Remembering 9/11 in Cedarhurst village; ceremony on Sunday

Cedarhurst village will host its 21st anniversary 9/11 remembrance ceremony on Sunday, Sept. 11 at 2 p.m. in Andrew J. Parise Cedarhurst Park at the intersection of Cedarhurst and Summit avenues.

As of press time, the program is yet to be finalized, however village officials said that students from Lawrence High School will perform and the ceremony will include religious and elected officials.

The Lawrence-Cedarhurst American Legion Post 339 will take part, according to Commander Syd Mandelbaum, and the Lawrence-Cedarhurst Fire Department Color Guard typically leads the procession at the beginning and at the end of the ceremony.
The Five Towns and nearby communities lost seven people that Tuesday in 2001.

Thomas Jurgens, 26; Neil Levin, 47; Kevin O’Rourke, 44; Bettina Browne Radburn, 49; Joseph Rivelli Jr., 43; Howard Selwyn, 47; and Ira Zaslow, 57, were among the 2,997 lives taken when four hi-jacked jets took down the twin towers of the World Trade Center, rammed into the Pentagon and crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pa.

At last year’s 20th commemoration, then Hempstead Town Councilman Bruce Blakeman remembered Jurgens, his nephew, a New York state court officer and volunteer firefighter who raced to the scene, and died there.

“Tommy was a wonderful boy — he set the bar very high for our family,” said Blakeman, now the Nassau County executive. “When I see our volunteer firefighters, especially those from his home firehouse in Meadowmere Park, I think of Tommy.”

Corinne Strom recounted last year how residents of Lawrence and Cedarhurst have honored O’Rourke, her late father, a FDNY and volunteer firefighter with the LCFD and Hewlett department who died at the World Trade Center.

“Whether it was lining Central Avenue, clapping and waving flags as he arrived at his final Mass at St. Joachim’s to dedicating the street in of the LCFD firehouse and a truck in his name at his first firehouse home, to the scholarships given n his name so children may follow their dreams like he did his,” Strom said as a Long Island Rail Road pulled into the Cedarhurst station across the park — a reminder that many people who commuted to work the morning of Sept. 11 did not come home that night.