Nearly 400 gather at Curlew Hills Memory Gardens to honor those lost on 9/11

PALM HARBOR, Fla. - Close to 400 people gathered Monday at Curlew Hills Memory Gardens to mark 22 years since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

The Gardens’ 9/11 Memorial includes a 150-pound piece of steel from the World Trade Center Towers, monuments with the names of firefighters who died that day and a memorial bell that was on the last wooden fire truck in New York City donated by a retired New York City firefighter.

"This is amazing," retired Deputy Assistant Chief John Norman of the FDNY said. "This is so powerful to see this people. Many of them had connections to the Trade Center. Some sat through two hours of brutal heat, to me it’s brutal heat, sat here and remembered and that was important that was so powerful to me."

Norman was the ceremony’s keynote speaker. 

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He served as the Search and Rescue Manager for the World Trade Center site after 9/11 and lost several friends.

"I don’t want to forget any of it, the horror, the joy. I didn’t find any survivors, but it was at a point that just finding our lost was important, a sense of joy. We got them," he said. "This was an attack on our country unlike any other in history. We need to understand, as has been said, there is evil in this world," Norman said.

The ceremony included flyovers from the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office and the U.S. Coast Guard, a presentation by the Sheriff’s Office’s and Palm Harbor Fire Rescue’s honor guards and the playing of taps.

"We have a whole generation of people that were not even born. Where are they today? They're turning 21, in their late teens. They're becoming firefighters. They're becoming police officers. They're in the military serving to defend our freedom. And again, thank you for all that, but without those who were there to tell them about it firsthand, let them know what happened and why it happened, it will soon be forgotten, and that would be a tragedy," Norman said.

Norman and others stressed the importance of not allowing the next generation to forget about that fateful day.

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"If we don't remind those youngsters to carry on the memory of those people that perished and changed their lives forever, shame on us," Florida Senator Ed Hooper said.

"For those of us who remember, it's our responsibility to ensure we never forget," state Representative Adam Anderson said.

Anderson and Hooper helped create the 9/11 Heroes Day legislation that Governor Ron DeSantis recently signed into law.

"Words can't express how humbled I am to stand on this stage today, just one year later [since the idea for the legislation], and be able to tell a crowd like this on the very first 9/11 Heroes Day that today is the first day in our state's history that every student in middle school, every student in high school is learning about that same American patriotism. And they're learning about the heroes that arose from the ashes of the worst terrorist attack in American history," Anderson said.

The state lawmakers said retired New York City firefighter Lee Ielpi partially inspired the legislation. 

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Ielpi's son's firehouse sent 19 men to the World Trade Center, including his son, Jonathan. None of them came home.

"I've been speaking about 9/11 since 9/11," Ielpi said. "I've spoken in, I don't know how many states. I don't know how many countries. And when I speak, I speak about education. I speak about enlightenment. Without that, the horrible thought that history will repeat itself, it will repeat itself. So, you know, I'm going to say this is a mission that, this is making me cry now, that my son chose me to do it, and I like to think that way," he said.

Ielpi said his son called him when he was on the way to the World Trade Center. 

Lee Ielpi was part of the Band of Dads, a group of senior firefighters who searched for their sons lost in the attacks. He also co-founded the Tribute WTC Visitor Center. 

It's a museum next to the World Trade Center site.

On Sept. 9, 10, and 11, from 8-10 p.m., Curlew Hills will display two beams of light from the memorial site. The beams of light will shine more than 1,000 feet in the sky like the two beams of light that shined in New York City following 9/11.