At 9/11 Memorial & Museum 5K, Long Islanders run, walk and remember
A participant crosses the finish line to the cheers of FDNY members Sunday in lower Manhattan at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum 5k Run/Walk. Credit: Ed Quinn
About 4,000 people bundled up on Sunday morning for the 13th annual 9/11 Memorial & Museum 5K Run/Walk, facing strong winds in lower Manhattan to honor loved ones and first responders killed in the attacks.
Among those participating Sunday were members of a Massapequa running club, taking part in memory of their friend and 9/11 first responder Keith Ferrara.
"It was so long ago, but it feels like it was yesterday," club member Jim Ader said.
Ferrara, of Farmingdale, an NYPD officer, died in 2019 from 9/11-related lung cancer.
"He never met a stranger," Terry McCormick, another Massapequa runner, said of his friend.
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, McCormick was in his office at 1 Wall St.
"Every moment, every part of that day, you remember it," he said.
Ader and another member of the Massapequa Road Runners, Rajiv Bansal, wore T-shirts featuring a photo of Ferrara.
Thousands of others joined them, gathered in light blue shirts by the Hudson River just before 8 a.m. on Sunday, with runners in the front and those walking — many with children — in the back. Hundreds of firefighters and police officers lined the walking path, cheering on participants and directing cars away.
Kristin Stelfox, a global history teacher at R.C. Murphy Junior High School in Stony Brook, said she pulls from her own memory of 9/11 when teaching her students.
"The world that I grew up in, that I started to become a young adult in, was gone overnight," Stelfox said. "The things I imagined getting to do changed in a split second."
Stelfox works to train new teachers, some of whom were born after 9/11, in how to instruct young students about the attacks that killed 2,753 people.
Nykiah Morgan of Westbury used to avoid the area where the Twin Towers once stood but took part in Sunday's 9/11 Memorial & Museum 5K in memory of her mother, who died in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Credit: Ed Quinn
Nykiah Morgan, of Westbury, spoke through tears on Sunday remembering her mother, who worked at Marsh and McLennan in the north tower — and was one of nearly 500 Long Islanders who were killed. Morgan, 48, avoided the area downtown for two decades until she decided to make the walk a new tradition.
"To be around so many people that experienced what you experienced ... is a great thing," she said.
"It’s more of a celebration ... You’re doing something for all the lives that were lost to live on."
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