Jessica Bishop, a member of the Southwick Fire Department, prepares to ring a bell during a 9/11 Remembrance Ceremony in Southwick yesterday. (Photo by Frederick Gore)
SOUTHWICK – The Southwick Fire Department hosted the town’s annual 9/11 Remembrance Ceremony yesterday.
Marked with the ringing of a bell – known as the Striking of the Four Fives in the firefighting world – the ceremony was solemn and honored lives lost and the heroes who arrived after terrorists struck.
Fire Chief Richard Anderson said the firefighters and all first responders that day bravely ran into buildings as others were running out. They helped save lives.
“Much has happened since that day,” Anderson said. “It changed the way we live. It changed the way we see terrorists.”
Anderson said people today tend not to look back.
“There’s a great tendency to focus on the present and avoid the past,” he said. “We’re here today because we’ve chosen not to forget.”
Members of the Southwick Police Department and the Department of Public Works join the public in a 9/11 Remembrance Ceremony at the Southwick Fire Department yesterday. (Photo by Frederick Gore)
A small crowd of residents, town officials, police and public works employees joined the fire department in remembering the fallen and saluting the first responders. Anderson said firefighters and first responders honor those memories whenever they respond to a call.
“It doesn’t matter who calls or what the circumstances are,” Anderson said.
Fire Chaplain Rev. Albright recalled that Sept. 11, 2001 was not unlike yesterday.
“It was a September morning that began much like this one,” he said. “It is all too easy for us to forget events of the past and be content with what is before us today.”
Albright said that tragic day was a demonstration “of what we are at our best in order to save the victims of what we are at our worst.”
Albright spoke of the 343 firefighters lost trying to save lives that day.
“There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for another,” he said, quoting the Bible.
Firefighter Dennis Day closed the ceremony with the reading of the Fireman’s Prayer.
Westfield firefighter Mark Oleksak presents a framed U.S. flag which was flown over Kabul, Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom to Fire Chief Mary Regan during a ceremony yesterday to honor the firefighters who fell along with the World Trade Center in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the nation. (Photo by Carl E. Hartdegen)
The Fireman’s Prayer was also read, by Dep. Chief Patrick Egloff, at the ceremony staged by Westfield firefighters at the same time.
The 13th annual remembrance ceremony staged at the Westfield fire headquarters featured the ceremonial tolling of a bell, by firefighter Randy Quarles, in the sequence denoting the loss of firefighters and included a prayer offered by fire commission chairman Albert Masciadrelli.
This year, the annual ceremony also included a presentation to Chief Mary Regan by firefighter Mark Oleksak on behalf of his son, an Air Force captain who had been stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Capt. Mark Oleksak Jr. had secured for the fire department a flag which had flown over Kabul and his father presented the framed flag to Regan during the ceremony.
The ceremony in Westfield concluded with the sound of skirling bagpipes played by firefighters Roger Bernier and Pat Scanlon.
