20 Years Later: Essex County To Hold Annual 9/11 Ceremony

ESSEX COUNTY, NJ — Essex County will hold a solemn ceremony at Eagle Rock Reservation in West Orange to mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

The ceremony will take place at 8 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 11 at the reservation, which is located at Eagle Rock Avenue and Prospect Avenue in West Orange. It will be open to the public and also streamed live online at the county website.

A brief program with family members who lost a loved one in the tragedies, elected officials and clergy members from diverse religious faiths will be held at 8 a.m. Memorial wreaths will be laid at the monument and a new U.S. flag will be raised. A string quartet will perform reverent selections of music at the memorial site after the ceremony until 2 p.m.

The ceremony will take place at the Essex County Eagle Rock September 11th Memorial, which was dedicated in October 2002, just over a year after the attacks.

According to county officials:

“Its many elements pay tribute to the men and women, police officers, firefighters and other first responders who lost their lives at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, in Pennsylvania and aboard the four airplanes that crashed that day. It was the only 9/11 memorial to list all 3,000 victims’ names until 2011, when the World Trade Center Memorial was dedicated.”

“After the attacks, people spontaneously came to Eagle Rock Reservation to view the tragedy unfold at the Twin Towers and leave cards, letters, photos and flowers in an impromptu memorial in honor of their loved ones,” Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo Jr. said.

“I knew immediately that this was the natural location for a memorial because of the public attraction to this site and the unparalleled view of the World Trade Center from the lookout area,” DiVincenzo said. “Our September 11th Memorial is a special place for people to come for solace and comfort because of its unique location and its powerful message of peace and hope.”

The county has also made other tributes to the attacks, officials said:

“In 2009, the Essex County 9/11 Memorial was expanded to include a monument honoring the 33 flight crew members aboard the four airplanes that crashed. In 2011, a 7,400-pound steel and concrete artifact from the World Trade Center foundation was installed at the site and a bronze plaque was dedicated to honor emergency medical technicians who responded to Ground Zero and those who provided aid to people returning from New York across the Hudson River. In 2016, the Essex County Search and Rescue Dog Statue was dedicated at the site to commemorate the role that dogs had in the search and recovery efforts at the World Trade Center and Pentagon after the 9/11 attacks.”

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