Burn Ban in Effect. All outdoor burning is prohibited in Franklin County.
See more photos from this event here.
Ladies and gentlemen,
There are certain dates in American history that are more than dates.
December 7, 1941.
November 22, 1963.
And September 11, 2001.
For those of us who lived through them, we don't have to look them up on a calendar.
We remember exactly where we were.
We remember what we were doing.
And we remember the moment when we realized that something terrible had happened to our country.
Today, we observe Patriot Day—a day of remembrance for the Americans who lost their lives on September 11, 2001, and for the countless people whose lives were changed forever by that terrible morning.
September 11, 2001, began as an ordinary Tuesday.
The skies over much of the East Coast were clear and blue.
People went to work.
Children went to school.
Parents kissed their families goodbye.
Airline passengers boarded four commercial airplanes, expecting nothing more than an ordinary flight across the country.
But nineteen terrorists associated with al-Qaeda had other plans.
At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
Seventeen minutes later, at 9:03, United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower.
At 9:37, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.
And then came the moments that Americans watched in disbelief.
At 9:59, the South Tower collapsed.
At 10:03, the passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93 fought back against their hijackers. Their struggle ended when the aircraft crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
At 10:28, the North Tower collapsed.
In less than two hours, America had been changed forever.
The attacks killed 2,977 people—men, women and children from 90 nations. They included 2,753 people in New York, 184 at the Pentagon and 40 passengers and crew members aboard Flight 93.
We often hear the number 2,977.
But behind every number was a human being.
Someone's husband.
Someone's wife.
Someone's father.
Someone's mother.
Someone's son or daughter.
Someone's best friend.
Someone who had plans for that evening.
Someone who expected to come home.
The National September 11 Memorial contains thousands of names, but those names represent individual lives and individual stories. The victims ranged in age from children to people in their eighties and came from more than 90 nations and a remarkable diversity of backgrounds.
That is something we must never lose sight of.
They were not statistics.
They were people.
And then there were the first responders.
Firefighters.
Police officers.
Emergency medical personnel.
Port Authority officers.
People whose job was to save others.
When thousands of people were running down the stairs trying to escape the World Trade Center, hundreds of emergency responders were going up those same stairs.
They knew something was terribly wrong.
But they went anyway.
441 first responders died that day, the greatest loss of emergency responders in a single day in American history. Among them were 343 New York City firefighters, 37 Port Authority Police officers and 23 New York City Police officers.
Think about that for a moment.
They didn't know how the story would end.
They simply knew that someone needed help.
And they answered the call.
That is what courage looks like.
And then there were the passengers of Flight 93.
They were not soldiers.
They weren't police officers.
They weren't trained commandos.
They were ordinary Americans.
But through telephone calls to their families, they learned that their airplane was part of a larger attack.
And they made a decision.
They would not simply sit and wait for the terrorists to decide their fate.
They would fight.
We don't know precisely what each passenger said or thought during those final minutes.
But we know what they did.
They fought back.
The aircraft crashed into a field in Pennsylvania rather than reaching its intended target.
Those passengers and crew members gave their lives trying to save others.
Ordinary people became extraordinary heroes.
The terrorists expected America to be frightened.
They expected us to be divided.
Instead, something remarkable happened.
For a time, Americans came together in a way that many of us had never experienced.
Flags appeared everywhere.
On houses.
On automobiles.
Outside businesses.
At schools.
People stood in line to donate blood.
Churches opened their doors.
Neighbors helped neighbors.
Strangers embraced strangers.
And across America, political differences suddenly seemed very small compared with the fact that we were all Americans.
For a short time, we weren't Democrats or Republicans.
We weren't liberals or conservatives.
We weren't rich or poor.
We were simply Americans.
And we were hurting together.
This is an important part of the story that sometimes gets forgotten.
The physical attacks ended that morning.
But the consequences did not.
Thousands of firefighters, police officers, volunteers, construction workers and recovery personnel spent weeks and months at Ground Zero.
They breathed the dust.
They worked among the ruins.
They searched for survivors.
They recovered remains.
They tried to bring some measure of closure to grieving families.
And some of those people paid a terrible price years later.
The 9/11 Memorial now has a memorial glade specifically honoring those who became sick or died from exposure to toxins and hazards during the aftermath of the attacks.
The legacy of September 11 therefore isn't confined to the people who died that morning.
It includes the people who died years later.
It includes the people who became sick.
It includes the survivors who still carry emotional scars.
And it includes the American military personnel who went to war in the years that followed.
Thousands of American service members served in Afghanistan and elsewhere as the United States pursued those responsible for the attacks.
Many never came home.
Others returned carrying wounds that could not always be seen.
September 11 also changed the way Americans traveled, worked and thought about national security.
Airport security changed.
Intelligence and law-enforcement agencies changed.
The Department of Homeland Security was created.
The United States entered a long war against terrorism.
And an entire generation of Americans grew up knowing a world that was different from the one many of us knew before September 11.
Even today, the effects continue.
The 9/11 Memorial notes that the attacks irrevocably changed the lives of victims' families, survivors, first responders, recovery workers, volunteers and millions of people around the world—and that the consequences continue decades later.
So what should Patriot Day mean to us?
It should mean more than remembering the destruction.
It should mean remembering the people.
Remember the 2,977 innocent Americans and citizens of other nations who never made it home.
Remember the firefighters who climbed the stairs.
Remember the police officers who entered the buildings.
Remember the emergency medical workers.
Remember the airline crews.
Remember the passengers of Flight 93.
Remember the families who waited for loved ones who never returned.
Remember the survivors.
Remember the recovery workers.
Remember the veterans who served in the wars that followed.
And remember the first responders who continued paying the price long after the television cameras left Ground Zero.
Today, a new generation is growing up that wasn't alive on September 11, 2001.
For them, the Twin Towers are photographs.
The sound of those airplanes is history.
Flight 93 is a chapter in a textbook.
But for those of us who were alive that morning, September 11 is not simply history.
We remember the television screens.
We remember the smoke.
We remember the confusion.
We remember the silence that fell across America.
And we remember the flags.
Most of all, we remember the people.
Twenty-five years later, the responsibility belongs to us.
We must tell their stories.
Because when the last survivor is gone...
When the last firefighter who was there can no longer tell his story...
When the last family member who remembers that morning is gone...
Someone must still be able to explain what happened.
Someone must still remember the names.
Someone must still understand the sacrifice.
And someone must still be willing to say:
We will never forget.
September 11 showed us the worst that humanity can do.
But it also showed us the best.
It showed us courage.
It showed us sacrifice.
It showed us compassion.
It showed us ordinary citizens becoming heroes.
And it showed us that even when America was attacked, wounded and frightened...
America stood.
The buildings fell.
But America stood.
And nearly a quarter of a century later, we are still standing.
So today, let us bow our heads in remembrance.
Let us remember the fallen.
Let us honor the heroes.
Let us pray for the families who still carry the loss.
Let us remember those whose health was destroyed in the aftermath.
And let us honor every American who answered the call to serve this country.
Above all—
Let us remember.
Let us honor.
Let us teach.
And let us make sure that the words spoken after that terrible day remain true for generations to come:
Never Forget.
May God bless the families of those we lost.
May God bless our first responders.
May God bless our veterans and those who continue to defend our freedom.
And may God continue to bless the United States of America.
Thank you.
