Editorial | More than a remembrance
The city of Cape Coral will again hold a 9/11 remembrance on the lawn at City Hall.
This year’s ceremony to be held next Thursday beginning at 8:30 a.m. will again focus appropriately on the victims — all those who died in New York at the World Trade Center, in Washington, D.C., at the Pentagon, and in a field in Pennsylvania in the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001.
Nearly 3,000 Americans died, including first responders — firefighters, paramedics and police officers — who put duty first as they climbed the stairs of the plane-struck Twin Towers to save others.
Each — all 2,977 — will be remembered with an American flag bearing their name.
As a community, as a country, we vow to never forget, not only the fallen of 9/11 but all those who have followed — the more than 800,000 who enlisted and voluntarily served in Operation Enduring Freedom, including the near 2,400 who did not come home from that fight in Afghanistan; the more than 20,000 who returned wounded in the effort to prevent another such attack on American soil; survivors who continue to die each day due to suicide, addiction, cancers and other ailments directly linked to 9/11 and its aftermath.
We thank those who rose up in the wake of the worst attack our country has seen on American soil, everyone from those heroes who entered the Twin Towers to save lives at great risk to their own to all who volunteered to serve when our country needed them.
We thank the city for its continued efforts to remember those who died.
Events such as these are more than a remembrance: They are a promise and a vow to the fallen, to the families and to those who worked to make our world safer: We will not forget.
We will not forget.
Breeze editorial