A time to remember, and promises to keep: 9/11 ceremony at firehouse

Rows of folding chairs were set out on the grass field next to the Center Firehouse. In the stillness there were long evening shadows cast by the evening sun. At a little past six p.m. on Friday, Sept. 11, a good crowd of Islanders had taken their seats facing a podium and a row of chairs. From the rear a double line of Fire Department volunteers and Auxiliary members in dress uniforms solemnly walked forward to take their seats.

Shelter Island has always remembered Sept. 11, from the first anniversary on, having ceremonies at the Firehouse on the date and time in the morning that the first plane struck the North Tower. This year was the same, with a morning ceremony at the Island’s memorial, an iron girder from Ground Zero, its only adornment a brass Fire Department insignia and the number 343, a reference to the number of firefighters who died on 9/11. And there have been evening ceremonies as well.

Father Peter DeSanctis, pastor of Our Lady Of the Isle, and a member of the Fire Department, gave the innovation. He spoke of the power of words, such as “respect” and “dignity.” “Words are fine. Sentiment is O.K.,” Father DeSanctis said. “Action is better.” He referred to Matthew’s Gospel from the New Testament, and the passage that says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

Father DeSanctis then prayed, that people become peacemakers in their marriages, and families, in workplaces and communities. 

Chief Pelletier then gave an eloquent address, beginning by noting that we must remember the office workers murdered in the terrorist attacks, along with the 343 firefighters, the police officers, EMTs, paramedics, Port Authority officers “and every first responder who ran toward danger while thousands of others desperately tried to escape it. But tonight, 25 years later, we are reminded of a painful truth: Sept. 11 did not stop taking lives when the towers fell.”

The chief noted that a year ago the Island remembered those who survived that 2001 day ,but then died from other consequences of the attacks. “Tonight,” he said, “that list has grown again.”

Thirty-six additional members of the Fire Department of the City of New York lost their lives, the chief said, after battling illnesses connected to their work during the rescue and recovery efforts at the World Trade Center. “Thirty-six members who answered the call 25 years ago, and whose sacrifice ultimately followed them home.” 

He then named them all. 

“These men survived Sept. 11. Many returned to their firehouses, their families, and their communities. They raised children, watched grandchildren grow, and continued serving,” he said, adding, “But September 11 remained with them.”

The phrase “Never Forget” has to be more than words, the chief said, on the side of a fire truck or printed across a shirt. “It must be a promise.”

It is the duty of all of us to make that promise, he said. But more is required. Children, teenagers and young adults today have no memory of the day the world changed, getting information only through videos and accounts in history books. “That means we must become the storytellers,” the chief said. “Because someday, there will be no eyewitnesses left.” 

Other symbols must be a guide to memory, he told the hushed crowd. “There can always be a bell. There can always be a flag. And there can always be a firehouse where one generation teaches the next what sacrifice and service truly mean.”

He returned to the fact that the deaths of Sept. 11, 2001 continue this day. “Tonight, especially, we honor the 36 members whose names were added to the World Trade Center Memorial Wall this year,” the chief said. “Thirty-six men and women who were with us when we gathered last year. And who are not with us tonight. To their families: Your loved ones are remembered. Their service mattered. Their sacrifice mattered. And their names will continue to be spoken. Twenty-five years have passed. The skyline has changed. Our country has changed. An entire generation has been born. But our promise has not changed.”

There was a moment of silence and then applause. People stood, greeted friends and made their way home in the lingering light of a late summer Shelter Island evening.