Wearing traditional white gloves and borrowed firefighters’ helmets, 20 Maine women on motorcycles will help escort firefighters to New York City next weekend to honor those lost in the terrorist attacks 10 years ago.

Motor Maids, a 70-year-old organization for female motorcyclists, is sending more than 140 members to the firefighters’ memorial. Of those 140, one of the largest contingents will be from Maine, almost half of those from the tri-county area.

“You can’t believe how excited these (firefighters) are that the Motor Maids are doing this,” said Lil Charron, Motor Maids district director for Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. “We just can’t get them to understand this is an honor for us to be doing this.”

More than a year ago, Michael Crouse, national coordinator for the International Association of Firefighters’ motorcycle group, asked Charron if she could pull together an escort for his firefighters. Based in Kittery, he’d worked with northern New England Motor Maids before. It would mean a lot to have some of the women there at the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. A small number would be fine, he told her. A few.

Charron, of Arundel, figured she could get more than a few.

“I just put out the call,” she said.

She asked for volunteers during the Motor Maids’ convention last summer, where more than 400 motorcycle mamas were in attendance. Others got the news through email.

Members from Texas signed up. So did women from Oklahoma and Wyoming. Pennsylvania. New Hampshire. New Brunswick, Ontario and Nova Scotia in Canada. Three Florida women, firefighters themselves, volunteered to ride. Ten women from Tennessee did, too.

But one of the largest contingents is expected to come from Maine, where about 20 women signed up. One was human resources professional and Harley rider Diane Clairmont of Turner. She remembers where she was on Sept. 11, 2001, when she learned the Twin Towers had fallen.

“I think we were all glued to our TVs and glued to our computer screens that day in disbelief that it could happen,” she said. “I think everyone’s lives were changed that day. It’s hard to believe it’s been 10 years.”

She and her husband, a retired Navy man, visited ground zero after the terrorist attacks. Next weekend, riding her Patriot Special Edition Harley-Davidson, she’ll accompany firefighters back to the city.

Barbara McGill of Monmouth will be there, too. With a friend living in Manhattan, she’d visited the city often back then. And although she didn’t know anyone who died that day, her son’s roommate lost his father.

When McGill heard about the Sept. 11 ride, she decided she had to go. It will be one of the only rides she takes this year.

“It just struck a chord that it was like, ‘Hey, this is something I’ve got to do.’ They asked us to escort them and it was an honor,” she said. “I’m not doing very much riding this year. My husband was diagnosed with colon cancer last year, so I haven’t been able to do very much. So I told him this was a ride that I was doing, so we’re scheduling all of his surgeries around this and going.”

Each woman will dress in the Motor Maids uniform of black jeans, a blue mock turtleneck, a white vest decorated with the Motor Maids crest and white gloves. Some will carry special flags — a Maine state flag for one woman, for example, an American flag emblazoned with the names of those who died on Sept. 11 for someone else.

They will also each wear the helmet of a firefighter who means something to them. Some will wear the helmets of firefighters from their hometowns. Others will wear the helmets of friends or family members, or firefighters who are serving in the military overseas.

Charron will wear the helmet of Sarah Fox, a Portsmouth firefighter and mother of five who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007, just hours before giving birth to twins. The cancer has since spread and she won’t be well enough to travel with her fellow firefighters to the Sept. 11 memorial.

“See, I lost my folks to cancer and I’m a survivor myself, so Sarah’s helmet is kind of special to me to be able to do that,” Charron said, choking up.

Some women will take their husbands or other companions. One Lewiston Motor Maid will take her grandson, an 18-year-old who recently joined the military.

The women say it’s an honor to be invited to join the firefighters in their procession to the memorial in Manhattan. Crouse said the firefighters feel honored that the women want to go.

The International Association of Firefighters lost 343 members on 9/11; 25 were Crouse’s friends. The support firefighters got then — and continue to get — means a lot.

“Our saying is, ‘Always remember; never forget.’ And we live by that,” Crouse said. “When we get the public support like this, it helps.”

Many Motor Maids will begin their journey on Sept. 9, meeting at Seacoast Harley-Davidson in North Hampton, N.H., and riding to New York. Those traveling the farthest will meet the group in New York over the weekend.

On Sunday morning, Sept. 11, the motorcycle procession will be led by a New York City firefighters’ motorcycle group called Fire Riders, followed by the Motor Maids, then more than 2,000 members of the International Association of Firefighters.

Other riders, including New Yorkers and individuals there for other 9/11 events, will follow.

The procession will begin at Orange County Choppers in Newburgh, N.Y., and travel 80 miles to Manhattan. Charron is looking forward to the trek.

“It was tragic,” she said, “but we’ll all come together to pay our respects.”

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