|
|
|
|
Santa Monica Remembers 9/11 By Mark McGuigan September 11 -- Standing under a steel gray sky beneath the vacant stares of the topiary dinosaurs, 100 mourners gathered on the Third Street Promenade Wednesday evening to commemorate the victims of the September 11 attacks. Throughout the 40-minute memorial organized by the Santa Monica Bay Interfaith Council, City officials and religious leaders honored with words and music the 2,792 people -- two of them Santa Monicans -- who died when four hijacked airliners were used as missiles in the biggest attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor. During an emotional speech, Mayor Richard Bloom recalled the names of two local residents -- Carolyn Beug and Dora Menchaca -- and a Santa Monica worker, Ronald Gamboa, who died in the tragedy. Bloom called on mourners to seek unity in sadness and to work toward a better world. “These are sad memories for our community, but one of the things I remember about September 11 is our community coming together in love,” Bloom told a solemn crowd peppered with lighted candles. “Only if you and I and everyone around us takes a little bit of time everyday, a little bit of time in our lives to think about peace, and to talk about peace and do something about peace, only then will we ever have peace,” he said. In paying tribute to his fallen comrades in the New York Fire Department, Santa Monica Fire Chief Ettore Berardinelli thanked those gathered for remembering the 343 firefighters who stepped into the breach, gave everything in trying to save the lives of others and never returned. “We’re all drawn to this career because we want to help, so when an event like this happens elsewhere it’s like losing one of our own,” Berardinelli said, his powerful words spoken softly. “So I want to thank you tonight for remembering all of the people that died but especially for remembering the 343 fire fighters -- for remembering their courage, for remembering their noble lives, for remembering how they served their families, their country and their community. Thank you so much for remembering them.” During the ceremony a four-minute silence was observed, a gong sounding at the end of each minute to symbolize the lives of those on board the four planes and to remember the void felt each day by the families and friends left behind. Recalling the day after September 11, the day a horrified world slowly began to come to terms with what had happened, Mayor Pro Tem Kevin McKeown spoke of the global solidarity and the waves of compassion that enveloped the nation. “Remember that day?” McKeown asked of September 12. “In all of our grief we turned on the news and saw the rest of the world stood with us. We bathed in the compassion of the entire planet that day. “I fear we squandered that in the two years past," he said, referring to the backlash after the U.S. attack on Iraq. "But I don’t want to forget it because that was a very beautiful thing. It told us a lot about humanity.” Standing a single block from where another tragedy took place in the more recent past, McKeown also recalled the events of the evening of July 16 when an elderly man ploughed through the Farmers Market, killing 10 and hospitalizing 50 others. “I was in New York City that day just a couple of miles from the World Trade Center,” McKeown said, “and when others in New York found out that I was from Santa Monica, they turned to me with open hearts and they bathed me in their compassion. “That is what this can do for us. There’s little we can do to help another with grief or with pain but if we stand together it makes it easier because none of us has to be alone in that grief or that pain,” he continued. “That is what community is.” But some felt disappointed in what they saw two years later. Standing in the midst of a busy shopping district, Kieran Donahue -- a former resident of New Jersey now living in Santa Monica -- noted with a tinge of pain that life in Santa Monica was very quick to continue as normal. “It just seems that things are easier because it didn’t happen here,” said Donahue, her baseball cap emblazoned with the NYFD logo. “It’s sort of ‘life goes on’ and I guess that’s a good thing, but because I was touched, (my) family and friends were touched, I would have thought there would have been a little more reverence for the day.” Others thought of it in different terms. Holding the event on such a busy street forced people to put aside the glamour and glitz of nearby shops and focus on the true meaning of life, according to resident Mark Dicenzo. “In a sense I felt like the Promenade was maybe not the best place to have this memorial because there’s so many other things going on,” Dicenzo told The Lookout. “But as I reflected on it a little more, I realized it’s probably the best place because we came here to remember," he said. "But at the same time, life goes on and it’s very difficult to stand here and focus. We have to really be focused on what happened." Related Stories: Santa Monica Mourns, Sept. 11, 2001 SM Lends Aid, Continues to Function in Wake of Terrorist Attacks, Sept. 11, 2001 Distant Disaster Hits Home, Sept. 13, 2001 Santa Monica Loses Two of Its Own, Sept. 14 Vigils Mark National Day of Prayer and Remembrance in City, Sept. 17, 2001 |
|
Copyright 1999-2008 surfsantamonica.com. All Rights Reserved. |
 |