Mount Kisco marked the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks with a moving ceremony that brought together families, first responders, faith leaders, elected leaders, and residents.
Dozens of firefighters and other first responders from Mount Kisco and surrounding communities marched briskly into the village’s 9/11 Memorial park accompanied by the martial sounds of the fire department’s fife and drum corps.
Welcoming the large and somber crowd was Rich Alexander, a retired New York City firefighter who’d been on duty during the terrorist attacks.
A member of the Independent Fire Company in Mount Kisco, he and Mount Kisco Firefighter Paul Felice had led the effort to build the memorial, which is located next to the public library on Main Street and consists of two black and gray granite pillars that symbolize the World Trade Center towers.
(Joe Scopelliti of Westfair Pools in Bedford built the monument.)
The memorial incorporates elements representing all three airplane crash sites. The perimeter contains a water feature with five sides recognizing the people who died at the Pentagon. Three benches are engraved with the doomed airplanes’ flight numbers and the time each went down. A piece of steel from one of the World Trade Center towers is off to the side.
It includes the names of local 9/11 victims George Morell and Michael J. Berkeley and honors the 343 NYC firefighters who’d lost their lives on that fateful day.
Morell, 47, was on the North Tower’s 105th floor at Cantor Fitzgerald, where he worked as a bond broker and vice president, when American Airlines Flight 11 struck at 8:46 a.m. A hunter, fisher, and teller of stories, he left behind a wife and four young children.
(Seventeen minutes later, at 9:03 a.m., the second hijacked plane, United Airlines Flight 175, hit the South Tower.)
Berkeley, 38, was the founder of a brokerage firm that was located on the 79th floor of the North Tower. The son of a detective and a nurse, he was remembered as being upbeat and generous. Berkeley left behind a wife and two children.
The Rev. Steven E. Clark of St. Francis of Assisi Parish led the opening and closing prayers.
Recalling that close to 3,000 innocent lives were lost in New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., and in a field outside of Shanksville, Pa., Clark said that “the world changed that day and our neighbors, family members, and friends who began their workday like many of us, never returned.”
Referring to the “legacy of service, friendship, and love” of the first responders who died trying to save others, he urged folks to pass the lessons of 9/11 on to the next generation.
Clark asked for blessings on the gathering, the people who perished, those who continue to serve, and folks who are still struggling with the attacks’ physical, mental, and emotional aftermath.
Mount Kisco Firefighter Maddy Contreaus led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Felice introduced the flag ceremony.
Two American flags that had been among 49 others ceremoniously flown at all three sites of the terrorist attacks were raised and lowered by local firefighters Ed Cordelini and Erin Sevillano; volunteer ambulance crew member Sally Pierce; Sgt. Vito Salvatore of the Westchester County Police Department; Bob D’Agostino, former chief of the Mount Kisco Police Department; and former Mount Kisco Fire Chief Al Bueti.
In his address, Mayor J. Michael Cindrich, a former police officer who had served as a U.S. Marine, elaborated on the theme: “Never Forget.”
While it’s important to remember what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, and the weeks and months that immediately followed, there’s “more to the story,” he said.
And that’s that approximately 16,000 people have succumbed to 9/11-related illnesses.
The numbers “continue to grow,” said Cindrich, who personally knew three firefighters who have since died of cancer and other ailments.
He blamed, in part, the “bad air” at Ground Zero and the “travesty of the EPA not taking charge” and telling people “what was going on.”
Cindrich traced the birth of the current battle against terrorism to the 1983 bombings that had targeted American forces in Beirut, Lebanon.
Sixty-three people were killed at the U.S. Embassy on April 18 that year and 241 U.S. service members, most of them Marines, and French forces, were killed by a truck bomb on Oct. 23.
Afterwards, then-President Ronald Reagan’s administration faced congressional criticism and scrutiny regarding the security lapses, foreign policy decisions, and military deployment surrounding the Beirut bombings.
Cindrich felt that Marines had been sent into “a hostile area with no ammunition,” and he could “never forgive anybody who was involved when that happened.”
He also recalled George W. Bush’s visit to Ground Zero on Sept. 14, 2001, when the president climbed onto the rubble of a ruined fire truck and was speaking to rescue workers through a bullhorn.
When someone shouted, “We can’t hear you!” Bush responded: “I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”
It was a spontaneous moment that became one of the defining symbols of national resolve.
“So, this was the calling out of the terrorists that are in this world today, that America is strong, we’re going to remain strong. You knock it down, we’re going to rebuild it,” Cindrich said.
Speaker Julian Eyre, who has been with the FDNY since 2000, now works with the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, a major nonprofit that supports military veterans and first responders and their families.
It was formed in honor of NYC Firefighter Stephen Siller, who, although off duty when the towers were hit, strapped on 60 pounds of gear and ran for 1.7 miles through the closed Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel to reach Ground Zero. He was killed when the South Tower collapsed. His body was never found.
The foundation’s core programs include providing mortgage-free homes, adapted “smart” homes, K-12 educational resources, and events such as Tunnel to Towers 5K Run & Walk NYC.
Eyre has painfully vivid memories of that fateful day.
He wasn’t on duty because he was with fellow firefighters at an event in Brooklyn.
“We saw it on the news like everybody else," Eyre recalled.
They quickly “commandeered” a city bus and made their way to the site, a scene of such utter devastation that at first it didn’t seem real.
“When the smoke cleared, all you could see was steel sticking up. I remember thinking, this is like something out of a ‘Die Hard’ movie. It was just beyond comprehension,” he told the rapt crowd.
Momentarily stunned, Eyre came to when he heard his name being called.
“I looked over at the Burger King at the corner of Liberty Street and there was my friend Joe, a New York City police officer. We made eye contact, ran over, and hugged like we hadn’t seen each other in 10 years,” he recalled, pausing to compose himself. “We were just happy to know that both of us were still alive.”
“I know they say ‘Never Forget.’ It’s been 25 years and it’s hard to believe that it’s gone by this quick,” Eyre said, adding that wanting to “give back” to those who made the ultimate sacrifice and to support those who are still suffering today was what eventually led him to Tunnel to Towers.
In acknowledgement of the start of the Jewish High Holy Day of Rosh Hashanah, the ceremony was respectfully concluded before sundown with the laying of a wreath, the playing of Taps, and the giving of a ceremonial gun salute by members of Moses Taylor Jr. American Legion Post 136.
One by one, participants — many in tears — approached the memorial where they quietly placed white carnations and small American flags.
Folks then gathered at the firehouse across the street where they shared some comforting food and enjoyed a performance by world-class saxophonist Mark Rivera who, according to Alexander, faithfully comes every year to play patriotic and reflective music in remembrance of 9/11.
(Born and raised in Brooklyn, Rivera now lives in Brewster in Putnam County.)
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