Bonnie McEneaney reached the depths of despair on Sept. 11, 2001. Her husband, Eamon, was a vice president of Cantor Fitzgerald, the bond trading firm that lost hundreds of employees in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
Updated 11:03 a.m., Thursday, September 15, 2011
The swift response from thousands of emergency workers renewed her sense of hope, she said.
"When I think of the role you played, I think of love," McEneaney told dozens of police officers, firefighters and paramedics from departments across Connecticut on Wednesday evening at Sherwood Island State Park in Westport. "Instead of despair, I think of hope."
Three days after the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, dozens of first responders and volunteers gathered under the pavilion at the waterfront park, which overlooks Long Island Sound and the state's memorial for victims of the attacks.
The Connecticut U.S. Attorney's Office, the state Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection and the victim outreach group Voices of September 11th hosted the ceremony as a show of gratitude for emergency workers who rushed to the rubble of ground zero a decade ago.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy told the crowd, mainly first responders in full dress uniforms, that the nation's sense of volunteerism and community sets it apart from other nations. He said the first responders and volunteers who traveled to the remains of the World Trade Center embody that spirit.
Malloy, who was mayor of Stamford when the planes hit the World Trade Center, recalled how city firefighters and police officers approached him shortly after Sept. 11 and asked for permission to work at ground zero. He said while the terrorist attacks changed emergency communications, response tactics and equipment over the past several years, they did not alter the American will to rebuild or recover.
"No terrorist, no war, no set of circumstances can deny that," he said.
David Fein, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, opened the ceremony by offering effusive thanks to the state's emergency responders.
"In the hours and days after the attacks, most Americans sought solace within the safety of their homes," Fein said. "You, our first responders and volunteers, did not hesitate to act."
The ceremonies began with State Police Trooper Pat Whalen playing a somber song on the bagpipes, and it ended just as solemnly, with a slow rendition of taps. John Hughes, chief of the civil division of the Connecticut U.S. Attorney's Office, was one of the event's organizers.
"On the 10th anniversary, we wanted to do something special," Hughes said before the ceremony. "We wanted something unique and special for first responders as a way of saying thank you."
Other speakers included Reuben Bradford, the state commissioner of the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection; Andrew Savino, a deputy chief in the New York City Police Department's counterterrorism unit, and Paul McConnell, an assistant U.S. attorney and lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Paul Aaronson, a member of the New Canaan Volunteer Ambulance Corps, spoke about the call his paramedic department got in the days after Sept. 11 to help relieve the exhausted New York City emergency workers at ground zero. He also spoke about the anger and frustration felt by many first responders on Sept. 11 when survivors could not be found amid the destruction.
"We wished we could have done more," he said
http://www.westport-news.com/news/article/Hope-not-despair-9-11-responders-honored-at-2171771.php
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