‘IF YOU THINK TIME MAKES IT EASIER, IT DOESN’T’
Families of 9/11 victims mourn
Seventeen years ago, William Christopher Hunt was working for Euro Brokers on the 84th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
He had a beautiful wife and a 15-month-old daughter, Emma.
He was only 32 on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when Islamic terrorists attacked the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing Hunt and thousands of others.
“I lost my son — William Christopher Hunt,” said Diane Hunt, 71, of Plymouth. “Every time I really think of him, I find a penny. My granddaughter, Emma, found a penny, too, yesterday. She’s feeling her daddy is watching over her.
“It’s been difficult. My granddaughter was 15 months old when he was murdered. She went off to college this year and he wasn’t part of it,” she added. “If you think time makes it easier, it doesn’t.”
Hunt was one of several surviving family members of the nearly 3,000 people who perished on Sept. 11 who gathered at the Boston Public Garden yesterday to remember the victims.
“The scriptures tell us that we are all children of the light,” said Mayor Martin J. Walsh. “We do not belong to the darkness. That is what we are here to remember today. With this community of survivors as our beacon, we remember those precious lives that we lost 17 years ago. We are here to remember the light they brought into this world.”
“He was my older brother. He was my mentor,” said Laurel Gay, 62, of Tiverton, R.I., who lost her brother, Peter A. Gay, on American Airlines Flight 11, which was hijacked and crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. “I know he would have stopped it if he could have. I miss him. I think of what life could have been for his family, his three children. People say you move on. You try to, but there’s always
that part . ... You’re still sad.”
Meanwhile, the indomitable spirit of American Airlines Flight 11 attendant Madeline “Amy” Sweeney proved an eternal flame yesterday with the presentation of a civilian bravery award in her name to two Bridgewater pals who earlier this year saved an elderly couple from certain death when their car became stuck on railroad tracks during a blizzard as a train bore down on them.
Ryan Saba, 24, and Ray Armstead, 25, accepted their plaques humbly and with few words at a State House commemoration observance of the 17th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks that claimed Sweeney and nearly 3,000 other innocents.
Sweeney, a 35-year-old Acton mother of two, was posthumously lauded after the disaster for transmitting crucial information about Flight 11’s five hijackers to a ground supervisor, even as the Boeing 767 hurtled toward New York’s World Trade Center with its crew and passengers.
Many family members were disappointed that the country seems more fractured and farther apart today than it was ever before.
“I think the world is scary,” said Maria Koutny, 50, of Methuen, who lost her mother, Marie Pappalardo, on Flight 175, which was headed from Boston to Los Angeles when it crashed into the South Tower. “I really thought the world was going to change. After time, I don’t want to say people forget, but they go back to their lives. I hope it doesn’t take another attack to bring people together.”
“Don’t forget,” said Fred Pappalardo, 78, of San Jose, Calif., Marie Pappalardo’s uncle.