NEW YORK – It’s not every day you find a beautiful and carefully hand-carved sandcastle in Lower Manhattan.
But professional sand sculptor Matt Long brought the beach to Vesey Street in Lower Manhattan at the Tunnel to Towers NYC 5K on Sunday, Sept. 25, 2022.
The annual run and walk honors all of the lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001 — and this year the event also spotlighted the 13 military men and women who were killed during America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.
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In an interview with Fox News Digital, Long revealed his dedication of the masterpiece to America’s fallen heroes — a dedication he’s made every year since the foundation’s beginnings.
“It’s one of my proudest moments,” he said. “It’s a thrill, and I’m extremely proud.”
“It’s my most exciting moment of the year,” he added.
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Long revealed he had about 14 hours total to complete the Tunnel to Towers sculpture.
It’s an intricate sandcastle with the foundation logo and the message “We Support Our Heroes” carved into it.
The professional sculptor — who has four world championship medals to his name and has sculpted sand in places all across the globe — first got involved in the craft while making sandcastles during family vacations in Cape May, N.J., where he took his children.
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“I don’t sit still very well. Let me give it a try,” he said he remembered thinking. “And for about five or six years, I made pitifully embarrassing sculptures.”
Long, then-uneducated in the art of sculpting, decided to take on a job with a professional sculptor, which blossomed into a new career.
“I’ve carved sand as far [away] as Thailand and as nearby as Times Square,” he said. “I’ve carved sand in a lot of places in New York City — it’s one of my favorite places to carve.”
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Long mentioned that he grew up on Staten Island with Tunnel to Towers founder Frank Siller and the rest of the Siller family.
He said that members of the two families played baseball together and were always “intertwined.”
He noted that the first few Tunnel to Towers events were very small “cry-fests,” given that the loss of 9/11 first responder and firefighter Stephen Siller was so “devastating.”
Now, the foundation has given back to American families in major ways. The group builds houses for injured veterans and pays off mortgages for the families of service members — actions that Long described as “just phenomenal.”
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“Some days you wake up and you think humanity is just a mess,” he said.
“And some days you wake up and you think, ‘Wow, it’s just incredible.'”
Pointed to his sandcastle and the efforts of so many people to help others, Long added, “This is the incredible part.”
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