By Sunayana Prabhu
Shattered remnants of the Twin Towers are part of monuments and memorials housed in firehouses and museums across the country. They unite communities through a shared history of pain and pride.
One of those charred steel pieces rests in a slightly more unusual place, sharing space with vintage tattoo machines and historic tattoo flash art in Atlantic Highlands. Visitors stop in front of it. Some cry. Some pray.
At Under My Skin Tattoo Studio, owner Tony Rodriguez, known to regulars as “Tattoo Tony,” has spent decades turning their grief into ink.
“A tattoo tells a story. It should tell a story,” Rodriguez said.
As the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks approaches, Rodriguez said he expects to spend the coming weeks working on a string of 9/11 tribute pieces, such as outlines of the Twin Towers, the number 343 (the number of New York firefighters who died that day), empty chairs and angels, all dedicated to those lost.
Of the nearly 3,000 people killed that day, 147 were Monmouth County residents; 72 law enforcement officers, including 11 from New Jersey, died. According to the Officer Down Memorial website, rescue workers who rushed to the scene after the first plane hit the World Trade Center’s North Tower saved over 25,000 people.
For many survivors and first responders, there is no clear road to healing. Some turn to charity work; many live with survivor’s guilt. Others, like the clients who walk through Rodriguez’s door, choose to carry the day with them permanently.
“You would be surprised how much somebody coming in and getting tattooed will really help them heal and help them move forward,” Rodriguez said.
“It’s all part of the journey.”
A Museum of Memory
Rodriguez has been a tattoo artist since 1985. Over the decades, his studio has grown into something closer to a museum, with nearly 300 exhibits of machines and memorabilia honoring New Jersey’s tattoo history.
The piece of World Trade Center steel came to him after he appeared on “Fox and Friends,” he said, when 9/11 advocate John Feal presented him with the fragment. It now sits alongside an engraving Rodriguez made and a patch from the FealGood organization, which raises funds for 9/11 responders.
Rodriguez was living in Ocala, Florida, on the morning of the attacks and watched it unfold on television, struggling at first to grasp what he was seeing. He lost friends and family members that day, too, he said.
Some of the people who arrive at his shop are still working through what happened.
‘To the Grave’
Rodriguez said his 9/11 clients come from every walk of life. They are “doctors, lawyers, a mother memorializing an uncle or father who was there.” The designs vary, but the impulse behind them is often the same: to possess permanence, something physical to hold on to of the person who died.
A 9/11 tattoo stays forever, he said. “No matter what happens to you through the course of life – you could go hungry, you could go broke, you could be the richest person on Earth, the only thing you’ll take to your grave with you is that tattoo.”
He has come to see his job as more like counseling.
“As you’re tattooing somebody, you’re kind of like a therapist, because you’re sitting there and you’re hearing their stories, you’re feeling their pain,” he said. “I’m not talking about the pain from the tattoo – it’s not really that painful. I’m talking about the pain that’s in their heart.”
He often recommends clients place memorial tattoos somewhere visible to them, like the inside of the arm, so grief has somewhere to land.
“Sometimes all you need is that little moment. You look down, you see that tattoo, and say it’s OK, because they’re right there,” Rodriguez said.
A Firefighter’s Ink
Among Rodriguez’s clients is Carlo Conrad, a retired Fords firefighter with 30 years of service. Not long after the attacks, Conrad decided to express his grief in art.
“Tony had tattooed a bunch of tattoos on me, just representing that I was a firefighter during this time,” Conrad said. His left arm is covered in flames, a fireman, a hydrant and a phoenix rising from fire, representing new birth, he said.
He wants to remember “how the community stood united and lifted each other” after the attacks. “People brought whatever they could, whatever was needed; they were there, giving out wet towels, bottles of water and just everything. It was just crazy how everybody tried to get there.”
On Conrad’s lower leg, Rodriguez recreated a statue of Jesus embracing a kneeling firefighter, a piece Conrad had made shortly after the attacks. “Just to be in touch with the sense that somebody was looking over us, or looking over what we do,” he said.
Firefighters, police officers, EMS workers and volunteers dedicated themselves to the rescue, recovery and cleanup at ground zero. Some of those from Monmouth County include Middletown Deputy Fire Chief Kevin Morrissey, who worked with New Jersey Task Force 1 and continues to respond to disasters a quarter-century later.
Holmdel resident and retired FDNY firefighter Joe McKay continues to share what he witnessed and the toll it took on responders’ health. As of June 30, 2025, more than 86,000 9/11 responders were enrolled in the federal World Trade Center Health Program, which provides monitoring and treatment for qualifying 9/11-related conditions.
Others did not live to see this 25th anniversary. Middletown’s Joseph Capriotti, who responded to ground zero, died of cancer in 2019 at 62. Michael Cioffi, a Long Branch resident and former FDNY firefighter, died in 2024 at 61 from illnesses attributed to his 9/11 service. FDNY firefighter and Matawan native Michael Carter died in 2025 at 69 after battling cancer attributed in his obituary to his rescue efforts at ground zero.
Kenneth Tietjen, a former Middletown resident and Belford Engine Company volunteer, was working as a Port Authority police officer at the 33rd Street PATH station Sept. 11. He helped evacuate people from the North Tower, then entered the South Tower with a respirator and was killed when the tower collapsed. He was 31.
A Legacy of Service
On the morning of Sept. 11, Conrad was driving through northern New Jersey when the first report of the attacks came over the radio.
Conrad had to stay behind, he said, to protect his own district instead of responding to the World Trade Center site. A necessary decision, he said, but one that created a dilemma for many firefighters. “A lot of guys have survivor’s guilt. And firefighters that continued to live their lives doing what we do – it’s no less than being on the pile,” he said.
He gets tattoos in remembrance. “I’m not going to forget,” he said. “I’m not going to forget the loss. I’m not going to forget what we went through on that day.”
Conrad is a member of Knights of Inferno, a firefighter motorcycle club that formed soon after 9/11 and has now grown to 26 chapters worldwide. On Sept. 13, members will ride together to firehouses that display fragments of 9/11 steel, as they do every year. Pieces of the wreckage can be seen locally at fire stations in Holmdel, Tinton Falls and Rumson, among others.
The club members will lay wreaths at the fragments. “We’re trying to show people that we’re not forgetting – this is how you honor these people.”
The article originally appeared in the September 3 – 9, 2026 print edition of The Two River Times.
