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“For those of us old enough of us to remember Sept. 11, there are the images, sounds, moments from that day that have never left us. We remember where we were. We remember who we called. We remember watching the towers fall. And we remember the uncertainty, the grief and the fear. But we also remember something else. We remember the extraordinary courage, compassion, and unity that followed.”
That was Windermere Mayor Andy Williams, speaking Friday during the town’s sunset ceremony to mark the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
On that day, three passenger jets, flying from Boston and Washington, D.C., were hijacked by Al-Qaeda operatives and flown into the Pentagon and World Trade Center, bringing down the Twin Towers. On a fourth jet, from Newark, the passengers and flight crew fought back and the plane crashed in Shanksville, Penn. before it reached its target, thought to be the White House or Capitol building. A total of 2,996 people died in the attacks, including the hijackers. Still more have gotten sick and died in the last quarter century from exposure to the toxic dust at Ground Zero during the rescue, recovery and clean-up efforts.
A sizable crowd gathered at Town Square Park to mark the quarter century since that terrible day. Families came with children asking questions. Seniors came. Veterans came. Town leaders, past and present, came. Both State Rep. Leonard Spencer and Orange County GOP Chair Erin Huntley, who is challenging him for his seat in House District 45, came, each standing discreetly on opposite sides of the crowd. Ocoee fire fighters parked a fire engine outside Town Hall and came to stand at the edge of the park.
Bagpiper Tonya Parnell played “Amazing Grace.” Blake Ogden played “Taps.” Benjamin Windle sang the National Anthem and “God Bless America.” Andy Jones, who serves as chaplain to several local police and fire departments, gave the invocation. He told VoxPopuli before the ceremony that he was there to honor God and those who lost their lives.
“I’m here to remember them as we promise we will never forget,” Jones said.
Tony Davit, a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel and now a Windermere town council member, told VoxPopuli that this memorial is “one of my favorite events in the Town of Windermere.”
“We remember 9/11 every year,” said Davit, who said he knew when the second plane hit the South Tower that he would be deployed. In the decade after 9/11, he deployed seven times to Afghanistan, Iraq and other military theaters, evaluating airfield runways for Air Force operations.
In Windermere, he said, “[former Mayor] Jim O’Brien did a really good job [remembering 9/11], and [Williams] is picking up the mantle now of remembering this. We have the 9/11 memorial here behind me and it’s very important because 100 million people have been born since 9/11 and don’t remember it first-hand. … They gotta understand what’s going on.”
That sentiment was echoed by several at the 25th anniversary ceremony, including keynote speaker Jimmy Brown who noted that anniversaries have an important place in our culture, but “marking a 25-year anniversary takes on greater significance because not only does it mark a quarter of a century, but it also marks the next generation holding these events and ensuring the next generation knows what happened …”
“I’m grateful to be here,” Brown, clad in his dark navy dress uniform, told VoxPopuli before the ceremony began.
That's no doubt because he very nearly wasn’t.
On Sept. 11, 2001, the former New York City police officer turned FDNY fire fighter was assigned to the fire station across the street from the World Trade Center known as Ten House.
In his keynote address, he shared that he heard the approach of American Airlines Flight 11 as it flew too low and fast over Lower Manhattan, then felt a “concussion wave” go through his body as the jet “slammed into the North Tower.” Brown saw the “fireball coming out of the tower as debris began raining down on the streets.”
He joined his company going into the North Tower and up the stairs. They’d climbed as far as the 23rd floor when the South Tower collapsed. Brown said they didn’t realize what had happened at the time, but when the South Tower fell, the North Tower “shook so violently, I feared that our tower was actually collapsing itself.” The fire fighters turned around and headed back downstairs. In the descent, Brown, somehow got separated from his company. He came out on the plaza level at 6 World Trade Center.
He was trying to get his bearings when he heard “what sounded like a freight train far away. It sounded like it was picking up speed and getting closer.”
The North Tower was collapsing.
He narrowly escaped being buried by debris by diving through a broken window into 6 World Trade Center. He hoped there were “floors left to keep me from falling six stories to the basement level.” Fortunately, he caught a beam below the windowsill. He made his way out via what became known as the “survivor stairs.” He eventually found an FDNY command post and was taken to a hospital.
In the years since, Brown said he’s experienced survivor’s guilt, post traumatic stress, two chronic health conditions and four cancers related to the toxic air he was exposed to when the towers fell. (He said thanks to close monitoring and early diagnosis, he’s been cancer-free for the past two years.)
Brown said that annual memorials, like Windermere’s, are “a bridge from the past into the present and further into the future," helping to keep the events and stories from that day alive.
Williams also sounded the importance of teaching the next generation well.
“ There is now an entire generation of Americans who have no personal memory of Sept. 11, 2001,” he said. “For them, Sept. 11 is history. They know it through photographs, videos, classrooms, memorials, and the stories told by those who were there. And that changes the meaning of the gatherings like this one, because remembrance does not happen automatically. We have to choose to remember, and increasingly, we have to choose to teach. For those of us who remember Sept. 11, Never forget is a promise. For the generations that came afterwards, Never forget has become our responsibility.”
