On the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a memorial ceremony in Hopewell Valley remembered the lives lost and the survivors of the attacks of that day.
The ceremony took place at Woolsey Park in Hopewell Township, hosted by the Hopewell Valley Sept. 11 and Emergency Services Memorial Committee.
During the ceremony, remarks were made by Acting New Jersey Attorney General Andrew Bruck and Michael Yeh, who serves as Princeton’s director of Emergency Services and as task force leader of New Jersey Task Force 1, an urban search and rescue team.
Yeh, in 2001 as a member of New Jersey Task Force 1, responded to Ground Zero with other members of the task force to aid in the recovery efforts at the World Trade Center site. They task force spent 14 days on the ground in two shifts, day and night, after the attacks.
The week of the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, on Sept. 8, volunteers gathered at the Hopewell Valley September 11 and Emergency Services Memorial in Woolsey Park to plant 2,977 American flags in the grass at the memorial for each American who lost their life on Sept. 11, 2001.
The memorial features a 10-ton steel artifact from the World Trade Center site and a van used by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey that was destroyed during the terrorist attack of the North and South Towers in 2001.
Additionally, prior to the memorial ceremony, on Sept. 10, a piece of steel that was recovered from the World Trade Center following the attacks of Sept. 11 was moved to the Media Center at the Hopewell Valley Central High School (HVCHS).