SEBASTIAN — A few hundred Sebastian residents gathered at Veterans Park along the city’s waterfront early Saturday morning as a show of force they’d never forget the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
“Our great nation paused,” Father David Newhart of St. Elizabeth Episcopal Church said, addressing the crowd, on that day, when the heartbeat of America stopped for a moment and began again.
Ed Motyka, of American Legion Post 189, reminded the audience that on this day nine years ago, the nation’s people were preparing for another routine day. For thousands, though, they came “face to face with the forces of evil.” And for hundreds of thousands more, their lives changed.
“The resiliency of this country has been shown over the last nine years,” Motyka said. “Remember what you felt like – that’s what this ceremony is all about, remembering and never allowing it to happen again.”
After a minute of silence and a flyover by the US Coast Guard Auxiliary Flotilla 56, Sheriff Deryl Loar spoke before the crowd, recounting the crashes of four planes – two into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and a fourth in a Pennsylvania field that is believed to have been headed for the White House.
There was an “eerie feeling throughout the country,” Sheriff Loar said in the days, weeks and months following the attacks. The people of America learned new terms – Al Qaeda, Taliban, jihad, and the names of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.
“Where do we go from here – nine years later?” the sheriff asked. He challenges all to renew their patriotism – the patriotism they felt in the time immediately following the attacks.
Then, it was a time when people would report suspicious persons and activities, post flags in their yards and on their cars, and greet each other with waves and smiles and hold the door for each other.
Sebastian Police Chief Michelle Morris said there is no other place where such large groups of people can come together to console each other over the “cowardice acts against us.”
“We stand strong for our freedom and beliefs,” the chief said.
“We all remember,” Mayor Richard Gillmor said of where we were and what we were doing when we learned of the attacks. “That’s burned into our consciousness.”
In the recent weeks leading up to the anniversary of Sept. 11, Mayor Gillmor said, the American attention has been on a Mosque proposed near Ground Zero and a church’s plan to burn copies of the Quran.
“We are still a free nation under God,” Mayor Gillmor said, adding that in other nations, such religious and personal freedom would not be allowed. “That’s what makes us different.”
“We’re not red states and blue states,” he said. “We are the United States of America.”