Four years later...
Sep. 11th, 2005 09:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matrixrefugee( Last year's 9/11 entry, for anyone who'd like to see it )
Last year, a group of folks in our town decided to erect a memorial to the 9/11 victims, especially to honor two men from our town, Peter Gay and Peter Hashem, who'd both died on United Airlines Flight 11. The design of the memorial changed from a simple idea for a wooden gazebo, to a stone portico-like structure, surrounded by brick paving stones engraved with the names of all the victims, which they decided to erect in front of our town's library, since both Mr. Gay and Mr. Hashem liked to read and they both went to this library a lot. The committee even asked people to sponsor the engraved paving stones: Mom has been praying for the soul of Richard Cruz, who died when the World Trade Center towers came down, so we asked to sponsor the stone with his name on it.
This morning, my dad and I went to the dedication ceremony; quite a crowd showed up, along with a bunch of reporters from some of the local news stations. Dad and I ended up sitting on a wall close by the speakers' podium, *right* in front of the press section, no less. There was a crew from Channel 5 (ABC), Channel 7 (NBC), and Channel 56 (WB, the one we watch the most: I spotted Terrell Harris, one of their field reporters); 56 just aired their segment on it. There was one shot in which my dad and I were juuust out of range, off to the right; we're gonna try to see if we made it onto 5 or 7.
EDITED 11.15 TO ADD: Just watched 7 and 5... pretty much the same footage, including the shot we were juuust out of range. I'd like to poke 56, for referring to our town as "the tiny town of T[--------]" (edited letters mine, for security reasons): we *aren't* "tiny", we've got more acreage than Lowell, the largest city closest to us.
Enough blather about our near-miss at being on the TV news... The real center of attention were the families of Mr. Gay and Mr. Hashem. Rita Hashem gave a genuinely moving speech about having to "learn to ignore the pain when it comes knocking at your door"; her son Patrick, who was only nine when his father died, talked a little bit about what went through his mind on 9-11-2001: he mentioned that he and his dad had been watching the movie "Cast Away", the night before that day, and how the plane crash scene in that movie spooked him, since his dad was going away on a business trip the next day. I seriously wanted to hug that kid to comfort him: premonitions are scary things... Larissa Gay read a poem that helped her get through the darkest times after she lost her dad.
It was a sad day, but I think I've finally got some closure on 9/11. To the so-called "mental health experts" who say it's impossible for someone who wasn't physically present at the World Trade Center Towers, or the Pentagon to have a touch of PTSD from that day, I'd tell them: try being an Atypical Aspie on that day. I still get little flashes of the shock and horror that I felt that day. Or try being one of the people who went to Mass at Holy Trinity German Catholic Church the Sunday after that terrible day: one of the Logan Airport flight paths used to go right over HT, which is within yelling distance of the John Hancock Tower. A low-flying plane went over during Mass that Sunday, and people in the congregation ducked. The priest even paused during the Mass readings. We were all bracing ourselves for something terrible to happen, but thank God it didn't. And let's hope nothing like this ever happens again, anywhere.
Last year, a group of folks in our town decided to erect a memorial to the 9/11 victims, especially to honor two men from our town, Peter Gay and Peter Hashem, who'd both died on United Airlines Flight 11. The design of the memorial changed from a simple idea for a wooden gazebo, to a stone portico-like structure, surrounded by brick paving stones engraved with the names of all the victims, which they decided to erect in front of our town's library, since both Mr. Gay and Mr. Hashem liked to read and they both went to this library a lot. The committee even asked people to sponsor the engraved paving stones: Mom has been praying for the soul of Richard Cruz, who died when the World Trade Center towers came down, so we asked to sponsor the stone with his name on it.
This morning, my dad and I went to the dedication ceremony; quite a crowd showed up, along with a bunch of reporters from some of the local news stations. Dad and I ended up sitting on a wall close by the speakers' podium, *right* in front of the press section, no less. There was a crew from Channel 5 (ABC), Channel 7 (NBC), and Channel 56 (WB, the one we watch the most: I spotted Terrell Harris, one of their field reporters); 56 just aired their segment on it. There was one shot in which my dad and I were juuust out of range, off to the right; we're gonna try to see if we made it onto 5 or 7.
EDITED 11.15 TO ADD: Just watched 7 and 5... pretty much the same footage, including the shot we were juuust out of range. I'd like to poke 56, for referring to our town as "the tiny town of T[--------]" (edited letters mine, for security reasons): we *aren't* "tiny", we've got more acreage than Lowell, the largest city closest to us.
Enough blather about our near-miss at being on the TV news... The real center of attention were the families of Mr. Gay and Mr. Hashem. Rita Hashem gave a genuinely moving speech about having to "learn to ignore the pain when it comes knocking at your door"; her son Patrick, who was only nine when his father died, talked a little bit about what went through his mind on 9-11-2001: he mentioned that he and his dad had been watching the movie "Cast Away", the night before that day, and how the plane crash scene in that movie spooked him, since his dad was going away on a business trip the next day. I seriously wanted to hug that kid to comfort him: premonitions are scary things... Larissa Gay read a poem that helped her get through the darkest times after she lost her dad.
It was a sad day, but I think I've finally got some closure on 9/11. To the so-called "mental health experts" who say it's impossible for someone who wasn't physically present at the World Trade Center Towers, or the Pentagon to have a touch of PTSD from that day, I'd tell them: try being an Atypical Aspie on that day. I still get little flashes of the shock and horror that I felt that day. Or try being one of the people who went to Mass at Holy Trinity German Catholic Church the Sunday after that terrible day: one of the Logan Airport flight paths used to go right over HT, which is within yelling distance of the John Hancock Tower. A low-flying plane went over during Mass that Sunday, and people in the congregation ducked. The priest even paused during the Mass readings. We were all bracing ourselves for something terrible to happen, but thank God it didn't. And let's hope nothing like this ever happens again, anywhere.