By 8:46 Saturday morning, 20 years to the minute after the first plane struck the World Trade Center’s North Tower, Lebanon Fire Chief Chris Christopoulos had already concluded his brief remarks.
It’s important, he said, to remember the nearly 3,000 people killed in the terrorist attacks that reshaped the nation. That includes the 412 first responders who were killed in the line of duty that day.
“Why do we need to remember?” he asked the gathered firefighters, EMTs and police officers as well as around 50 civilians in attendance. “Why is it so important?”
Those questions might sound rhetorical, but they are not, and Lebanon’s first responders, along with a few from Hartford and Hanover, marked the anniversary by spending the rest of the day reading the names of the rescuers who gave their lives, one name every 90 seconds, from morning until shortly after 7 p.m.
A generation of first responders has retired since Sept. 11, 2001, and a new generation young enough not to have experienced those events has come up.
“We must pass on the importance of those who paid the ultimate price,” Christopoulos said. He also noted how 9/11 had prepared first responders to deal with what’s happened since — flooding, shootings and the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed 780 first responders, far more than the 2001 attacks.
After a moment of silence and a salute from the uniformed officials, the bell tolled at 8:46 at First Congregational Church and a smaller bell rang at the fire station. The church bell rang again at 9:03, to mark the second plane striking the South Tower. The assembled crowd gradually dispersed.
“We make it a point to educate our children on these events,” Luke Martin, 41, of Lebanon, said at the end of the ceremony. His 15-year-old daughter Olivia Martin wore over her shoulders an American flag bearing the names of people who perished in the attacks. She’d picked it up at the 9/11 memorial in New York.
“It’s obviously something that the weight and significance has settled in on her,” Luke Martin said.
During the ceremony, visitors had clustered between the two ladder trucks that supported a giant flag. But as the names were read throughout the morning, the paved apron in front of the fire station was largely empty. Occasionally a passerby would stop and take a photograph, but the vigil was mostly a lonely one.
Two first responders stood in half-hour shifts on either side of a table draped in black plastic and a tall photograph of the American flag being raised at ground zero. A pair of boots stood empty in front of a low table next to a lectern. One of the first responders stood still while the other stepped forward to read the names and after each name ring a bell.
Battalion 49, Chief John Moran, 42
Battalion 50, Chief Lawrence T. Stack, 58
Battalion 57, Chief Dennis Cross, 60
The tableau was so formal and solemn that it was hard for viewers to know whether to approach it or to view it from a distance. Passing motorists sometimes honked their horns and car windows reflected bars of light into the bays of the fire station.
The first responder reading names followed a large clock with a second hand that was perched inside the fire station doors. The steady reading of names and the chime of the bell became meditative, and time stretched out.
Politicians sent out statements about Sept. 11, but at the fire station the day was set aside, separate from the jockeying for advantage of everyday life, even from the ordinary leisure of a sunny Saturday morning.
Firefighters and police, both on duty and off, milled around in the back of the fire station, some in dress uniforms, others in polo shirts.
“It’s a huge deal for us,” said Lt. Jon Copeland, 37, a Lebanon firefighter, “especially those of us who were kind of ‘of age’ when it happened.”
The efforts of first responders that day are legend. “We call it the greatest rescue mission in history,” said Copeland, who helped organize the ceremony. Many thousands more people could have been killed when the towers collapsed if firefighters and others hadn’t helped them evacuate, he said.
The ceremony also served as a reminder to the participants of what their calling entails. People spoke both of lives lost and of lives given.
“I think the importance of the day is really to remember the sacrifice of our first responders,” said Lebanon Fire Capt. Will Rancourt, 40, another organizer of the event.
The Sept. 11 attacks transformed his life, said Rancourt, who had joined the Army at 18 “for something to do” and by 2003 was in Ramadi, Iraq, with a seven-member firefighting unit. They responded to improvised explosive device strikes.
“We were there to kind of pick up the pieces.”
In commemorating Sept. 11, “the differences can be set aside,” he said. We can “remember what it really means to be a good and decent human being.”
Among the younger firefighters participating was Kayleigh Eastman, 23. She stood to one side of the makeshift altar during the noon hour. She listened to the names while a rising breeze whipped the flag overhead.
“When you’re standing there, it just gives you time to reflect on all their experiences that day and kind of put yourself in their shoes,” she said.
When her shift ended, around 12:30, she took a photo of the next shift, John Hamilton stood where she had, while his son, Todd Hamilton read the names. John, 68, retired from the Lebanon Fire Department in 1994, and Todd, 41, is a current firefighter.
Both men were injured in the line of duty, a reminder to their colleagues that the events of Sept. 11 aren’t distant. John was thrown from a ladder in 1989 while fighting a fire when an outrigger on the ladder truck broke. Todd was injured in the December 2019 explosion at the Element Hotel on Route 120.
“I was lucky that I got to walk away from that,” Todd Hamilton said. He broke his left arm, and suffered a concussion, three cracked ribs and superficial wounds on his head, but was back to work in three months. Reading the names brought him back to his own experience, he said.
Both of the Hamiltons called it “an honor” to participate.
“You just never know in this job,” John Hamilton said.
“It’s definitely an honor to be able to do that,” Todd Hamilton said of reading the names, “whether anybody’s listening or not.”
“Ten years from now, they’re not going to remember it like we do,” his father said.
Then a voice crackled over the radio. There was a motor vehicle accident next to Primitive Pickings on Route 4. Todd Hamilton moved the lectern and table to one side, so Engine 9 would have room to pass. He put his turnout gear on over his dress shirt and tie and he and Rancourt drove off.
Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.
