9/11

In a service that recalled in detail the tragedy, fears and horror of Sept. 11, 2001, Pastor Marty Macdonald's Sunday morning message was really about hope.

"We have the power to hope," he said, "in something greater than ourselves."

Sept. 11, Macdonald said, wasn't something that God "allowed" to happen, nor was it, as some have said, God's revenge on a nation gone astray.

"God didn't have anything to do with it," Macdonald said. "It was the work of the enemy."

The Sunday service at City Church opened with the usual praise worship, but then shifted gears to vignettes related to 9/11 -- first, community residents recalling what that day was like, then a scene of a daughter at breakfast with her mother, unable to comprehend why 9/11 is important, so her mother opens her computer to show her newsreels from that tragic day.

On the projection screens, scenes of 9/11 played out as they did in 2001, followed by the Oval Office speech from President George W. Bush.

After the videotapes from Sept. 11, 2001, three church members portrayed different people effected by 9/11: the daughter who lost her father; the firefighter who contracted cancer from working in the rubble of the Twin Towers; and the wife of Todd Beamer, the passenger on Flight 93 who famously uttered "Let's Roll" before passengers attempted to retake the hijacked airplane.

Macdonald said that at a time when people are losing confidence in our government, it's important to remember where to place our hope.

"When you place your confidence in human beings, you will always be disappointed," Macdonald said. "But when you place your hope in a living God, you will never be disappointed."

Our world changed on Sept. 11, 2001, said Pastor Allen Werk. Things that we disagreed about on Monday, seemed unimportant on Tuesday. Things that annoyed us one day could be seen as a sign of God's grace the next day. As a nation, we came to see how important God is to our lives.

"We saw what life really meant and how fragile life could be," Werk said.

Werk delivered his sermon as part of a special 9/11 service at St. Paul Lutheran Church, which mixed patriot songs and prayer and a chance to honor first responders and military veterans (top picture).

"What we witnessed on that day of terror on our shores, when we saw people dying right in front of us, we recognized that we needed somebody who was bigger than us, more powerful than even the most powerful nation on Earth, who was on our side," Werk said.

Volunteers from at least four fire companies -- I saw Le Roy, Batavia, Stafford and South Byron while I was there -- were on hand Sunday at The Home Depot to raise a flag in honor of the 9/11 victims and give community members a chance to meet with local volunteers and learn about fire safety. Children could tour the firetrucks and receive hats and coloring books.

Batavia residents found a number of ways to remember Sept. 11 on Sunday.

Above, Ken Mistler hung his giant U.S. flag from the former Carr's building.

Frank Bellucci set up this display outside his Ellicott Street home. The centerpiece, a model of the Twin Towers, was built a few yeas ago for a competition by his son, Frankie, now 13.

Somebody set up these signs on West Main Street near Oak Street.

Still to come from Sunday, coverage of 9/11 services at St. Paul's Lutheran Church and City Church.

Somebody has posted a sign on Route 20, Bethany Center, encouraging people to plant flags along the road as a 9/11 memorial. So far, at least 30 flags have been left.

Ken Adams had a job in Brooklyn in 2001 and on Sept. 11, with his wife home sick, it was his turn to pick up their daughter from school. 

He was late getting there, one of the last parents to arrive, and he remembers walking into the class and there was only his daughter and a little girl standing next to the teacher.

"I looked at her and she looked at me and we had the same thought at the same time," Adams recalled. "There will be some children whose parents won't be picking them up today."

Adams, the commissioner of Empire State Development, was in Batavia today for the Sept. 11 memorial ceremony, representing Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

During a brief speech, Adams described what it was like in New York City on 9/11 -- from walking his daughter home on a bright, clear blue-sky day, but with the acrid smell of the fallen twin towers in the air, to the office paper ashes falling in their small Brooklyn back yard.

"I remember getting home, looking at my little girl and thinking, 'No one knows how to tell a 6-year-old girl about evil," Adams said.

The ceremony included remarks by Council President Marianne Clattenburg, Legislator Ed DeJaneiro, State Sen. Mike Ranzenhofer and Sheriff Gary Maha.

On 9/11, Maha, along Deputy Ron Meides and another member of the department traveled to NYC to help with the relief efforts.

Maha described helping with relief efforts and visiting ground zero and seeing the devastation of the terrorist attacks.

"It's heartwarming to see everybody here today paying respect to those who lost their lives on Sept. 11," Maha said.

Adams said it's important that the country, and New York, not forget what happened on 9/11, and that we teach our children about the "brutal facts" of that day.

