By lea Kahn, Staff Writer
WEST WINDSOR — It has been 15 years since two airliners crashed into the Twin Towers in New York City, ending the world as Teresa Cunningham knew it.
Her husband, Michael J. Cunningham, died in the 9/11 terror attacks, along with six more township residents whose names are immortalized in the township’s Twin Ponds memorial park at the Ron Rogers Arboretum on the Princeton-Hightstown Road.
“My motto for the year is, ‘No day shall erase you from the memory of time,’ ” Ms. Cunningham said Sunday afternoon at the township’s annual 9/11 memorial service — which happened to be Sept. 11.
In her remarks to the township’s emergency first responders and residents who turned out for the service, Ms. Cunningham explained that it is a quote from Virgil’s “The Aeneid.” It is inscribed on a wall in the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum in New York City.
While her husband — and the father of their 2-week-old baby — has been dead for 15 years, Ms. Cunningham said he lives on “in our hearts and in our town of West Windsor.” The baby, meanwhile, has grown into a 15-year-old boy named Liam Cunningham.
Ms. Cunningham said she was in a fog that day, and really did not know what had happened to her husband. She did not know that he had been unable to escape from the building. But she found out that he had died. He had been out of the office on paternity leave and went to work one day earlier than planned.
Ms. Cunningham said she is grateful for the support that her neighbors gave her. West Windsor represents what the world is like today — all kinds of people from all walks of life. The children are most important in their lives, and they need healthy role models and a place where they can talk.
West Windsor Township has held a memorial service every year, and Sunday afternoon’s service marked the 15th anniversary of the darkest day in American history, Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh said. It is held to honor the memory of those who died — fathers, sons, husbands, brothers, mothers, daughters, wives and sisters, he said.
“We will all remember them in our hearts,” Mayor Hsueh said.
The mayor reminded the attendees that West Windsor Township created its memorial park in April 2001, seven months after the terror attack. In 2011, a steel beam from one of the Twin Towers was dedicated at the park, he said.
Mayor Hsueh recalled that he was in his office at the state Department of Environmental Protection when the airliners plowed into the Twin Towers. He left work and returned to West Windsor. Three township employees — one who belongs to an elite statewide response team, plus two emergency medical technicians — traveled to New York City to help out, he said.
Then, Township Council President Linda Geevers quietly read the names of the seven township residents who were killed on Sept. 11, 2001 — Jeffrey Chairnoff, Michael Cunningham, Peter Mardikian, Patrick Murphy, Edward Pykon, John Ryan and David Suarez.
