Sept. 11, 2011, marked the 10-year anniversary of the devastating attacks on the United States. The following are images taken from Jersey City's Liberty State Park across from Manhattan last year as well as this year. I traveled from Toms River to Jersey City this and last year on and around Sept. 11 to capture some of the memorial activities. The lights have been going on for some time during Sept. 11, and this year was their last, but there's a new element to the memorial in Jersey City: This year's photos include images of the new memorial unveiled this year, called "Empty Sky: New Jersey…
In Holiday City, Toms River and elsewhere, Jersey Shore residents remembered, cried and came to terms with what happened 10 years ago, when 3,000 people - some of them local, others not - perished at the hands of terrorists. A large crowd gathered at Holiday City at Berkeley's Clubhouse 2 for a ceremony to honor those who were lost during the attacks of 9/11. Berkeley Mayor Jason Varano addressed the audience and said although the tragedy was horrific, it united the country. "While the loss was great beyond description... we came together to support each other during those terrible days," …
The story that follows is another in our series profiling local residents affected by 9/11. As the 10th anniversary of the attacks approaches, Patch is inviting all readers to share their stories of that day and its aftermath. Salvatore Velez watches every 9/11 special and documentary he can find. When police and fire communications from the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center are released, the retired New York City firefighter listens to all the recordings. He's not trying to torture himself. He said he’s just trying, from the distance of a decade, to catch a glimpse of the friends he …
In the days surrounding Sept. 11 this year, many will find personal ways to reckon with the tragic events of a decade earlier. Some will travel to New York City, Washington D.C. or to a field in rural Pennsylvania to visit memorials established to honor those lives lost or changed forever on that day. But residents of Brick Township have a very special monument in their own backyard. In Windward Beach Park, just off Princeton Avenue, they will find a statue titled, Angel in Anguish. Kneeling in a circular garden near the edge of the Metedconk River, this sorrowful bronze figure wraps her …
Laraine Sgroi will be speing the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in Brick. That's just where she was when they occured, claiming the life of her ex-husband, Thomas, who worked on the 95th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center when it was hit. "We avoid the city altogether," she said, when asked if she would be attending the memorial event in New York City scheduled for the anniversary next month. "I don't put the TV on. I don't watch the ceremony, because for us it's not just that day. It's every day." But Sgroi still wants her hometown to remember what happened. …
OCEAN COUNTY BARNEGAT 9-11 ceremonyBarnegat American Legion and Township CommitteeSunday, 11 a.m.Location: Municipal Dock 411 East Bay AvenueMemorial ceremonyPresentation of a 9/11 flagSunday, 11 a.m.Location: Four Seasons at Mirage clubhouse1 Esplande Drive 9/11 memorial dedicationFriday, 6 p.m.Location: Township memorialNear Barnegat High School football field BERKELEY September 11 memorial service and dedication of Twin Towers SteelSaturday, 6:30 p.m.Location: Veterans Park Annual Sept. 11 memorial serviceSunday, noonLocation: Holiday City at BerkeleyClubhouse II on Port Royal Drive BRICK …
As a poet from a working-class New Jersey background who teaches at a small community college tucked into the Northwest corner of his home state, BJ Ward is accustomed to being ignored. Which makes the public’s awareness — and gratitude — for one of his poems, For the Children of the World Trade Center Victims, all the more remarkable to him. Ten years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Ward still hears from the children and wives of Sept. 11 (but no husbands so far) emailing or calling to thank him for expressing what they are still trying to absorb. “They are the living victims. They still have an…
I've long wondered how I should lend my voice to the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. As the Jersey Shore regional editor for Patch.com, I often get called on to write the obituary of record, or to find the right prose for the event of the month—Hurricane Irene, for example—that commands the attention of my hometown area.This time, I was expecting to step into the background, and let others shine. Little did I know, however, that the words were already written.The book of my family, "A Legacy of Madness: Recovering My Family From Generations of Mental Illness," will be released on …
"This is the hour of lead Remembered if outlived, As freezing persons recollect the snow — First chill, then stupor, then the letting go." —Emily Dickinson Colleen Meehan Barkow and her mother JoAnn Meehan spent the weekend before Sept. 11, 2001 happily shopping for towels and linens for the 26-year-old's new home in the Poconos. Colleen and her husband Daniel, married less than a year, were planning to move into the house at the end of October. It meant a long commute into New York, where Colleen worked as a facilities director for Cantor Fitzgerald, on the 103rd floor of the North Tower …
