ALEXANDRIA — Police Chief Tarrick McGuire stood at the podium Friday morning and read 12 names.
"I think it is important that we say people's names," McGuire said at the city's ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, before reading the Alexandrians his research found were killed that day at the Pentagon and aboard American Airlines Flight 77.
About 125 people turned out under heavy gray skies outside Alexandria Police Department headquarters. Rain had fallen through the early morning and let up an hour or two before the 10 a.m. start. It was 73 degrees. The crowd included members of the Alexandria Fire Department, the Police Department and the Sheriff's Office, along with city staff, and residents.
Del. Kirk McPike, former Mayors Allison Silberberg and William D. Euille, and City Council members Canek Aguirre, Jacinta Greene and Sandy Marks were among those attending.
Tracy Walker, communications manager for the Alexandria Police Department, served as master of ceremonies. She told the crowd that the city's Department of Emergency and Customer Communications broadcasts three memorial announcements over police and fire dispatch radios each Sept. 11, marking moments in the attacks. Early in the program, she noted the one for 10:03 a.m., when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and asked the crowd to remember those lost.
The Joint Public Safety Honor Guard presented the colors, Alex Parchment played the national anthem on the horn, and the Rev. Taft Quincey Heatley, senior pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church, gave the invocation. Heatley said that on Sept. 11, 2001, race, religion and nationality did not matter. "Every life is valuable," he said. He recalled those who went to work "on that beautiful Tuesday only to discover it would be a day that would change their lives forever," and closed with Psalm 90:12.
Alexandria Poet Laureate Cristi Donoso read her poem "Everyday Elegies," about how people carry on honoring those they lost.
'Two blue lights'
Mayor Alyia Gaskins said she had been in New York two days earlier with City Manager James F. Parajon and city staff for Alexandria's annual bond rating presentation. Leaving dinner, she said, she saw the Tribute in Light for the first time, "the two blue lights shining up into the sky" where the towers stood.
"In a place like New York where there are lights everywhere, sounds happening, everyone's moving, all I felt was this complete stillness," Gaskins said.
She tied the moment to "This Little Light of Mine," a song she learned in Sunday school. Light cannot erase "all of the darkness, all of the hatred, all of the evil," she said, but it "has the power to focus our attention."
Nearly a third of Americans were born after the attacks, Gaskins said, and do not know the stories of that day.
"Today on this 25th anniversary, we have a duty to continue to carry their lights forward," she said. "We have to keep telling their stories and honoring their memories."
'Shoulder to shoulder'
Deputy Fire Chief Garrett Dyer walked through the morning minute by minute, from the first plane striking the North Tower at 8:46 a.m. to the crash in Pennsylvania, and recalled that Alexandria's responders were part of the immediate response at the Pentagon.
"It was also a day when first responders from the city of Alexandria stood shoulder to shoulder with regional partners in the immediate response to the Pentagon," Dyer said.
The city's own account of that morning, posted on its website, recalls Alexandria police and firefighters mobilizing to help, residents watching smoke rise from the Pentagon, and others losing friends, relatives and co-workers.
Dyer cited 2,753 people killed at the World Trade Center, 184 at the Pentagon and 40 passengers and crew aboard Flight 93, along with 343 firefighters, 37 Port Authority police officers, 23 New York police officers and eight EMS providers. The toll did not end that day, he said, pointing to the thousands of responders and civilians who later fell ill or died from toxic exposure at all three sites.
Among them is Stanley Meador, now Virginia's secretary of public safety and homeland security, who spent eight days working in the Pentagon debris as a state Alcohol Beverage Control special agent and was later diagnosed with colon cancer that progressed to Stage 4, according to Gov. Abigail Spanberger's office. At ground zero in New York, organizers this year added a moment of silence for people who have since died of illnesses tied to the dust, The Associated Press reported.
A new generation, Dyer said, knows the day mostly through history books, photographs and stories handed down.
"This is why ceremonies like this matter," he said. "It is our responsibility to tell those stories, to honor those who were lost and recognize those who answered the call."
He closed with the line Gaskins would return to at the end of the ceremony.
"We must continue to honor our promise to never forget," Dyer said. "Never forget the lives lost. Never forget the families left behind. Never forget the first responders who answered the call, and never forget the responsibility we carry forward."
The names
The 12 names McGuire read belonged to Alexandria residents killed in the attack on the Pentagon: Eddie A. Dillard, Bryan C. Jack, Steven D. Jacoby, Navy Capt. Robert E. Dolan Jr., Diane M. Hale-McKinzy, Terence M. Lynch, Army Maj. Clifford L. Patterson Jr., Navy Cmdr. Robert A. Schlegel, retired Army Lt. Col. Gary F. Smith, Norma Lang Steuerle, Sandra C. Taylor and Meta L. Waller. Dillard, Jack, Jacoby and Steuerle were passengers on Flight 77. The other eight were at work inside the building.
McGuire asked the crowd for grace if he had missed anyone. Published lists of Alexandrians killed that day differ, and some include people who lived outside city limits with Alexandria addresses. Other local lists also name five people who died in the Pentagon: Army Spc. Craig S. Amundson, Navy Cmdr. William H. Donovan, Army Maj. Wallace Cole Hogan Jr., Army Maj. Stephen V. Long and Army Lt. Col. Dean E. Mattson.
Every name on those lists is among the 184 people killed at the Pentagon. A few miles north on Friday morning, all 184 names were read aloud at the Pentagon's own ceremony, a bell tolling between each, as President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump listened, The Associated Press reported.
McGuire said he was a student at Oklahoma State University in 2001, watching from his apartment, and admitted that when he thinks of Sept. 11, his mind goes first to New York, not Arlington or Pennsylvania.
He then turned to the crowd, saying some of the first responders who drove to the Pentagon when Arlington County called for mutual aid were standing there Friday.
"How dare we not thank them?" he said. "I want to personally say thank you."
He closed with a line from Isaiah: "Send me."
'The very best of humanity'
Sheriff Sean Casey asked the crowd to remember not only the attacks but what followed them.
"Faced with the worst of humanity, we saw the very best of humanity rise to meet it," Casey said.
He asked each person to find a way to carry that spirit forward. "However you choose to serve, do something that strengthens the bonds between us and reminds others that they are not alone," he said.
The bells
The Joint Public Safety Honor Guard then performed the Return to Quarters ceremony, a tradition honoring the fallen as they come home to their station for the last time. Walker asked the crowd to use the ringing of the bells as a final moment to remember those lost and the service shown that day and in the years since.
Gaskins closed by thanking city staff for organizing the ceremony, and borrowed Dyer's words.
"May each of us live up to our promise to never forget," she said.
Ryan Belmore is an Alexandria resident and the founder and publisher of The Alexandria Brief. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas to ryan@alexandriabrief.com.
