By Leah Kahn, Staff Writer
WEST WINDSOR — The best day of Teresa Cunningham’s life was Aug. 29, 2001 — the day that she and her husband, Michael Cunningham, welcomed their newborn son, Liam Cunningham, into the world.
“All I knew is that we had a baby. Then, I had the worst day of my life. It was Sept. 11, the day that my husband died,” Ms. Cunningham said. She spoke at West Windsor Township’s annual 9/11 ceremony last week, held at the Twin Ponds memorial in the Ron Rogers Arboretum on the Princeton-Hightstown Road.
Michael Cunningham was one of seven West Windsor Township residents who died when the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center collapsed in New York City. The memorial includes a stone with seven names inscribed on it. The name of an eighth victim has been added to the list because his widow recently moved to West Windsor.
On Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Cunningham was at work at the office of Euro Brokers on the 84th floor of the South Tower. It was the second building to be struck by a jetliner commandeered by terrorists, and the first of the two towers to fall. The 84th floor was impacted by one of the jet’s wings.
Fourteen years have passed, and “everything is moving along. Everybody has a life to run. I wake up (on Sept. 11), my family wakes up, but it jettisons us back to that day,” Ms. Cunningham said. And while there are many memorials, there is something special about West Windsor’s memorial, she added.
“This beautiful park came out of the worst day of my life,” Ms. Cunningham said.
Turning to the attendees — Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, residents, police, firefighters and emergency medical technicians — Ms. Cunningham urged them to be kind and generous to others.
“Everyone has the capacity to do one nice thing every day. Please, please, please, every day is a day of remembrance. Be kind and generous. Family is the most important thing. You don’t need an official day to do a good deed,” she said.
After Ms. Cunningham completed her remarks, the Rev. Jan Willem Van der Werff of the Dutch Neck Presbyterian Church offered an invocation, which was followed by remarks from West Windsor Township Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh.
Asking the attendees if they remembered where they were when the terrorist attacks occurred, Mayor Hsueh said he was at a meeting at the state Department of Environmental Protection in Trenton. The mayor said he organized an emergency support team as soon as he learned what had occurred.
“(Now), we are here to honor the memories of those lost to us in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001,” the mayor told attendees. “Husbands, fathers, brothers, sons and members of our community, we will remember them in our hearts and through this memorial.”
The Twin Ponds reflecting pools, along with the names of the seven West Windsor Township residents who died inscribed on a stone, were dedicated on April 27, 2002, Mayor Hsueh said. A steel beam from the first building of the Twin Towers was added to the park, and dedicated in 2011.
“This beam signifies at once all that was lost and all that remains in the wake of the terrorist attack,” the mayor said. “We will never forget them nor their families left behind. Hopefully, being here together is a comfort to us all and reminds us that we all share in that which affects others in our community.”
Then, the names of the victims were read off: Anil Bharvaney, Jeffrey Chairnoff, Michael Cunningham, Peter Mardikian, Patrick Murphy, Edward Pykon, John Ryan and David Suarez.
And together, Liam Cunningham and Mayor Hseuh placed a wreath at the 9/11 Memorial.
