By Heather Michon, Editor
Twenty-five years after the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil, much of the focus of Lake Monticello Volunteer Fire and Rescue’s annual ceremony was on passing the memory of that day, and the lessons drawn from it, to a new generation.
The annual “Remembrance and Tribute” ceremony honored the 2,977 people killed when hijacked planes struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pa.
It also recognized responders and survivors who became ill or died after working in the wreckage, two Lake Monticello Volunteer Fire and Rescue members killed in the line of duty in 1989, and U.S. Navy Seaman Dakota Rigsby, a Fluvanna County first responder killed aboard the USS Fitzgerald in 2017.
Around 100 people gathered under gloomy skies and scattered raindrops at the Community 9/11 Memorial Garden beside the Lake Monticello Fire and Rescue station. The Fluvanna Community Singers opened the ceremony with a medley of patriotic songs, followed by a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance.
For many speakers, a quarter-century felt hard to comprehend.
Fire Chief Richard Constantino recalled learning of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination while he was a schoolboy in 1963. That afternoon, he boarded the school bus to find the driver crying as she listened to the news on a transistor radio.
Like the Kennedy assassination, he said, 9/11 became one of those moments that linger in the hearts and minds of those who lived through it.
Constantino, who previously served as a fire chief in New York, also spoke of the continuing toll among those who worked at Ground Zero. Thousands of responders and survivors have died from illnesses linked to toxic exposure at the site, while many more live with chronic physical and mental health conditions.
“Many, many of them were my friends,” he said.
His brother John died in 2019 from a 9/11-related illness.
“My big brother,” he said. “The one who got me into this business.”
“With the passage of time, people’s memories have diminished, and the zeal for remembrance has faded,” Constantino said. “That is why ceremonies such as this are so important.”
Assistant Chief Sherry Cappa recalled living near an airport in Connecticut at the time of the attacks.
“For days, there were no planes in the sky,” she said. “That silence made what had happened feel even more real.”
For first responders, Cappa said, the heroism displayed that day carries a particular meaning.
That morning, the rescuers who raced to the scene “didn’t know if they would make it home, but they went anyway,” she said.
“We put on a uniform. We answer the call. We leave our families, sometimes in the middle of the night, and we go toward someone else’s worst moment because they need us,” she said. “September 11th reminds us that this isn’t just a job. It is a commitment to serve others.”
Twenty-five years later, she added, children who had not yet been born at the time of the attacks are now adults.
“Much of the world has changed, but our responsibility to remember has not,” she said.
Chief Deputy Dave Wells of the Fluvanna County Sheriff’s Office said the attacks have become little more than a historical footnote for some younger Americans, while others have simply chosen to forget.
The responsibility now rests with those who remember to teach the next generation not only about the horror of the attacks, he said, but also about the period of unity and generosity that followed.
“It didn’t matter where you were from, where you lived, what you looked like, what your politics were,” Wells said. “We were just all Americans.”
Board of Supervisors Chair Tony O’Brien also reflected on the growing distance between the attacks and the present. His daughter was two years old in 2001 and has no memory of the day.
“It is not just fitting that we remember. It is necessary,” he said.
O’Brien recalled television footage of firefighters gathering near the remaining World Trade Center tower after the other had collapsed. Knowing what could happen, they organized and moved toward the building.
“To me, this is the lasting legacy of 9/11,” O’Brien said. “The lasting legacy is not the hatred that caused the attacks. The lasting legacy is the selflessness that answered them.”
The memorial garden physically represents that legacy with a five-foot section of steel recovered from the World Trade Center’s North Tower.
Added to the garden in 2011, the twisted steel stands as a tangible connection between Fluvanna County and the events of that day.
The Fluvanna Community Singers concluded the ceremony with “We Remember Them,” a 9/11 tribute song. Members of the American Legion then fired a ceremonial rifle salute, followed by the playing of “Taps.”
John Lye, chief of the Lake Monticello Water Rescue Team, offered perhaps the evening’s most succinct challenge.
The best way to honor those who died on Sept. 11, he said, would be to recover the spirit Americans showed the following day.
“Get back to where we were on September 12, 2001.”
