By David Slone
Times-Union
WARSAW — Many of those who attended Friday’s 9/11 Remembrance Ceremony at Central Park in Warsaw for the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks will not live to see the 50th.
Guest speaker for the ceremony, Mark Eaton, founder of the Eaton Leadership Foundation, stated, “Congratulations, Warsaw. Congratulations, gentlemen, for an event like this. These are going on around our country this evening, but I have to tell you, clearly I am afraid. I look around at these guys behind me and as handsome as they are, they’re old. And the rest of you are old or are getting old. We will forget, unless we do something. So what are we going to do? Well, that’s for us to talk about.”
He said if there were young people in the audience, “We need you, who did not shed tears 25 years ago, to feel what we feel, because we shed tears, some of us more than others.”
Eaton, 70, said those who forget lose what is forgotten.
“I will never forget. We must never forget. We, this group of us, will remember and, importantly, we need to remember to remember. We need reminders like this,” he said.
The first plane on Sept. 11, 2001, struck the North Tower at 8:46 a.m. EST. Eaton was at his home then in Mt. Vernon, Wash., and was three hours behind. He was headed down the hill to a little café where he had met other gentlemen every Tuesday.
“As we walked in, we all had our radios on and we heard what was going on and we were stunned and in disbelief. In a matter of minutes, our entire country was drawn into grief and uncertainty,” Eaton said.
He said the people who drove the planes and paid for those people to drive the planes “attacked American soil, much like Pearl Harbor was. Nearly 3,000 people were killed. Four hijacked planes, carried 300 people nearly.”
American Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles struck the North Tower. United Flight 175 from Boston to Los Angeles struck the South Tower. American Flight 77 from Washington to Dallas struck the Pentagon. United Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco crashed into Shanksville, Pa.
“We remember Welles Crowther, the man in the red bandana. It’s a beautiful story about him that you can watch,” Eaton said. “We remember Rick Rescoria who organized Morgan Stanley and stood there singing to them to keep them calm as he got them all organized and out and down. Nearly 2,700 of them walked down those stairs.”
Betty Ong and Amy Sweeney were flight attendants on Flight 11, stayed on the telephone with the EMS and gave important information. Brian Clark helped many people escape from a tower. Frank De Martini and Pablo Ortiz helped carry people out of the North Tower. Mike Benfante helped carry a woman out who needed a wheelchair.
“Their lives were not statistics. They were fathers, mothers, son, friends, daughters. They had stories. Some ran toward the danger when every instinct told them to run away. Young people with us … these are the people who did not cowardly stand there filming the fight, hoping to make $50 for a YouTube post. These are people who ran to the fight. This is the stuff of heroes, not bystanders,” Eaton said. “We saw courage aboard 93 where Todd Beamer and the now-famous ‘Let’s roll!’ and that crew and those people that were on that flight didn’t wait for somebody else. They saw what was happening, heard what was happening and took action as best as they know how.”
There were fighter pilots who did not have time to put munitions on their plane, who flew toward the flight and were prepared to give their life.
Eaton spoke about the help Canada gave to those who were stranded there after the attacks. Many flights traveling to the United States were turned back to Europe, Mexico and other countries, and those countries and others offered global assistance while the air space over the U.S. was shut down.
“There were so many casualties other than the immediate 3,000 that happened afterwards as sickness still affects the responding fire departments and EMS,” Eaton said.
He congratulated Warsaw for the 9/11 Memorial and said every town in the U.S. that can afford it should have one.
“For the younger generations who aren’t here, it will be up to us, you and I, to walk away from tonight, moved and reminded, and we need to tell them. We need to somehow get into schools and into a history class. We need to speak to it from our pulpits. We need to talk about it with radio programs and television programs that remind them of what that day was,” he said.
