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island.

Bloomberg’s office donated the beams, which weigh 1,500 pounds each. McKelvey paid for shipping them to Kansas on a semi truck.

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Smith said the beams were rare because many of the communities who have requested rubble have received 2-foot sections of beams. At least two other Kansas communities – Dodge City and Hutchinson – are creating memorials using beams from the World Trade Center.

Erik Nelson, the Dole Institute’s associate director, said many of the beams distributed had been sanitized and had excess rubble removed. But KU’s beams haven’t – they still have pieces of cloth, plastic and dirt on them, and there’s evidence of where hot jet fuel burned away the fire retardant spray from the beams.

“They haven’t been cleaned,” Nelson said. “We wanted them just as they were when they were taken out of ground zero.”