More than 100 attend Elgin 9/11 remembrance
By Janelle Walker for The Courier-News September 11, 2011 8:08PM
Elgin Fire Deparment Chaplain Roger Pollock, listens during an opening choral performance, Sunday, at Elgin's 9/11 ceremony on the Civic Center Plaza. | Dave Shields~for Suntimes Media.
Updated: November 30, 2011 12:31AM
ELGIN — Michelle Dubanowski remembers where she was on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists attacked the United States — on her way to the doctor for her one-week-old son’s checkup.
It was for that now 10-year-old son, the Sleepy Hollow resident said, and her 4-year-old boy, too, that she attended Elgin’s program commemorating the 10th anniversary of the terror attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
“I wanted him to see everyone coming together. It is important for him to be here and see this. And for myself,” Dubanowski said. “My life was changed forever. Everyone who lost someone … your heart goes out to them.”
More than 100 people joined city, county, and state officials, firefighters, police officers, and veterans in front of The Hemmens in Elgin to remember the attacks, the victims, the first responders and everyone who lost their lives or a family member that day.
Elgin has observed the anniversary each year since 2002. It is due to Elgin’s strong military and veteran organizations that the event continues, said Mayor David Kaptain. “It is part of our obligation of being a city,” to recognize these events, Kaptain said. He hoped residents from cities that didn’t have ceremonies of their own would come to the Elgin event, and stay for the commemorative Choral Union concert scheduled later Sunday the Hemmens, too.
Master of Ceremonies was Floyd Brown, who also served in that role for Elgin’s very first Sept. 11 ceremony.
“We feel it is very important to come together as a community and as a nation to commemorate the loss, still,” Brown said.
The nearly 3,000 people who died were remembered in a special flag carried by the honor guard. On that flag, the stripes were represented in the names of each of those killed that day, Brown said.
Children and young adults from Elgin’s Second Baptist Church’s T.E. Bedford Children’s Choir performed “The Star-Spangled Banner” and a special arrangement of “God Bless America.” Tricia Dieringer from the American Legion Post 57, one of the day’s co-sponsors, joined a choral group that also sang “When you Walk Through the Storm” and “Amazing Grace.”
Special speakers for the day included Elgin’s fire and police chiefs.
“Memories of that day still stir powerful emotions,” said John Fahy, Elgin fire chief. In the last 10 years, it has been shown that “America’s determination is stronger than any buildings,” and that determination was shown, he added, when SEAL Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden, believed to be the mastermind behind the attacks.
But, added Jeff Swoboda, Elgin’s chief of police, while we remember that day and thank the first responders, firefighters and good Samaritans who died saving others, it is also a call to action for all citizens.
“We need to identify evil where ever it exists,” Swoboda said. “We need to call it what it is and defeat it.”
It is every resident’s duty to be vigilant and “When they see something, say something,” Swoboda said. “It is not someone else’s responsibility.”
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