9/11 Remembrance Ceremony Honors Manalapan Residents

MANALAPAN, NJ —A candlelight ceremony to remember those who lost their lives in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks will take place Sunday, Sept. 11, at the Manalapan Township 9/11 Memorial.

The ceremony will begin at 7 p.m.

The memorial is located in the township arboretum in front of the municipal building at 120 Freehold Road (Route 522).

According to the township Police Department website, the memorial features two 7-foot-tall blue granite twin towers, reminiscent of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers that fell in the attacks.

A piece of a steel girder that supported Tower Two is placed in the footing of the memorial to support it, as it once did the World Trade Center.

The memorial includes a polished, black granite wall engraved with the names of Manalapan residents who were killed in the terrorist attack: Daniel T. Afflitto, Louis F. Aversano Jr., Steven H. Berger, Dominick E. Calia, James V. DeBlase, Salvatore A. Fiumefreddo, Salvatore Gitto, Christopher S. Gray, Thomas McCann and Joseph B. Plumitallo, the police department site says.

At the northern entrance of the memorial is a pentagon shaped fountain and a granite boulder representing United Airlines Flight 93. Attached to the boulder is a plaque honoring Patrick Joseph Driscoll, a longtime resident of Manalapan who was a passenger on Flight 93, which was hijacked after leaving Newark Liberty International Airport and then crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers fought the hijackers. All on board died. The U.S. Pentagon was also attacked that day by terrorists who hijacked another airliner.

The memorial is the community’s tribute of remembrance to those who lost their lives on that tragic day, the township says.