By Niko Balkaran
Twenty-five years after Alex Ciccone left behind two young children when he was killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, those children are now raising families of their own.
Ciccone lived in New Rochelle and worked for Marsh & McLennan Companies at the World Trade Center. Joan Porr, a local Newburgh resident and his relative, attended the City of Newburgh’s Sept. 11 memorial ceremony Friday, carrying his photograph and remembering the night her family learned he had not come home.
The family had spent that night wondering whether he might still return, Porr said, because some people had escaped the area on foot. His children, who were 4 and 5 at the time, have since grown up.
“Alex will never see his grandchildren,” Porr said.
Porr joined residents, first responders and elected officials at the City of Newburgh’s annual observance Friday morning at Park Place and Grand Avenue. Later, the Town of Newburgh held its first official Sept. 11 ceremony at Chadwick Lake Park, where World Trade Center steel donated by the FDNY now stands as part of a permanent memorial.
At both ceremonies, the names of residents and first responders lost in the attacks were read aloud. In the City, the reading honored victims from across Orange County, while the Town’s ceremony focused on those with connections to Newburgh.
“Each name represents a life, a family, and a story that must never be forgotten,” Town of Newburgh Deputy Supervisor Scott Manley said before beginning the Town’s reading.
For Manley, several of those stories were personal.
Manley attended both ceremonies Friday and helped with the readings at each. Among those remembered was Paul Ruback, an FDNY firefighter who Manley said lived “three doors down” from him and was a “family man.”
Ruback was not Manley’s only connection to those remembered Friday. Manley said he grew up in Meadow Hill, where he knew of others whose names were read and recalled that John Giordano, also an FDNY firefighter, had a wife who owned the daycare center his son attended.
“Everybody is close to everybody and somebody knows a name, knows a neighbor,” Manley said. “It affected a lot of people and it still affects people.”
The toll from Sept. 11 has continued decades after the attacks, as first responders have died from illnesses linked to their exposure at Ground Zero.
Manley pointed to a Town of Newburgh police officer who responded to the World Trade Center after the attacks and died about a year and a half ago from what he described as a 9/11 related cancer.
“So many years later, nobody could have ever guessed it would keep coming back and back,” said Manley. “Who knows when the end is?”
City of Newburgh Deputy Police Chief Phil Pulaski brought his own firsthand memories of Sept. 11 to the City ceremony, where he shared that, at the time, he was an NYPD deputy chief leading 800 detectives in the Manhattan Detective Division. After the attacks, he was part of the department’s senior leadership team that planned and implemented its response and security operations.
Pulaski recalled first responders running toward the World Trade Center as people in Lower Manhattan fled. Within 24 hours, he said, civilians and first responders from New York City and across the country began providing food, beverages, clothes and other supplies to personnel engaged in rescue, security and counterterrorism operations.
Pulaski said the encouragement responders received was as important as the supplies.
“They gave us hope at times when we stood on the precipice of hopelessness, and they gave us strength at times when our strength waned,” Pulaski said.
As those with firsthand memories reflected on the attacks, Assemblymember Jonathan Jacobson also emphasized preserving those memories for the generations that did not experience Sept. 11.
“We have now 25 years of people being born that had no recollection of this day,” Jacobson said. “It’s important that we have these ceremonies throughout the country that we celebrate the heroism of our first responders and strive for the unity that we once had.”
For the Town of Newburgh, the 25th anniversary marked the beginning of a new tradition, with the town holding its official Sept. 11 ceremony and establishing a permanent memorial at Chadwick Lake Park featuring steel from the World Trade Center and two survivor trees.
Cronomer Valley Fire District Commissioner Rob Dorrmann, also a former FDNY firefighter, helped secure the World Trade Center steel and kept it for some time before the town installed it at Chadwick Lake Park, according to Town Supervisor Gil Piaquadio.
Ironworkers erected the steel and welded it into place. The town initially considered forming it into an arch but after the ironworkers told officials it would be difficult to do so, they decided to leave the steel as it was, Piaquadio said.
“It’s hard to imagine how hot it must have got to really melt those beams like that,” said Piaquadio.
With the World Trade Center steel and the 25th anniversary, this was the year for the town to begin holding an official Sept. 11 ceremony, according to Piaquadio.
“We had never had one before, so we figured this was a time to start and I hope it continues going forward,” said Piaquadio.