County plans 9/11 ceremony

ESSEX COUNTY, NJ — The public is invited to attend “Essex County Remembers,” a solemn ceremony at the Essex County Eagle Rock September 11th Memorial that will mark the 15th anniversary of the tragedies in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. The annual ceremony will be held on Sunday, Sept. 11, beginning at 8 p.m. at the memorial in Eagle Rock reservation on Eagle Rock Avenue in West Orange.

A brief program with family members who lost a loved one in the tragedies, elected officials and clergy members from diverse religious faiths will be held at 8 a.m. Memorial wreaths will be laid at the monument and a new American flag will be raised. A string quartet will perform reverent selections of music at the memorial site after the ceremony until 2 p.m.

The Essex County Eagle Rock September 11th Memorial was dedicated in October 2002, slightly more than a year after the attacks. Its many elements pay tribute to the men and women, police officers, firefighters and other first responders who lost their lives at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, in Pennsylvania and aboard the four airplanes that crashed that day. It was the only Sept. 11, 2001, memorial to list all 3,000 victims’ names until 2011 when the World Trade Center Memorial was dedicated. In 2009, the Essex County 9/11 Memorial was expanded to include a monument honoring the 33 flight-crew members aboard the four airplanes that crashed. In 2011, a 7,400-pound steel and concrete artifact from the World Trade Center foundation was installed at the site and a bronze plaque was dedicated to honor emergency medical technicians who responded to ground zero and those who provided aid to people returning from New York.