By Max Bowen-max.bowen@northstarreporter.com
The town will hold two remembrance ceremonies to mark the 25th year of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The two ceremonies will be held on Friday, Sept. 11. The first, organized by the the town’s Department of Veterans Services with North Attleborough Public Schools, will begin at 8:30 a.m. at the North Attleborough High School football field. The ceremony is open to the public, and attendees are asked to arrive between 8 a.m. and 8:15 a.m.
Veterans Agent Scott Smith said that for the students, the events of 9/11 occurred around 10 years before they were born.
‘I believe that there will be a constant reminder that this is the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks,” he said of the ceremonies.
The student-led ceremony will include two moments of silence. North Attleborough resident Glenn Carrano will be the guest speaker.
Carrano served as a protective security adviser with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency assigned to Massachusetts’ Southern and Northern Homeland Security regions from 2021 until his retirement in 2024. Prior to this, he served as a civilian field intelligence officer for the U.S. Coast Guard in the New York/New Jersey area from 2004 to 2020 and was involved in major events throughout the region.
A second remembrance ceremony, organized by the North Attleborough Fire Department, will be held at 11 a.m. at the September 11 Memorial on the Baptist Common, 75 Park St.
Smith said that at the time of the attacks, he had just completed a Marine Corps Leadership school at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and was moving his family from Massachusetts to Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort in South Carolina. He said it was ironic in that the last course he had was “Installation (Military Base) Terrorism Vulnerability.”
“I, like the rest of my peers and Marines in my class, felt that we really didn’t need to worry about terrorism coming from ‘across the pond,’ but were we wrong,” he said. “On September 13, 2001, my family and I drove south on Interstate 95, and we could still see smoke rising from where the Twin Towers stood. Seeing the smoke and not seeing the Twin Towers of lower Manhattan twisted my stomach.”
When asked about the importance of holding these ceremonies after 25 years, he reflected on the comments he made at the 2024 ceremony, how the nation came to realize its vulnerability and that the ocean would no longer afford protection.
“We honor those gathered with us here today who continue to protect and serve our community so that we may lead our daily lives in safety because of their dedication and sacrifice,” he said at the 2024 ceremony. “And as a grateful community we look to the men and women who wear and have worn the cloth of our nation who have sworn to defend these United States by those enemies who would seek to do us harm.”