SOUTH HADLEY — One of the speakers at Saturday’s 20th anniversary 9/11 observance on the Town Common had not even been born when the planes struck the Twin Towers.
Even so, Georgia Wall, 16, a South Hadley High School junior, said the events of that terrible day affected her. Every Sept. 11, she said, her father took the family to Sept. 11 ceremonies. One of the narratives that stayed with her involved United Flight 93 and the heroic efforts of the passengers and flight crew to retake the plane from the hijackers. All on board perished when the plane crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It was the only one of the four hijacked airliners that never reached the terrorists’ intended target.
The passengers were “ordinary people,” Wall said, who joined together in common cause without regard to one another’s race, politics or sexual orientation.
“In a divided world,” she said, “we’re so much stronger when we stick together. Americans get the job done.”
The Rev. Donald Bradley, former pastor of South Holyoke’s Second Baptist Church, expanded on that theme, quoting Jesus from John 15: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
Bradley cited the police officers, firefighters and first responders who sacrificed their lives while trying to save others. Scouts participating in the ceremony distributed American flags to members of the public. Each flag carried a tag bearing the name of one of the 343 firefighters and 72 police officers who died at ground zero that day.
Saturday’s gathering was hosted by South Hadley firefighters and police officers. District 2 Fireman Tyler Scheinost presided over the brisk yet emotional ceremony before some 100-plus onlookers. Speakers included Fire District 1 Chief Robert Authier, District 2 Chief Todd Calkins and South Hadley Police Department Chaplain the Rev. Tomasz Gorny, pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Granby.
Gorny read the Police Officer’s Prayer, which includes the lines, “Lord, I ask for courage, courage to face and conquer my own fears, courage to take me where others will not go.”
When firefighter Scheinost convened the ceremony at 10 a.m., he said he did so with “a heavy heart.” The 30-minute observance concluded with a memorial tree-planting followed by Scheinost’s somber reading of the 9/11 timeline for each of the four planes, including destinations and the number of passengers and crew.
As he worked his way through the timeline, from takeoff to impact, it was evident the recitation was testing his composure. He wasn’t alone.