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Shelter Island stopped to remember 9/11

JULIE LANE PHOTO A metal slab from the World Trade Center is embedded outside the Shelter Island Center Firehouse where firefighters, auxiliary members and others gathered Friday morning to remember the fallen and pay respects to survivors on the 14th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
JULIE LANE PHOTO
A piece of ironwork from the World Trade Center is embedded outside the Shelter Island Center Firehouse where firefighters, auxiliary members and others gathered Friday morning to remember the fallen and pay respects to survivors on the 14th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

A lone tear ran down Liam Carroll’s face as he stood Friday morning, September 11 at the monument — a metal piece of the former World Trade Center — that stands outside the Shelter Island Center Firehouse.

Shelter Island students in grades 10, 11 and 12 joined members of the public and Shelter Island firefighters and auxiliary members early Friday morning for a brief service of remembrance at the monument led by Father Peter DeSanctis, Fire Department chaplain.

“I lost my three closest friends that day,” Mr. Carroll said, choosing not to name them, but to honor them in his thoughts and in his heart. He, like those he lost, worked for the New York Mercantile Exchange.

They were housed since 1997 in what was a new building on the southwestern side of Manhattan that was part of a complex called the World Financial Center. Of the 28 workers there that morning, 24 perished.

“I walked past the smell” following the attacks, Mr. Carroll said.

He remembers with sadness that workers at Ground Zero were being told the air quality was safe. Today, some have died and others are suffering from illnesses related to working to save the few they could and bring out remains of others who had died.

He recalled hearing later that one of his colleagues had been on the telephone with his wife saying a last goodbye before the buildings fell.

“It’s still hard every year,” Mr. Carroll’s wife, Matalia Carroll said about her husband’s emotions each September 11.

He retired from his job in 2008.

“We were supposed to be open to intensify the American spirit,” Mr. Carroll said about Mercantile Exchange workers, among the only operations in full swing that morning in the area.

The workers were engaged in supporting futures trading in energy carriers, metals and similar commodities bought and sold on the trading floor. They were running the overnight electronic trading computer systems.

Crossing guard Catherine Rasmussen was just 18 and in a social studies class when the teacher, who always had a television set in the back of the room tuned to CNN, “stopped dead in his tracks.”
Juniors and seniors were allowed to remain in the classroom to watch the story unfold.

Today, Ms. Rasmussen is 32 and she and her husband Daniel have two children of their own — Danielle, 6, and Joseph, 4.

“I’m not one to hide anything and I tell my kids how it was,” she said. “I want them to appreciate what they have.”

But when her daughter saw images on television of people falling from the buildings— a scene difficult for adults to comprehend — that was something she couldn’t explain to a 6-year-old.

Instead, she told Danielle it was slabs of the building falling.

At the interfaith service, Father DeSanctis called for prayers for the deceased and consolation for their family members.

At the same time, he asked those in attendance not to “harken back to the horror and the sorrow” of that day, but to think about today and tomorrow.

While it’s understandable, to give in to bitterness is to let the “criminals” who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks win again, he said.

Speaking later to teacher Peter Miedema’s social studies class, Father Peter reminded students that the United States has an all-volunteer military and asked them to think about whether any of them would choose to serve.

He said later he isn’t advocating for compulsory service, but thinks it’s important to think about and pray for those who do serve in the Armed Forces.

First Assistant Chief Greg Sulahian remembers that morning stopping for coffee and hearing the news.
Shelter Island’s EMTs, who sent an ambulance team to Ground Zero following the attacks, marked 9/11 Friday with their own display honoring those first responders who gave their lives to save others.

While he and others stayed on Shelter Island to man the department, some Shelter Island firefighters put in time at Ground Zero and a Shelter Island ambulance crew was dispatched to the city to aid in rescue efforts.

“We’ll remember 9/11 like our parents remember Pearl Harbor,” Chief Sulahian said.