West Milford to hold 9/11 remembrance ceremony on Sunday

A ceremony remembering the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack will begin at the 9/11 monument on the front lawn of the West Milford Municipal Building on Sunday, September 11 at 8:45 a.m. This is the time that the first of a four-plane group attacking national buildings crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan 21 years ago.

West Milford Mayor Michele Dale will begin the program with those present reciting the pledge of allegiance, followed by an opening statement, prayer and singing of the national anthem.

Representatives of the West Milford Police Department will again traditionally place a memorial wreath at the 9/11 monument in honor of local victims of the terrorist attack. Pipe Major Joseph Smolinski will play bagpipes.

Mayor Dale will then read the names of the victims killed in the attack who had local connections. They are the Rev. Mychal Judge, former pastor of St. Joseph Church in the Echo Lake community; Jeremy Glick of Greenwood Lake, who was among passengers on a plane headed to hit the pentagon who took control and crashed it into a Pennsylvania field; and Michael Zinzi and Jean Caviasco DePalma of Newfoundland, and TJ Hargrave, who grew up in the Echo Lake community, who were working in World Trade Center buildings when the planes struck.

Cyndy Taylor will sing “America the Beautiful” with its memorable words written by poet Katherine Lee Bates in 1893 to music composed by Samuel A. Ward. A closing prayer will follow, and TAPS played by Tammy McLaughlin will close the program.

Some people who will be at the observance were not born yet or were very young at the time of the attack. The sky was blue with billowing white clouds on that seemingly beautiful day. People were going through their usual morning routines – eating breakfast and getting ready for work or school. Those with their TVs or radios on were among the first to hear the terrifying news.

September 11

On that day, 19 men directed by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden highjacked four commercial airline planes while they were in flight from the East Coast to California. The attackers were organized into three groups of five members and one group of four. Each group had one designated flight-trained hijacker who took control of one of the planes. The goal was to crash the aircrafts into prominent American buildings causing mass casualties and major structural damage.

The first of the two planes that crashed into the north and south towers of the World Trade Center in New York City took the lives of DePalma and Zinzi who were at work in offices in the building, as well as Hargrave. With their deaths and that of Glick of Greenwood Lake, seven children lost a parent.

Zinzi was 37. He was a certified public accountant at Marsh and McLennan. He and his wife Dyan were bikers who had taken a ride from Parsippany to Newark in the Elvis Run charity motorcycle event just two days before the attack. Their infant son was just nine weeks old. Zinzi’s memorial stone is in the St. Clare section at St. Joseph Cemetery. His wife heard about the first plane flying into the Tower One and tried to phone her husband’s office but was unable to reach him. She left a warning on his answering machine to get out of the building but did not hear from him.

DePalma was 42, a certified public accountant and a vice president at Marsh and McLennan. At St. Joseph parish she was the church and school finance chair. DePalma was at her desk on the 100th floor of the tower at 6:40 a.m. when she emailed her brother. A single parent, she was the mother of two children who were 17 and 15 when she was killed.

Hargrave, 38, was a vice president of one of the largest bond-trading houses on Wall Street – Cantor Fitzgerald. He had three children. Hargrave and his six siblings, children of James V. and Kathryn Hargrave, grew up in their home on Germantown Road. As a child he appeared in commercials, TV movies and the soap opera “The Guiding Light.” He loved to read and write and was a champion high school wrestler and soccer coach.

A third plane crashed into the pentagon in Arlington Va. Three of the planes had taken off from Boston Logan Airport in Massachusetts.

A fourth hijacked plane — United Airlines Flight 93 — left Newark International Airport and was headed to hit a federal government building in Washington, DC. when Glick and other passengers revolted and attempted to take control of the plane. The plane crashed into a field outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Glick and the others had managed to save the Washington federal government building where the plane was headed but gave their lives in their heroic action.

Glick has a hiking trail in Hewitt named in his honor. When he was killed, his daughter was a baby. Former Mayor Robert Moshman supported the West Milford Council in adopting a resolution asking that the Presidential Medal be awarded to Glick for his heroic efforts.

The fifth victim, the Rev. Mychal Judge, was a Franciscan priest and pastor of St. Joseph Church in West Milford from 1979 to 1985; he was serving as a chaplain to the New York City Fire Department when he was killed. Father Mychale became the first official casualty of the attack, a recognition given because his body was the first to be recovered and taken to a medical examiner.

After hearing that the World Trade Center was hit, the priest rushed to the site and prayed over bodies lying in the street, then entered the lobby of the North Tower of the World Trade Center where an emergency command post was organized. There he continued offering aid and prayers for the rescuers and dead. When the neighboring South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m. debris flew through the North Tower Lobby striking Father Judge in the head and killing him as he prayed. His body was found and carried out of the tower by four firefighters and a policeman and taken to the medical examiner.