9/11/2018

Today, I would like to ask you to remember the families that grieve not only on this day every year, but also on birthdays, on anniversaries, on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day and many other holidays, during vacations, family reunions, and every time that they look in the direction of an empty chair, a chair where a loved one once sat and laughed and enjoyed life and food and family before they went to work on that sunny Tuesday morning and never returned.

Today, I would ask you to remember the three hundred forty-three firefighters and seventy-one law enforcement officers who ran into two crippled, burning office towers in hopes of saving lives, only to lose their own.

Today, I would ask you to remember the fourteen hundred rescue workers who have died since their exposure to the toxins and corrosive dust of Ground Zero.

I would ask you to remember the citizens of the more than sixty countries who were killed in the 9/11 attacks, from Argentina to Venezuela, from Italy to India, from Switzerland to South Korea, from Mexico to the Dominican Republic, from Canada to the United Kingdom, from Jamaica to Japan. I would ask you to realize that this was more than an attack on a single country; it was an attack on civilization and humanity.

Finally, I would ask, as I do every year, that you would remember my colleague Richard Rosenthal. If you are so inclined, please keep Richard’s family in your prayers this week.

Thank you.