Hundreds gathered as Harrison Township dedicated the memorial site to “never forget” the attacks on America and the sacrifices people made and continue to make.
By KRYSTAL NURSE
The Sun
Harrison Township on Sunday honored those who died in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, in Shanksville, Pa., Manhattan, N.Y. and Arlington, Va., with a permanent memorial site complete with artifacts that were secured and designed by a former committee member — who is also honored with a permanent plaque at the site.
“If it were not for former Deputy Mayor Dennis Clowney for his efforts in securing the artifacts that now sit here, obviously nobody else would’ve had a job today,” Mayor Louis Manzo said.
Clowney started securing the artifacts in 2012, beginning with the World Trade Center, then in 2015 with the Pentagon, and finally, this past year, from the Flight 93 crash site in Shanksville, which can no longer be acquired due to the land being entombed by the wreckage, Clowney said. During the memorial, he was presented with a plaque commemorating his efforts to secure those pieces.
“I’m truly honored, it was a surprise to me,” Clowney said. “It was nice to see the support, response and the community — it’s truly humbling to me.”
Clowney and the township committee designed the memorial in a Pentagon shape, lined the pieces to face the directions in which they came from (Manhattan, Arlington and Shanksville) and had the Twin Towers built from granite, standing tall at the center of the memorial.
presents his metal plaque (Photo by Krystal Nurse/The Sun).
“I just get emotional looking at it knowing that it’s going to be a part of our Main Street and the downtown (district) forever,” Manzo said. “Having it be in the heart of our Main Street community has people seeing it every single day, all day long and know what it means for how we, as America, responded to those events.”
Several Harrison Township police officers responded to the Port Authority of New York-New Jersey’s call for help at Ground Zero on that day and made it known that it’s a remark on how well first responders always jump into action as they made their journey into the Jacob Javits Convention Center in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood.
“When we drove up on the [New Jersey] Turnpike, it was a beautiful sunny day, and then you can see the smoke clouds coming up from the towers,” said Harrison Township Police Capt. Brian Bartholomew. “We got to the George Washington bridge and got held up and we told them ‘we’re going in.’”
Bartholomew and Lt. Ronald Cundley both remember dense debris along the streets, dark skies among Manhattan as the dust settled, buildings on fire, seeing crushed vehicles and surrounding buildings having no glass on their windows due to the impact.
Robert Cundley and Chief Thomas Mills (Photo by Krystal Nurse/The Sun).
For Harmony Fire Company Chief Matt Cardile, it’s a day for firefighters with 343 losing their lives in New York, and hundreds of others passing away later from cancer or other illnesses contracted from the dense smoke and debris.
“There’s over 1 million firefighters throughout the country and a decent amount of them are volunteers,” said Cardile. “They do it for nothing. They do it for the sake of helping the public and the need of their community and surrounding communities.”
For some of those who have served or are serving in the Armed Forces, Sept. 11 is a reminder to give back to those who made sacrifices in this country and overseas fighting for the greater good.
“The artifacts are a visual cue in helping you see what you’re trying remember, and having something in person is a better way to drive yourself harder and be willing to make the sacrifice for people,” said Cpl. Patrick Haul of the U.S. Marine Corps. “Being able to see it every day is going to make people remember.”
16 (Photo by Krystal Nurse/The Sun).
This is a memory in which many agree should be of America’s strength and of the hundreds of police officers, firefighters, doctors and nurses who jumped into action and did what they could to help save lives.
“It is up to us — the parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and anyone with a recollection of the events on that day — to shape the written and visual accounts of this historic episode for the younger, and future, generations,” Manzo said.
Despite the otherwise dark day and the tragic loss of thousands of lives, many present at the event always pushed for everyone to remember the day that is now known as Patriot Day and the unity and resiliency that came from it on Sept. 12, 2001.
“There’s one group that has never succeeded on taking us down and that’s the terrorists,” said Cardile. “They want to knock some things down, they want to disrupt our financial gain, they want to cause corruption or hysteria, and the days after 9/11, the country unified and got together. We all looked at each other as we’re the same.”
