Today the SUNY Oswego community joins the rest of the nation in remembering the 18-year anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.
As part of honoring the nearly 3,000 lives lost that day, including 12 SUNY Oswego alumni (listed below), our campus will ring the carillon bells 18 times at 8:46 a.m., 9:03 a.m., 9:37 a.m. and 10:03 a.m., marking the exact times of the plane crashes that occurred at the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Flags on campus will also be lowered to half-staff today, in recognition of Patriot Day.
You can look around campus to see our students have already been active in offering memorials and thoughts on those lost and impacted on that fateful day. This past Monday, the Young Americans for Freedom student organization sponsored a remembrance where students, veterans, first responders, faculty, staff, administrators and community members planted 2,996 flags to remember every person killed in the terrorist attacks. We must also remember the many heroic first responders, including a number of alumni, whom we’ve lost since 9/11 to diseases sustained in carrying out their rescue and recovery attempts.
I encourage you to visit the 9/11 Memorial Garden (located on campus along the Glimmerglass Lagoon pathway) to see the memorial dedicated to remember those alumni lost 18 years ago:
James Potorti ’72
Wendy Morris Faulkner ’74
Leo Roberts ’79
Michael O'Brien ’81
Michael Collins ’84
Richard Caproni ’89
Michael Hannan ’89
Michael Cawley ’91
Melissa Renee Vincent ’94
Scott Bart ’95
James Woods ’97
Michelle Bratton ’00
For students, faculty and staff on campus, please take a moment to stop what you are doing when the bells ring this morning, and join the greater SUNY Oswego community in a moment of silence. For those members of our wider campus family, I hope you will join us during these moments of silence to commemorate the attacks on our nation 18 years ago and remember the families, friends and Oswego alumni we lost that day and in the years that have passed.
Deborah F. Stanley
President
University Police and local law enforcement and first responders participated in this year's effort to plant 2,996 flags in front of Sheldon Hall to remember the lives lost in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.