Tullytown Borough and Garden of Reflection in Lower Makefield held their annual September 11th remembrance ceremonies on Friday evening.
One-by-one, cars drove through the flag-lined driveway of the Garden of Reflection, the state’s September 11th memorial, as a way to adapt to the current conditions caused by the global pandemic while honoring those lost in the attacks.
Advertisements
“We chose to remember and the garden expresses it beautifully. After darkness there is light and there is hope,” said Ellen Saracini, an advocate for the memorial whose husband Victor, the pilot of United Flight 175, died in the attacks.
“We come here often to reflect not only our losses but the what-might-have-beens,” said Bucks County Prothonotary Judi Reiss, whose son Joshua died in the attacks on the World Trade Center.
“Each family picked up the pieces of their lives and forged ahead with the knowledge that we would be stronger than the hate,” she said.
Advertisements
Reiss noted noting this year that people are remember the victims of the September 11th attacks but also those who were lost due to the coronavirus pandemic.
In Tullytown Borough, Mayor David Cutchineal said the town continues to hold their September 11th vigil for three reasons: too keep a promise to a woman grieving over the attacks, to remember all those lost, and to keep residents of aware of the threat.
JD Mullane, a columnist for the Bucks County Courier Times and Doylestown Intelligencer, recalled telling the stories of the attacks on their impacts on local residents. He talked of interviewing widows and speaking with a local man who had a voicemail of a young woman trapped in one of burning New York City tower who dialed his phone number by mistake.
Advertisements
Pointing to his work as a history professor for Bucks County Community College, speaker Bill Pezza noted that he realized that the freshman students were not alive when the September 11th attacks happened.
“It hit me. None of them were alive when 9/11 occured,” he said.
Pezza said Americans need to provide first-hand accounts of the attacks and the feelings after to younger generations so they “not only know it, but feel it.”
Advertisements
Report a correction via email | Editorial standards and policies
