Connecticut honors the fallen
Ceremony in Westport brings together families to remember, mourn
WESTPORT — For 20 years, Eunice Hanson has made sure the loss she suffered in the terror attacks of Sept. 11 would not be forgotten. She lost three family members that day — her son, her daughter-in-law and her 2-yearold granddaughter Christine.
Now 86, Hanson traveled to Westport on Thursday evening to grieve her loss and remember her loved ones at Connecticut’s annual memorial ceremony at Sherwood Island State Park. For two decades, she says she has never missed the service overlooking Long Island Sound in a spot where the World Trade Center could be seen collapsing that day.
“We, the families, have been unified by the tragedy of 9/11,’’ Hanson, of Easton, said after the ceremony. “We console each other and just talk the same talk. … I do it because I have to. I can’t let my kids down. I can’t let them be forgotten.’’
At 2, Hanson’s granddaughter was the youngest victim with ties to Connecticut that day. The family had been on a long-planned vacation to Disneyland on United Airlines Flight 175, which had been heading from Boston’s Logan Airport to Los Angeles before terrorists crashed it into the south tower of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.
Overall, 156 people with ties to
Connecticut died that day. Another 60 from Connecticut died in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed the attacks.
While a small state, Connecticut was hit hard on 9/11, with many Fairfield County residents commuting to jobs on Wall Street and other spots in lower Manhattan. The names of the victims with ties to Connecticut were read aloud Thursday — one by one — by surviving family members.
The readers were Barbara Theurkauf, sister of Thomas F. Theurkauf, a bank analyst and Glastonbury native who lived in Stamford; Mary Henwood, mother of John Henwood of Wilton, an employee of the financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald that had offices on the 103rd floor of the north tower; and Donna Hughes, wife of Paul Hughes, a computer consultant from Stamford who worked on the 97th floor of the north tower.
Gov. Ned Lamont, who was in Manhattan on 9/11 for a cable television conference, stood at the pavilion at Sherwood Island that looks toward Manhattan.
“It’s remarkable that just 20 years ago, right out there, there was the twin towers of the World Trade Center,’’ Lamont told the crowd as he looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Sherwood Island was chosen as the site for the state’s official 9/11 memorial because numerous residents gathered at the state park on the day of the attacks and could see the Manhattan skyline in the distance.
The emcee for the ceremony was Brian E. Mattiello, a former Republican state legislator who has been a direct contact between the families and state government for the past two decades.
While working in the state budget office and later as chief of staff in 2004 under then-gov. John G. Rowland, Mattiello was given the highly sensitive task of consoling scores of grieving families immediately after the 9/11 tragedy. As the years went on, Mattiello still maintained ties with the families and has continued attending the annual ceremony.
“Twenty years later, it’s hard to believe,’’ he said. “We have those moments that it seems like yesterday … 9/11 is not something in the rearview mirror. It is etched in our souls.’’
Seated in the front row Thursday evening was Harry Fisher, a longtime Greenwich resident who was honoring his brother, Bennett, a Yale University graduate who died at the age of 58 while saving others that day.
A senior vice president and portfolio manager at Fiduciary Trust International on the 97th floor, Bennett Fisher had survived the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and had experience in helping others inside the towers. He was a hero who was seen helping others to safety in a stairwell in the final hours before the towers collapsed.
Harry Fisher said his brother had been a fire marshal on his floor and went from Tower 2 to Tower 1, where he found the fire command center. Bennett’s remains were found with firefighters in January 2002.
“He never made it out,’’ Harry Fisher said Thursday. “He did what a lot of us would have done. He did what he could to help out.’’
For years, Fisher found it difficult to think about the horrors of 9/11 or to watch the extensive television coverage.
“This week, I’ve been noticing with all the remembrances on the TV that I’m a little bit more comfortable with it all,’’ Fisher said. “Time does heal wounds.’’