February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
At the southern tip of Manhattan island, the families and friends of the 2,749 people who died in the attack on the twin towers of the
World Trade Center will gather.
Then their siblings, stepping up in pairs, will read out the names of their brothers and sisters.
As Osama Bin Laden’s psychopaths directed those planes into the towers that morning four years ago, the rest of the world stood still. People in every corner of the globe watched on television, helpless, as those trapped in the burning buildings tried to escape.
New York’s firemen and police officers hurtled at top speed towards the flames. And when the buildings collapsed, they paid a heavy price for their extraordinary courage and unshakable sense of duty.
Many of the names of those who perished, and will be read out loud on Sunday, were Irish. As a community, Irish-America was all too well
represented amongst those firemen and police officers, as well as in
the workforce in the World Trade Center.
New York has a special significance for the Irish. It is the city that welcomed us in hard times, that saved hundreds of thousands of us from starvation, that allowed so many to live the dream.
Perhaps that is why we regard every single one of those 2,749 New
Yorkers as one of our own.
So on Sunday morning, we shall put aside the arguments over the
memorial, push aside the fact that Bin Laden remains alive in his cave, all the other controversies, and simply remember our heroic dead.