Long Islanders remember, reflect and pray on 23rd anniversary of 9/11 attacks

Long Islanders gathered in parks, beaches and in community squares Wednesday and remembered, for the 23rd year, those lost on 9/11 and the thousands who died years later from illnesses incurred while trying to recover the victims.

Gail Silk, of Carmel, left her Putnam County home with her cousin Carol Mitchell at 5 a.m. to drive two hours and join hundreds at Point Lookout to look out at the surf and recall watching the smoke rising from the World Trade Center on that terrible day.

Silk’s oldest brother, Stephen Driscoll, 38, was working in the Bronx as an NYPD EMS on Sept. 11 when he went to the south tower and never came out.

"It's not any easier," Silk said. "You miss him every day."

The annual 9/11 commemoration by the surf, and other ceremonies around Long Island, have taken on added meaning over the years, as first responders and others succumb to illnesses related to exposure at Ground Zero, joining the nearly 3,000 victims who lost their lives that day in terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and aboard Flight 93.

The World Trade Center attacks killed 2,753 people, including 497 Long Islanders. Another 224 people died in the crashes of a hijacked plane at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Tolling the bell

At Suffolk County's memorial in Hauppauge, Jennifer McNamara, 56, of Blue Point, watched the tolling of a silver bell to commemorate the anniversary. She was one of dozens of people who came to remember the lives lost at a ceremony led by Suffolk County Executive Edward P. Romaine. 

For McNamara, like many, the terrorist attacks represented a watershed moment in her life. Her husband, John McNamara, was a fireman who responded on the first day and ended up working at Ground Zero for more than 500 hours.

"I’m a little weepy this year," said McNamara. "I think a lot of people, especially 23 years later, start to forget, and I don’t know how we forget."

Her husband was diagnosed with cancer in 2006 when she was four months pregnant. He died in 2009 at the age of 44, leaving behind his wife and then-2-year-old son, Jack.

Jack McNamara, 17, is now in his first year of college in Kentucky. He hopes to follow in his father’s footsteps in becoming a member of the Fire Department of the City of New York.

"He honors his father every moment of every day," McNamara said of her son.

Retired NYPD Det. David Velez placed American flags in front of the names etched on the Suffolk County 9/11 Memorial, a yearly remembrance for those who lost their lives on that fateful day.

Among those who died was Glen Pettit, a fellow NYPD officer and a freelancer photographer.

On 9/11, Velez, a first responder, recalled seeing Pettit before the towers collapsed. The two men told each other to be safe and careful.

"I was able, by the grace of God, to get out," he said. "Unfortunately, he wasn't."

Velez, 50, credits dealing with post-traumatic stress to intense therapy, talking about the day and coming to place the flags.

The Amityville resident first started placing flags for people he knew. But that didn’t look right when he peered at all the others, so he added more.

This year, he bought 300 flags for the Suffolk County 9/11 Memorial and another site for those who died of 9/11-related illness, he said.

"I felt like everybody needed one," he said. "You know, everybody deserves a flag, and everybody deserves to be remembered."

Sniffles were heard among a silent crowd in Amityville as Babylon Town Supervisor Rich Schaffer and Robert Wagerle, president of the Town of Babylon Fire Chiefs Association and a former chief of the Amityville Fire Department, read the names of the 48 Town of Babylon residents who died on 9/11. 

Wagerle recalled watched the second tower fall during a business meeting in Manhattan. Shortly afterward, he learned his Amityville department lost a volunteer firefighter who was working as a trader at the World Trade Center: Peter O’Neill Jr.

"That one hurts even more," Wagerle said following the ceremony Wednesday evening.

O’Neill’s cousin, Kieran McDermott, 40, of Amityville, stood among the crowd of about 100 mourners as more than 100 firefighters from multiple local fire departments marched past the American flags, concrete monuments — each of which chronicle a moment during the events of Sept. 11, 2001 — and a steel beam recovered from Ground Zero.

After the ceremony, McDermott performed his remembrance ritual: sipping a beer — this year a can of Budweiser — and pouring some out before the onyx slab depicting O’Neill’s portrait to "toast him."

A list that keeps growing

Those who died are also remembered at the Town of Hempstead memorial at Town Park at Point Lookout. The memorial includes a wall of etched names, a 30-foot steel beam from the World Trade Center and a replica of the Twin Towers set against the beach.

The list of names on the town's memorial has grown to a nationwide loss of 4,560, from when it was first dedicated in 2017 with 2,983 names from the attacks. Names of 9/11 illness-related deaths are provided by the Nesconset-based FealGood Foundation.

Nearly 7,000 people who enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program established by the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 have died, although not all from WTC-related conditions.

The family of FDNY firefighter Ronald "Ronnie" Kirchner, 60, of Oceanside, remembered him on Wednesday at Point Lookout.

Kirchner had just finished a shift at his Queens firehouse, Ladder 154 in Jackson Heights, on 9/11 when the towers were struck. He worked more than 600 hours at Ground Zero during the search and recovery effort. 

He remained with the department until his retirement in 2009. He was diagnosed with dementia and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

His wife, Dawn Kirchner, said her husband attempted to go into Manhattan along with other firefighters, but arrived after the towers had fallen. She said her husband spent more than 600 hours during the next six months cleaning the debris, working for "hours on end" only to return home to sleep for an hour or two.

Kirchner said she had a few "good retirement years" with her husband when he retired from the FDNY at 47. The family moved to Arizona in 2009 after he was diagnosed with WTC asthma. But his cognitive skills soon began to disintegrate.

The family moved back to Oceanside in 2017 to be near friends and relatives in the last years of his life. He died in August 2022.

According to a Stony Brook University study, those who were exposed to toxins from the WTC rubble are 40 times more likely to develop early-onset dementia than the average person.

Angela and John Triandafillou, of Baldwin, also attended the Point Lookout service, remembering Sept. 11 when their flight from Europe was diverted to Canada after the attacks. 

The two were flying from Europe to Kennedy Airport with their then-18-month-old son when their plane, along with 37 others, was redirected to St. John’s in Newfoundland because American air space was temporarily closed.

Their plane sat on the tarmac for nine hours before they were escorted outside and placed into a stadium, where they were finally informed about the attacks.

"It was very emotional," said John Triandafillou, tearing up.

To this day, the couple has strong feelings about the generosity of the people of St. John’s, whose story inspired a Broadway musical, "Come From Away."

"The city took care of us, opened their hearts," Triandafillou said.

Reflecting on the day

At Nassau County's Sept. 11 memorial at Eisenhower Park in East Meadow, Colleen Woessner, 44, of Wantagh, carried a bouquet of white flowers Wednesday. She placed them on one of the steel pieces of WTC wreckage and then knelt down to pray.

"I felt it was important to come here and alone and just reflect," she said.

Woessner said she was a college senior at the time of the terrorist attacks, and the father of the person she was dating at the time died in the north tower. Her husband is a first responder and a volunteer firefighter with Rescue Hook Ladder & Bucket No. 1 in Lynbrook, and was exposed to the debris of Ground Zero.

"It’s important to keep this memory alive," she said. "My heart aches for all those families and people that are going through it."

She said she and her husband try to instill the importance of the historic day with their children, ages 12 and 5, and are planning to visit the Ground Zero memorial in Manhattan. She’s listened to the reading of the names so many times that now they are familiar to her, she said.

"Some people might be like, 'Oh, how long are we going to have to do this?’" Woessner said. "But I’m like, I hope, forever."