By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
Hillsborough fireman Pat Kelly woke up Friday morning and had the 9-11 chills all over again, he said.
The software sales executive remembers vividly the agony and horror of hearing of the day that hijacked airliners were deliberately flow into the World Trade Center towers in New York City.
The horrible feeling came back to him Friday, he said, on the morning that he once again organized Volunteer Company No. 2’s ceremony on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
He had vowed to remember the more than 2,800 people killed that day, including the 403 firefighters, paramedics and city and Port Authority police officers.
About 30 firefighters and auxilians from the three Hillsborough fire companies fell out in dress uniform and stood at parade rest as representatives of the township police, rescue and fire services read the names of fallen brothers and sisters in uniform.
The ceremony took place in front of the firehouse on Route 206, next to the monument featuring a piece of steel from the collapsed towers and below a fluttering white 9-11 flag featuring the Stars and Stripes imposed on the outline of the towers. Both the metal and banner were arranged to be donated by a township resident and friend of Mr. Kelly’s.
At the time of the collapses of two World Trade Center buildings — 10:05 a.m. for the South Tower and 10:28 for the north — Fire Commissioner Bruce Vatter rang the service bell in three sets of five tones, the fireman’s code for a death in the line of duty.
Mr. Kelly, a former chief of the company, told the assemblage to “never forget” the people who were lost, their families who remain and the military personnel who repel “attacks on all of us and our way of life,” he said.
“And never forget that we live in the greatest country on the face of the earth,” he said.
He also asked the group to remember police agencies everywhere who today, “for whatever reason, are under attack,” he said.
“Remember that some of them were the first to walk into those buildings,” he said.
