The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
‘THE LOSS GOES ON’
Somber Cromwell ceremony unites community
CROMWELL — Seventeen years of the shock, the pain, and the muted anguish is still there.
Seventeen years on, people are left to confront their emotional response to the Sept. 11 attacks and to draw sometimes very different lessons from the day 19 men set in motion an audacious plan that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.
Seventeen years on, some 50 people — residents, first responders and town officials alike — gathered in Cromwell to remember the attacks at the World Trade Center in New York City, at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and in the skies over Shanksville, Pa.
They remembered the people who were killed, as well as those affected today by lingering health issues and other repercussions of being at Ground Zero.
And they entertained the hope the country can once again come together as it did briefly in the days and weeks following the attacks.
The tribute, which took place at the gazebo at Riverfront Park at Frisbee Landing, took place under damp, dreary skies that were the polar opposite of the bright late-summer day when passenger airliners were put to use as weapons of war.
An oversized American flag hung from the extended ladder of the Cromwell Fire Department ladder truck as state Sen. Paul Doyle, D-9th, state Rep. Christie Carpino, R-Cromwell, and Mayor Enzo Faienza offered their memories of that black day and their hopes for the future.
Joining them were Police Chief Denise Lamontagne, Police Capt. Kevin A. VanderSloot, Fire Chief Michael Terenzio, selectmen Richard R. Newton, James Demetriades, Samantha Slade and Allan Waters, Town Manager Anthony J. Salvatore, Superintendent of Schools John T. Maloney Jr., Assistant Superintendent Krista Karch and former first selectman Mertie L. Terry.
The remembrance ceremony began with the Rev. Paul D. Krampitz, pastor of the Bethany Lutheran Church, recalling the dark hours of 9/11.
A former infantry officer commander and later a police SWAT officer, Krampitz said he was unprepared for the impact of the attacks. Newly anointed as a priest, “I didn’t know how to respond.”
He found his answer through a parishioner named Lorraine, whose son was in New York at the World Trade Center when the first plane hit.
Her son had been a Green Beret medic in the first Gulf War, and he called his mother in Stratford to assure her he was OK. But, he said, “I’ve got to go back in there” to one of the two crippled towers to help victims.
The rest of the day passed without any word from the son, Krampitz said. Finally, at 8:30 that night, the son walked into his mother’s house, safe but scarred by what he had seen.
The harrowing hours at the Trade Center, coupled with the tragedy he had witnessed in war, eventually consumed the man, who, Krampitz said, “succumbed to a drinking disorder.”
Trauma takes a terrible toll, both mentally and physically, Krampitz said, adding, “The loss goes on.”
That said, “Some good things did come out of 9/11,” Krampitz said, including the realization “We need to be open and embracing to one another.”
Following a stirring rendition of the National Anthem sung by Richard F. Donohue,
a bright silver fire bell tolled four times — one for each plane hijacked that day.
Two planes that hit the Trade Center towers, one slammed into the Pentagon, and United Flight 93, which crashed before it could be used in yet another attack in Washington, D.C., after passengers fought back against the hijackers.
Doyle spoke of his reaction to “the most significant day of my life,” his generation’s version of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Doyle said he was proud that, in the wake of the attacks, “We didn’t punish all Muslims for the misguided — and murderous — acts of 19 extremists.”
He was equally proud that, even if just for a while, politicians in Washington came together and worked together.
As she got her elementary school-aged son ready for school earlier in the morning, Carpino tried to explain what had happened on 9/11. “Some really bad people killed a lot of people because they didn’t like our way of life,” she said.
And yet, Carpino said, Americans “all stood up a little taller, and took a little better care of our neighbors” in the wake of the attacks. She expressed the hope that even in these contentious times Americans can once again come together.
Faienza thanked the first responders in his remarks, and, like Carpino, called upon residents to remember “to love one another.”
Master of Ceremonies Jay Polke invited residents who wished to add their recollections as well. One woman spoke of having just returned from a trip to Washington, where she had visited the memorial to the 184 people killed when an American Airlines jet struck the Pentagon.
Mary Byrnie talked about her son and daughter (she was an aide to Gov. George Pataki) as well as a niece, who was an FBI agent. All three were in New York and at or near Ground Zero on that day.
Fortunately, all three survived the attack. But Byrnie’s story was harrowing, summoning up the tension and the terror of the day.
Polke closed the ceremony talking about his cousin, John Michelotti, an artist who was inspired by the attack. Michelotti is the man who created the “Flag of Honor,” in which the stripes of the American flag contain the names of the 2,996 men, women and children who died that awful morning.
It took Michelotti three years to create the flag, one of which hangs in the atrium of Town Hall. He has sold the flags around the world, Polke said, with the proceeds from the sales going to the families of the victims.