ALBUQUERQUE, NM – The church bells at Sacred Heart Parish here once rang out for weddings and baptisms. Now they toll in remembrance of people who died thousands of miles east of this old New Mexico neighborhood.

Sacred Heart’s memorial bell tower is dedicated to the more than 2,800 people who died on September 11, 2001, in the attack on the World Trade Center towers.

Two steel beams, weighing 30,000 pounds and 26,000 pounds respectively, were lifted from the rubble of ground zero days after the New York attacks and brought to Albuquerque as part of the church’s effort to rebuild a bell tower.

Jorella Gonzales brought her two children, Javier Olivas, 13, and Sandra Olivas, 9, to Sacred Heart on Saturday for a memorial Mass and to view the beams inside the bell-tower chapel.

“We’re so far away from New York City, but I feel like we’re still with those people who died,” she said. “I cry because it’s still in my heart, the sadness I feel for those people who just went to work that day. I cry for their kids. I have mine. It’s very emotional here for us.”

Sacred Heart church, established in 1903, was razed over 30 years ago because of structural instability, and parishioners converted the school’s gymnasium into the church. Since then it has been refurbished, but because the small parish is in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, money was scarce and the bell tower was never reconstructed. The bells were actually lost, until one was discovered in a deceased church member’s garage in 2000.

Parishioners then started the movement to rebuild the bell tower, said Sosimo Padilla, a longtime church member and one of the men who spearheaded the efforts to bring beams from ground zero to Albuquerque.

“9/11 happened when we were making plans for rebuilding the tower, and several of us just believed we needed to do something to honor those innocent people,” Mr. Padilla said. “We wanted to also assure people in New York that we didn’t want to use these beams for some commercial project where anyone would profit from it.

“I’ve been a part of so many business deals in my life…. But this project, the beams, seeing them here gets to me right in the heart every time. I feel it in my heart when I see families weeping as they see them, touch them, and read the names of the people so far away who died in the rubble.”

U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson of New Mexico and Archbishop Michael Sheehan of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe also played crucial roles in getting the beams donated.

“The story of rebuilding the bell towers and of why they wanted to honor the people who died in New York seemed so right to me,” Ms. Wilson said. “It had to get done. The message to me is so clear. Though we have lost so many people, there is hope in every neighborhood where people gather and show their faith.”

Several hundred people attended the church’s memorial service Saturday, led by Archbishop Sheehan. The Mass was followed by a dinner and concert by the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra.

The bell tower opened to the public at 6 a.m. on Saturday for anyone who wanted to light a candle, view the many photos inside the tower, or touch the two beams. Across from the tower’s beams, the names of the victims of September 11, 2001, attacks grace a memorial plaque in the chapel. An embroidered quilt bearing four American flags reads: “We will not falter, We will not fail, We will not fear, We will not forget.”