PALM HARBOR — The last survivor pulled alive from the rubble of the World Trade Center and an 11-year-old born more than a decade after the attacks stood before the same crowd at Curlew Hills Memory Gardens on Sept. 11 and delivered the same message: Never forget.
The cemetery’s 25th anniversary remembrance, held under clear skies and searing heat, drew a large crowd to the section of the grounds dedicated to the attacks. Curlew Hills has hosted the ceremony for 15 years, and organizers describe it as one of the largest of its kind in Florida, drawing visitors from across the country.
“It’s been 25 years since 9/11,” said Mark Wilson, the Fox 13 news anchor who served as emcee. “But the pain does remain the same ... and we want to make sure that these stories are never forgotten.”
The program included prayers and pledges, songs and musical tributes, and remarks from elected officials, among them U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna and U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, who is running for governor.
“Never forget” became the phrase Americans adopted in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A quarter-century on, it carries a different weight. An entire generation has been born since that morning, and the horrors of that day have moved out of personal memory — the “where were you when the planes hit?” accounts — and into history classes, documentaries and online searches.
Keynote speaker Genelle Guzman-McMillan was working on the 64th floor of the North Tower when it came down. She spent 27 hours buried beneath the debris, her legs crushed and her head immobilized, before rescuers reached her. She was the last person found alive in the wreckage.
Her account, told in the book “Angel in the Rubble: The Miraculous Rescue of 9/11’s Last Survivor” and recently adapted into a Lifetime movie, held the crowd.
“Twenty-five years ago, I remember the pain. The scars. The darkness,” Guzman-McMillan said. “My world was shattered, and so was America. For I will never forget what happened to me under that rubble. I was conscious through it all. I stayed there, I laid there, with the uncertainty that I would ever get out alive.”
She said she closed her eyes and waited to never wake up.
“But that didn’t happen. I kept waking up,” she said. “I thought it was a dream and I would wake up back on the 64th floor in my office. But that didn’t happen. I just thought about making it home to my family.”
Guzman-McMillan credits her rescue to a man she calls Paul, a guardian angel who guided crews to her. After many surgeries, she said, she came to see her survival as an obligation.
“It’s an honor and privilege to stand here (speaking) to the new generation to give peace,” she said. “And to have comfort and grace knowing that we are fighting people. We are Americans. And we are never going to give up.”
Stories like hers inspired the entries in Curlew Hills’ annual student essay contest on the lasting impact of 9/11. The winner, 11-year-old Sydnie Hayden, brought the crowd to its feet.
“On Sept. 11, 2001, America changed forever,” the Westlake Christian School sixth grader read from her essay, “25 Years Later: Why September 11 Still Matters.” “For many who remember that morning, 9/11 is not something on a calendar. It’s a memory. It’s a moment when ordinary lives were interrupted and the world suddenly felt different.”
“For my generation, 9/11 is something we can learn about in classrooms, read about in history books and learn about from people who were there,” she continued. “We didn’t experience it ourselves. That is what makes remembering it so important.”
Hayden pointed to the weeks after the attacks, when “people helped strangers, supported grieving families, donated supplies, and stood beside their communities. Flags appeared everywhere. That is an important lesson today.”
She said the job of remembering will soon belong to her classmates.
“Eventually fewer people who experienced that day firsthand will be able to tell their stories,” she said. “We are the generation that will eventually become the parents, teachers, leaders and citizens that will tell the next generation what happened. If we forget, we lose more than a historical event. We lose the opportunity to pass down the courage, compassion and unity that came from one of the darkest days in American history.”
She closed: “Someday, when someone asks us why 9/11 still matters, it will be our time to answer. We remember every life mattered then, and every life matters now. And the choices that we make tomorrow will determine what we carry into the future.”
Curlew Hills president and CEO Keenan Knopke handed Hayden a $500 check as she left the stage to sustained applause.