Dear Commons Community,
Today is the 22nd anniversary of the horror of 9/11, and the attacks at the New York World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. There will be memorials across the country at firehouses, city halls and elsewhere to observe the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil. The impact of 9/11 was felt in every corner of the nation, however remote. The hijacked plane attacks claimed nearly 3,000 lives and reshaped American foreign policy and domestic fears.
On that day, “we were one country, one nation, one people, just like it should be. That was the feeling — that everyone came together and did what we could, where we were at, to try to help,” said Eddie Ferguson, the fire-rescue chief in Virginia’s Goochland County.
It’s more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the Pentagon and more than three times as far from New York. But a sense of connection is enshrined in a local memorial incorporating steel from the World Trade Center’s destroyed twin towers.
The predominantly rural county of 25,000 people holds not just one but two anniversary commemorations: a morning service focused on first responders and an evening ceremony honoring all the victims.
Other communities across the country pay tribute with moments of silence, tolling bells, candlelight vigils and other activities. In Columbus, Indiana, 911 dispatchers broadcast a remembrance message to police, fire and EMS radios throughout the 50,000-person city, which also holds a public memorial ceremony.
Here in New York City, Vice President Kamala Harris will join a ceremony on the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum plaza. The event will not feature remarks from political figures, instead giving the podium to victims’ relatives for an hours long reading of the names of the dead.
James Giaccone signed up to read again this year in memory of his brother, Joseph Giaccone, 43. The family attends the ceremony every year to hear Joseph’s name.
“If their name is spoken out loud, they don’t disappear,” James Giaccone said in a recent interview.
The commemoration is crucial to him.
“I hope I never see the day when they minimize this,” he said. “It’s a day that changed history.”
We can never forget!
Tony
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