On Sept. 11, Monmouth County Remembers the Tragic Loss of Residents

By Philip Sean Curran

ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS – With New York City visible in the distance on a sunny day, a crowd began arriving at Mount Mitchill Scenic Overlook in Atlantic Highlands Sept. 11 to recall what happened 18 years ago.

Monmouth County’s annual 9/11 memorial ceremony, which began at 8 a.m., 46 minutes before the first plane hit the World Trade Center, was a chance to honor the lives of those who perished and remember the events of that day.

Some of the estimated 200 people in attendance came wearing patriotic-themed shirts or those of first responder agencies. Lorna O’Hara wore one representing the New York City fire company her cousin, Brian Bilcher, belonged to when he rushed into the north tower of the World Trade Center where he died.

Here and in communities around the country, the nation paused once again to reflect on 9/11. Terrorists hijacked four airliners that morning, three of which hit their targets in lower Manhattan and at the Pentagon, while the fourth, destined for the White House, crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. In all, nearly 3,000 people were killed in what was the deadliest attack on the country.

Monmouth County lost 147 residents that day, most of them in lower Manhattan. At the overlook, their names, ages and the towns where they lived are engraved in a stone base beneath a sculpture of an eagle holding a twisted beam from the World Trade Center.

“It’s just a tough day every year,” said Mark Otto of Red Bank after the ceremony.

That bright September morning 18 years ago, he was on his way to work in Manhattan, aboard a PATH train to the stock exchange. On Wednesday he came to the memorial with a flag of honor listing the names of all those who died in the terrorist attack.

Freeholder Lillian G. Burry, who lost a cousin who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center, recalled how Sept. 11, 2001 “started as a normal day, filled with promise and possibilities.”

“We will never forget how it ended,” said Burry, a native New Yorker, to the crowd. “We remember the shock and the pain, the terrible sense of loss.”

Later, she would say how 9/11 “changed life for all of us.”

“It changed the way we saw the world,” she said, at times her voice filling with emotion. “The events of that fateful day will be with us forever.”

During the ceremony, each time a bell rang Burry explained key moments of that morning: from 8:46 a.m. when the north tower was hit, to the impacts of the south tower, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, to the north tower collapsing at 10:29 a.m.

Sharing one of the stories of that day, Burry recalled how two survivors, Stanley Praimnath and Brian Clark, made it to safety from the south tower of the World Trade Center. She told how Clark helped rescue Praimnath, with the two of them making it down 1,600 stairs just four minutes before the building collapsed.

She said both men remain friends.

“Sometimes when they think about their experience, they wonder why they were saved, when so many were lost,” she said. “They know there is no easy answer and feel that all they can do is to try to live their best life from day to day and move forward with gratitude.”

Freeholder Director Thomas A. Arnone, in his remarks, talked of the need to educate the younger generation of Americans about what happened that day.

He called it “probably one of the most devastating things that I could ever remember happening in my life.” And he said it is “also our job to teach ‘remember and never forget’ because it’s the youth that have to carry this day.”

Jennifer Garrison of Eatontown sat listening to the speeches with her three small children. Like many, she can remember where she was when the attacks happened. When she got to the gym where she was working at the time, she recalled the sight of all the TVs over the treadmills tuned to the awful news.

Linda Sison of Oceanport said, “The feelings are so deep with sorrow, really.”

Her birthday is Sept. 11, a day she no longer feels like celebrating. “My birthday hasn’t been a happy one in 18 years,” said Sison.