More than 2,000 Long Islanders gathered at the 9/11 memorial at Point Lookout on Wednesday morning to mark 23 years since the September 11th terror attacks.
The annual ceremony on the Atlantic Ocean beachfront was somber. Local officials honored those who died, faith leaders offered prayers and visitors cast white carnations into the sea.
This year, speakers stressed the importance of remembering those who died from toxic-exposure-related illnesses in the months and years after 9/11.
"This isn't a one-day event," Hempstead Town Supervisor Don Clavin said. "Every single year, these lives continue to be stolen from us. And I think the grieving and being together on this morning and this day to reflect is so significant.”
Clavin meant people like late FDNY firefighter, Ronald Kirchner, who spent months cleaning up the rubble of the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan. The Oceanside husband and father developed lung disease and dementia. He died two years ago at age 60.
His widow, Dawn Kirchner, detailed how his cognition and his physical health deteriorated. Eventually, he didn't recognize Dawn or their two children, Luke and Ava.
"I cannot fathom the pain of losing a loved one in an instant: no insight, no preparation, no goodbye," Dawn Kirchner said. "Stemming from that same day yet in direct opposition, Luke and Ava and I lost Ronnie ever so slowly — day by day, month to month, year to year. We, too, for very different reasons, had no goodbye."
Kirchner urged the attendees to be vigilant about their health, citing a recent Stony Brook University study that linked dementia to toxic exposure at Ground Zero.
"It's my hope in sharing Ronnie's stories that family or friends of responders with any mild cognitive impairment issues reach out to the World Trade Center Health Program at Stony Brook to be part of these ongoing research studies," she said.
The service at the Point Lookout 9/11 Memorial is one of the largest on the island. In 2001, onlookers gathered to watch the smoke rise over the New York City skyline to the west.
Paul Gomez, who lived in Long Beach at the time of the attacks, said he tries to come to the memorial every year.
"It was such a big day," Gomez said. "It was the day that everything changed."