Remembering, he said, will provide lessons and teach us about unity.

"We are bound together in our grief over the tragedy of Sept. 11," Adams said. "We are bound by our resolve never to let Sept. 11 fade from our memories."

UPDATE: Video from WBTA.

The City of Batavia's 9/11 ceremony has been moved up to tomorrow, Thursday, at 2 p.m.

It will be held in the mall concourse.

City Council President Marianne Clattenburg, Genesee County Sheriff Gary Maha and ESD President Ken Adams will be speaking at the ceremony.

This is the Remembering 9/11 display set up at City Centre by the NYS Museum, one of several 9/11 artifact displays set up in various municipalities throughout New York.  The car is an unmarked NYC Port Authority sedan that was found under the rubble of the Twin Towers. The display is outside the mall-side entrance to Batavia City Hall.

The State Museum is setting up 30 displays of 9/11 artifacts around the state and one of them will be at Batavia City Hall from Aug. 29 through the end of September.

The display will be open on Sunday, Sept. 11.

"It's memorializing a tragedy, but I think it's good for the city to be able to host something like this," said City Manager Jason Molino. "It will give the community a chance to reflect on the events of 9/11."

While details are still being worked out, Molino said, there will likely be some sort of city-hosted ceremony on 9/11.

County Clerk Don Read said he was glad to see Batavia picked as one of the 30 host cities.

"I think it is an excellent opportunity for the public to put themselves in a frame of mind to reflect on tragedy," Read said. 

Read called 9/11 "one of those legacy events" -- such as the Kennedy assassination -- when everybody remembers what they were doing and where they were when they heard about it.

"It's a chance to learn more about 9/11 and pay tribute to those who lost their lives on that day," Read said.

The State Museum has acquired more than 2,000 objects from Ground Zero and many of the artifacts that will be on display throughout the state, many of which will be viewed by the public for the first time.

As is his tradition, Ken Mistler hung a giant flag on the Carr's Building today to commemorate 9/11.

I spoke with Kenny a bit outside of "The Daily Grind," which will be his new coffee, tea and juice bar at the corner of Jackson and Main streets. He said he's about two weeks from opening because noisy work is still going on inside of the gym he's building adjacent to it.

The little guy I am holding in my arms now tends bar at Center Street Smokehouse. He was six months shy of his third birthday at the time of photo. Earlier that year Claudia and I had eaten dinner at Window's on the World, the restaurant situated on the 108th floor of the World Trade Center's south tower. It was evening, and I remember looking down into New York Harbor and thinking how small the Statue of Liberty seemed.  I took these moments for granted until Sept. 2001.   

Many of us, I think, had our lives changed and perceptions of the world altered by 9/11.  Some, of course, were affected in very direct personal ways, often tragic ways. For many of us, we were just observers, but still found the events momentous and unforgettable.

On Sept. 11, 2001, I was a manager in the Ventura County Star's online department. On that morning, my wife was up early getting ready for work and I was snoozing through my second alarm when Billie walked in and told me Dave Smith was on the phone. Dave had never called our house before. He was the editorial page editor. He had no reason to call me ... unless something very big was going on.

"Two planes just flew into the Twin Towers in New York," he told me.

I jumped out of bed and turned on CNN.  My job was to get the news on our Web site. I tried to hit other major news sites to grab an Associated Press story, but all the major news sites had crashed due to the heavy traffic. I had to write the initial story for our own Web site from what I was seeing and hearing on TV. It would be 30 minutes before an editor with access to our online system would be in the office and could post the AP story.

And so began perhaps the longest news cycle in my adult life -- a news cycle that would last for a couple of years, carrying us through the invasion of Iraq  -- and it is a news cycle that in many ways, still isn't over, even though most individuals have found ways to move on with their lives.

Sept. 11 is a long shadow that hangs over world affairs and personal lives. It effects our foreign affairs and figures into nearly every aspect of our national politics. 

Even if we would rather forget, we can't forget and perhaps shouldn't forget 9/11.

What are your 9/11 thoughts?

This past week, I had the privilege of spending Patriots Day in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the site of the crash of Flight 93, to commemorate the lives lost there on September 11th.  I was there as a reporter for my student-run tv station here at school, and I consider myself so lucky to have had the chance to be there.  It was one of the most, if not the most, remarkable, amazing experiences of my life.  Thus, I would like to share with you all my first news package from the trip, so you all can share a little bit in the experience as well.  So here it is, filmed, reported, written, edited and produced by me; I hope you enjoy:

As seen from Main Street (north side) between Center and Jackson streets.