Friday, October 2, 2026
Religious leaders from nearby communities gathered in Hewlett at the Chapel of Peace at Trinity-St. John’s Church for an Interfaith Service of Remembrance & Peace to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The service was stewarded by Father Christopher Ballard and included other religious leaders including Rabbi Michel Schlesinger of Hewlett-East Rockaway Jewish Centre’s Congregation Etz Chaim; the Rev. Prabhu Sigamani of Bethany Congregational Church in East Rockaway; Sister Jamillah Abdul-Kareem of the U.S. Islamic Cultural Center in Elmont; Karen Renna if the Bahá’í Faith; and Nanda Sundri of the AsaMai Hindu Temple in Hicksville.
Ballard, who joined the Five Towns community in 2014, was leaving a gym he was a member of on Varick Street in Greenwich Village when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower.
“We were stupefied by the first plane,” Ballard said. “It just didn’t register, and it didn’t really cross anyone’s mind that this was terrorism until the second plane hit.”
Just up the street, Ballard said, he stood outside the now-closed Saint Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center. He experienced the tremors from the towers coming down and watched survivors coming up from downtown covered in soot.
That afternoon, Ballard said, he and his husband, Seale Ballenger, watched first responders traveling down the West Side Highway. They visited the pile and World Trade Center 7, which would collapse later, at 5:20 p.m. In the ensuing months, the area below 14th Street was closed. Ballard said he was working in a seminary and helped comfort survivors and mourners who went to morgues to identify the bodies of people who died.
Ballard described lower Manhattan as haunting and terrifying as he referred to armed forces and transport trucks moving through the haze while jets circled overhead.
“To be in the city and hear nothing was really weird,” Ballard said. “For the people who witnessed it, there’s a look in their eye.”
Sigamani said he worked with an organization that supported Sept. 11 survivors and mourners with ties to Windows on the World — a collection of dining, meeting and entertainment venues on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower — which was above the impact zone.
“When I ministered and worked with them, I felt the pain in their soul,” Sigamani said. “May this day of remembrance become a renewal of our peace.”
Other religious leaders recited several prayers, including “Mourners Kadish” a Jewish prayer recited for those who died and “Oseh Shalom” which is Hebrew for “maker of peace.”
In front of them sat a vase filled with four white-petaled flowers — representing the tragedies at the North and South Towers, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, Pa., where Flight 93 crashed. Ballard used them to describe the connection between people of all different religions and faiths.
“We are connected by one stem to underscore the fact that tragedy is connected and that we are all connected to that one stem,” he said.