At first I thought it was a joke. Maybe a modern day "War of the Worlds' broadcast. My commuter friend and I always turned on the radio for the traffic reports before we ventured onto the New Jersey Turnpike for the trip into Hoboken. But instead of a traffic report, we heard the announcer asking an elderly man with a thick Irish brogue for more information about what he had just seen. Something about a plane crashing into one of the World Trade Center towers. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" the older man shouted. "Another plane just flew into the other tower!" I looked at Bob and said "This must …
The guessing game had already been played: reporters dispatched to places most likely to produce the news for the next day’s paper. Seldom have the guesses been more wrong than those made on Sept. 10 about what needed covering on Sept. 11, 2001. My assignment was to cover a stop by a Democrat running for governor at the Ramada Inn on Route 9 in Toms River, early that morning. It was early in the race, and solidly red Ocean County was hardly the place a Democrat would pick for a major campaign announcement, but I was there anyway. Jim McGreevey seemed in a hurry when he burst through the door…
As John and Barbara Sullivan unfolded an 8-by-12-foot American flag, they became emotional. It had been 10 years since they looked at the flag that was signed by thousands just after 9/11. “This is even hard for us,” John said. The couple, owners of American Eagle Flag, LLC on Lacey Road in Forked River, never anticipated that their product would become a hot commodity and under the circumstances, they wished it hadn’t. “Our business is the pulse of how the country is feeling at the time,” John said. “Many times when business is booming, it means the country is in turmoil.” John was working …
It was time for a change. After terrorists hijacked four passenger planes and slammed two into the World Trade Center buildings, one into the Pentagon, and another into a field in Pennsylvania, the way professionals approach security for mass transportation needed an overhaul. For NJ Transit, which operates 2,027 buses, 771 trains and 45 light rail vehicles over a service area of 5,325 square miles that meant a change in mindset. “In the past we only focused on crime and great service to customers, but now, here at NJ Transit, what we try to drive home to all our officers is that their main …
Bernadette Whitmeyer could not relax on Sept. 11, 2002, the one-year anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. She felt uneasy. She paced the floors in her Orangestad Street home she shares with her husband Richard, a retired Newark police officer. She tried to keep busy. "I was so unsettled," she recalled. "That day had such an impact on me. On that day I just never knew what to do with myself." That's when the idea of a annual memorial service came to her. A service where people could come to honor those lost on that dark day. "I decided the next year I'm going to try and do this," she …
We looked at the Jersey Shore to see how the events of Sept. 11 had changed people's lives. Here are their stories, as well as those of more than two dozen others from across the state.
"A Letter to Caitlyn" "You asked your mom why everyone is so sad around your birthday and you wonder why you never got to meet your Uncle Johnnie. I hope I can help you understand. "Before you were born, there were two really big buildings in New York City called the Twin Towers. Your Uncle Johnnie worked on the 104th floor of the building, almost at the very top! He worked with bankers and had lots of friends who worked with him. "A week before you were born, a group of men who did not like our country, did a very bad thing. They hijacked airplanes, which means they forced the pilots to let …
During the summer, Patch began collecting readers' photos of the World Trade Center, a growing gallery in tribute to the Twin Towers. As the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks draws near, we'll be remembering New Jersey residents who died that clear September morning. But we also wanted to pay tribute to the towers—iconic symbols of hope and prosperity—when they stood tall and proud, dominating the New York City skyline. We asked and you delivered, sending in more than a hundred photos statewide that represent your favorite memories: the shimmering skyline at nightfall, the view…
It wasn't supposed to end this way. But U.S. Marine Cpl. Nicholas S. Ott finally came home today, his body laid to rest as a Mass and burial service celebrated his life. A Mass for Ott, a Manchester native who was killed on Aug. 10 in Afghanistan, was held Friday at Saint John's Roman Catholic Church in Lakehurst, one day after hundreds of mourners paid their respects during a public viewing at the same location. Brian George, 38, who served in the U.S. Air Force for 18 years, was one of the many onlookers lining Myrtle Avenue in the borough to say goodbye as Ott's procession exited the …
