“This is really an event that we could not let go by the boards because we have done it every Sept. 11, since the towers went down,” said former Chamber of Commerce President Paul Newman.
The small gathering of chamber members, community members, law enforcement officers and emergency service personnel distanced on the lawn at the National Center for Medical Readiness at Calamityville. The event was held in front of the 9/11 memorial, a concrete slab next to a piece of steel from one of the World Trade Center towers. The two-tower monument is ringed by nine trees and 11 rose bushes.
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“Nineteen years ago today, the city of Fairborn promised we would never forget the events of Sept. 11, 2001,” said Fairborn Fire Chief David Reichert during his speech. “We won’t even let a global pandemic stop us from remembering.”
Reichert paid tribute in his speech to the 2,977 innocent men, women and children who were murdered that day. The number of victims is rising as emergency responders suffer from health effects contracted on 9/11, he said.
“The War on Terror is continuing to happen today,” Reichert said. “The sacrifices continue today. We must continue to remember them and thank them. This event changed us. It changed the world. On this day, we saw the worst of human nature. At the same time, saw the best of America come together.”
At 8:46 a.m., when American Airlines Flight 11 hit the north tower, the small crowd sang ‘God Bless America.’ Then, American Legion Post 526 of Fairborn performed a 21-gun salute. The ceremony ended with retired Montgomery Sheriff Sgt. Del Braund playing ‘Amazing Grace’ on the bagpipes.
Some area traditions had to be sacrificed this year. There was no honor guard from the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base present.
American Legion Beavercreek Memorial Post 763 was scheduled to hold a Patriot Day ceremony on Friday at the Beavercreek 9/11 Memorial on Fairfield Road.
In New York, victims' relatives gathered Friday morning for split-screen remembrances at the World Trade Center’s Sept. 11 memorial plaza and on a nearby corner, set up by separate organizations.
Standing on the plaza, with its serene waterfall pools and groves of trees, Jin Hee Cho said she couldn’t erase the memory of the death of her younger sister, Kyung, in the collapse of the trade center’s north tower.
“It’s just hard to delete that in my mind. I understand there’s all this, and I understand now that we have even COVID,” said Cho, 55. “But I only feel the loss, the devastating loss of my flesh-and-blood sister.”
Around the country, some communities canceled 9/11 ceremonies, while others went ahead, sometimes with modifications. The Pentagon’s observance was so restricted that not even victims' families could attend, though small groups could visit its memorial later in the day.
On an anniversary that fell less than two months before the presidential election, President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden both headed for the Flight 93 National Memorial in the election battleground state of Pennsylvania — at different times of day. Biden also attended the ceremony at ground zero in New York, exchanging a pandemic-conscious elbow bump with Vice President Mike Pence before the observance began.
In short, the 19th anniversary of the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil was a complicated occasion in a maelstrom of a year, as the U.S. grapples with a pandemic, searches its soul over racial injustice and prepares to choose a leader to chart a path forward.
Still, families say it’s important for the nation to pause and remember the hijacked-plane attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people at the trade center, at the Pentagon outside Washington and in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 11, 2001 — shaping American policy, perceptions of safety and daily life in places from airports to office buildings.
“People could say, ‘Oh, 19 years.’ But I’ll always be doing something this day. It’s history,” said Annemarie D’Emic, who lost her brother Charles Heeran, a stock trader. She went to the alternative ceremony in New York, which kept up the longstanding tradition of in-person readers.
Speaking at the Pennsylvania memorial, Trump recalled how the plane’s crew and passengers tried to storm the cockpit as the hijackers as headed for Washington.
“The heroes of Flight 93 are an everlasting reminder that no matter the danger, no matter the threat, no matter the odds, America will always rise up, stand tall, and fight back,” the Republican president said.
Biden visited the memorial later Friday, laid a wreath and greeted relatives of victims including First Officer LeRoy Homer. Biden expressed his respect for those aboard Flight 93, saying sacrifices like theirs “mark the character of a country.”
“This is a country that never, never, never, never, never, never gives up,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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