Connecticut holds socially distant Sept. 11 ceremony

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont praised health care and other essential workers Thursday by comparing the jobs they are doing during the COVID-19 pandemic to the heroism of first responders who put themselves in harms way after the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Lamont spoke at Sherwood Island State Park during a socially distanced ceremony marking the 19th anniversary of 9/11.

“We had a different type of the first responder during COVID,” Lamont said.

“We called them essential workers, but they were heroes just the same. And they didn’t always wear a uniform. Sometimes they did, maybe it was a nurse’s uniform or doctor or daycare operator or food service provider. Folks who just stood up every day and not knowing what was out there with that invisible enemy, did what they had to do.”

Family members of those who were killed on 9/11 attended the ceremony and helped read aloud the names of the 161 victims who had ties to Connecticut. Connecticut’s ceremony is held each year on Sept. 10 to allow those families to also attend ceremonies in New York on Sept. 11.

Lamont has ordered all U.S. and state flags to be flown at half-staff from sunrise to sunset on Friday to honor the attack victims. He also announced that the Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge in New Haven will be illuminated with red, white and blue lights on both Thursday and Friday nights in recognition of the anniversary.

Connecticut’s 9/11 memorial sits on a peninsula in Long Island Sound where, on a clear day, the Manhattan skyline can be viewed across the water. It features a stone engraved with the names of the people with ties to Connecticut who were killed. The state park was chosen as the site for the memorial because it is the location in the immediate aftermath of the attacks where many people gathered to view the smoke rising from the World Trade Center across the sound. The site was also used by the Connecticut National Guard after the attack as a staging area for Connecticut’s relief efforts to New York City.