Tribute To CT 9/11 Victims On Display At Enfield Town Hall

ENFIELD, CT — In the disaster which shook America 20 years ago on Sept. 11, 2001, a total of 65 Connecticut residents were among the nearly 3,000 people who perished in New York City, Washington, D.C. and rural Pennsylvania. Though none of the victims were from Enfield, a local military spouse devoted to assisting active military members and their families has again ensured that her fellow Nutmeg State residents who senselessly lost their lives that day are not forgotten.

Lori Gates, creator of the Enfield Hooah! website and organizer of the annual Cookies For Camouflage drive which provides care packages for military members deployed overseas, creates a memorial to the 9/11 victims from Connecticut each year in front of town hall. Each of the victims is remembered with a photo, their story and a flag.

The memorial was put up earlier this week, and will remain until Sunday afternoon. Assisting Gates was a couple with a direct connection to the events of that awful day.

Pam Townsend was an Army sergeant-major who was on duty in the nation's capital.

"She wasn't inside the Pentagon when it was hit, but she had to deal with a lot of it," Gates said.

Her husband, Army 1st Sergeant Lucien Lefevre, now commander of the American Legion John Maciolek Post 154, was in Connecticut getting equipment ready for rapid deployment to New York.

"They could not reach each other for hours," Gates said. "They both went about their business as was needed and put their own personal fear in the background."

For the first time, solar tea lights were added to the display beginning Friday evening, "so there is a form of memory candles in time for the actual anniversary of 9/11," Gates said.

Most of the Connecticut victims were from the southwestern part of the state, but Amy King and Michael Tarrou, an engaged couple from nearby Stafford, were flight attendants on United Airlines Flight 175, which crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center at 9:03 a.m. that fateful morning.

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