History teacher Ken Senter has a plan to capture the horror of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks for his students in Tennessee. He’ll take them outside.

A tourist watches as a giant banner is raised overlooking the site of the World Trade Center disaster in New York. The banner was raised Saturday to mark the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

Two beams salvaged from the ruins of the World Trade Center battered hunks of steel he received after lobbying New York officials for nearly a year will be shaped into a memorial in front of Oak Ridge High School. Every year, his students will file by for a hands-on history lesson.

“I just felt in my heart that if I could tell my kids, ‘This is from ground zero, people died next to this beam,’ … it will retain the reality of that experience longer,” Senter said.

Communities across the nation responded with an outpouring of generosity and grief after last September’s attacks: There were candlelight vigils, flags flying, blood donations, millions of dollars poured into charities.

A year later, America has turned to commemorating the tragedy in concrete and steel, in words and fabric, in churches, museums and even tattoo parlors.

There are scholarships and songs, quilts and paintings, exhibits and displays, videos and tens of thousands of Web sites. There are public memorials that will scrape the sky and private mementos already buried in the earth.

“There’s a desperate need for people to be connected,” said Nick Carpasso, an art historian in Massachusetts and expert on public memorials.

And having an artifact brings the tragedy home, said Mark Schaming, director of exhibitions at the New York State Museum.

“It’s human nature to have a touchstone and be closer to a historical event,” he said. “The further away you are, the greater the need for it.”

Consider just the rusty, dented beams that once made up the 110-story towers. Communities around the nation including Charlotte, N.C., Lafayette, La., and Tuscaloosa, Ala. have dispatched trucks to claim them for displays.

In Naperville, Ill., beams along with rubble from the Pentagon will become part of a memorial for Cmdr. Dan Shanower, a hometown boy who was a naval intelligence officer killed in the building.

In Albuquerque, N.M., beams will be used to rebuild the historic bell tower of Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church.

“We have people who leave flowers, rosaries and letters on the beams. They cry,” said John Garcia, who is organizing the memorial. “What they (the ruins) represent to us … is that our resolve is made of steel.”

A different kind of memorial is emerging in a quiet Pennsylvania field six miles from the spot where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed after its passengers apparently tried to thwart their hijackers.

The Rev. Al Mascherino, a Catholic priest, spent $18,000 to buy a vacant church and plans to have nondenominational services on the 11th of each month.

“Of all the messages of those who perished that day, theirs was the clearest,” Mascherino said of the passengers. “It really was a declaration of independence. They were able to rise up and defeat their oppressors.”