Note: This Sunday, September 10th, at 11:00AM you are invited to Cornerstone Church meeting at Scout Hall Youth Center, 28 Abbe Road, East Windsor for a special service to remember 9/11. Local Firefighters and Police will be there as we pay tribute to them. Local soloist Chris Kibbe will share in music.
MY GREATEST FEAR IS FORGETTING

A couple of weeks ago I went to see the movie “World Trade Center” with my son and a couple of friends. When I first heard of the movie I resisted seeing it because I was concerned that it would offend the true events of 9/11. To my surprise it was a good movie and did not do disservice to the men and women who responded to the attacks on that sad day.

So why did I go? Because I fear that as time passes I will forget what happened that warm day in September. After five years it would be easy to put this travesty out of my mind and act like it did not happen. Even worse would be for all of us to purposely block it out of our mind so not to have to revisit the emotions of that day.

But we need to remember! We need to revisit our feelings of 9/11/2001. We need to let it break our hearts again. Only then will we honor those who lost their lives in New York, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania.

Monday September 11, 2006 will be the fifth anniversary of the attack on America. At 7:00 P.M. that night our town will come together again to honor the fallen and herald the work of our First Responders. At the “September 11th Remembrance and Hometown Heroes Candlelight Vigil” we will all meet on the Enfield Town Green to share our unity of spirit as a community.

The event is sponsored by the Thompsonville and Hazardville Professional Firefighters Local 3059 A.F.F.

After five years I can still remember clearly the planes crashing into the Trade Towers, Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. As the television news continued to repeat the attack over and over I, like millions of Americans, watched as we witnessed something that has not happened since December 7, 1941 with attack on Pearl Harbor.

It has been said that our lives are defined by the events that we witness in our lifetime. What is the first tragic event you remember? For some it goes all the way back to the sinking of the Titanic. Some remember D-Day and the bravery shown by our greatest generation. For me it was the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I remember sitting in school and the teacher coming before us in tears saying we all could go home early today and that our parents would explain.

Since JFK we have had defining moments like Robert Kennedy being gunned downed, Martin Luther King Jr. taken from us on a hotel walkway, and the Challenger explosion . The list goes on and on.

At each one of these there was new generation born to experience one of these events. Some were accidents, as the Titanic at sea, while others were acts of hatred simply because their skin was a different color. No matter what, their lives are defined by what they first remember.

This week the children of 9/11 enter kindergarten. Children born in 2001, when asked what event is associated with their generation, will have to respond that the year they were born, terrorists attacked America.

There will not be a logical reason given. It will simply be stated that men motivated by hate took the lives of innocent people just going about their day.

But, somewhere in New York there is a little girl who is walking through the doors of her first classroom. She has her backpack filled with the supplies needed for her first educational experience. She has her lunch packed by her mom and a note saying, “I love you and am proud of you.”

As the teacher looks over the record of each student she notices a word next to the fathers name. The word is “deceased”. The teacher approaches the little girl and gives her sympathy for the death of her father.

The little girl says thank you and states that her dad was a firefighter on 9/11 in New York City. He was one of the first to go into the Trade Center, but he never came out. Mom says’ as he climbed up the stairs that God just kept him going straight to heaven and I talk to him every night in my prayers.

The teacher moved with emotion heads back to her desk taking the girls personal record with her. As she stares at the word “deceased” she picks up her pen and draws a line through that word and replaces it with another phrase. The phrase “Hero of 9/11.”

Let us not forget.