It’s moments like Friday’s ceremony where more than facts are taught. Every high school student knows about 3,000 people, but they can’t tell you other than the Twin Towers which buildings went down, he said. “They certainly don’t know the names of heroes, those are the facts, but more importantly they do not know about the thousands of U.S. young men who enlisted – including my son — as a result of this. Facts don’t inspire. Todd Beamer inspires. Those flight attendants inspire. The red bandana man who ran back, inspires. We need images of heroes or we become filmers of tragedy. We need to know what a hero looks like so that when our moment comes, we can act, hopefully in a way that creates a positive outcome.”
Friday’s ceremony honored local first responders. As a former EMT himself who was involved in dangerous rescues, Eaton said, “I speak to you and I say, ‘Thank you for that.’ You’ve prepared in silence. You’ve trained without fanfare. You’ve done hard things. You’ve been in cold nights, cold water, cold conditions, frozen fingers and nobody writes about your frozen fingers, they write about the accident. Nobody talks about the money you’ve spent for new shoes and new boots and new clothes and new helmets at your own expense. Nobody talks about that nice dinner at home when we get the text to respond and we leave our family to go rescue someone else’s family, often as a result of a poor decision. Thank you for doing that.”
A person may say they’ll never forget 9/11, but “we’ll see, right? We need to remember to remember,” Eaton stated. “We can teach our children what happened on that day, and why it matters … teach your grandchildren. They love to hear stories about when grandpa was young. Tell them the story about when grandpa was young. One morning in September you won’t believe what happened. Do not give these people victory by being silent. Ignore the shame of the names they might call you. My friends, we must speak. This crowd, in general, will be dead by the next 25th. If you don’t speak, there won’t be one of these, or maybe we’re forgetting.”
It should be clear that we will remember the innocent lives lost.
“This attack did not come to a military base or to soldiers who knew they were in combat. It came to babies and grandpas and single moms and flight attendants. It was cowardly!” Eaton exclaimed. “And these weren’t men who inspired these attacks. These were boys pretending to be men. Quote me. And they attacked this United States, and we have been here for 250 years. And, my friends, if we blink at this moment, when are we going to start blinking at all the moments? When are we going to start dropping our heads and apologizing for the blood my dad, my brother, my son have spilled overseas.”
He said we’re going to honor the heroes who responded, stand with the families here and otherwise who still grieve and thank those who protect our communities “and who drive around at 2 in the morning and see what no one else wants to get up at 2 in the morning to see.” Eaton stressed that we have to teach future generations to move forward with a new gratitude for our country, with compassion for the people in 9/11 and since. “And a determination to be good stewards of what we’ve been given.”
“May we have the courage to say no to the slow cultural creep and drifting that might cause us, one day, it’s imaginable to me, to lose this republic. Say no to the slow creep of losing our spine. Losing what stormed the beaches of Normandy that the French children now have forgotten and they just laugh at America. They forget Grandpa was there, my grandpa,” he said.
He said may we have the courage to stand up to those who want to tear down what our grandparents built with their callouses and blood.
“We will never forget. We will remember. We need to pass it on to future generations so they will not forget. My friends in Warsaw, thank you for having me. Remember to remember,” he stated.
Mike Cox, 9/11 Remembrance Committee member, gave the welcoming remarks and talked about the monument in Central Park near the Zimmer Biomet Center Lake Pavilion. On the east side, it pays tribute to New York, Shanksville and the Pentagon, while the west side pays tribute to those who have fallen in the county in the line of duty.
He thanked the committee members, contributors and later the sponsors.
The presentation of colors, national anthem and the pledge of allegiance led by Boy Scouts followed, with Cox then speaking about Sept. 11, “the worse attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor.” Nearly 3,000 were murdered in the attacks.
Ed Rock sang “Have You Forgotten?” by Darryl Worley, and toward the end of the ceremony he sang “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood.
Johnny Butler, Sons of the American Legion, spoke about the Honor and Sacrifice and the Honor and Remember flags.
Kyle Miller, chaplain for the Burket Volunteer Fire Department and the Kosciusko Fire Association, read brief biographies of those first responders in the county who died in the line of duty.
Ken Locke, a committee member, spoke about the day after 9/11 and how everyone was neighborly and we should get back to that. He led everyone in prayer.
