As we previously reported, the City of Rye held is annual September 11th Commemoration Ceremony on Thursday at 5:30 pm outside Rye FD headquarters on Locust Avenue.
Here is the text of Mayor Josh Cohn’s remarks. You can also watch the video (below).
City of Rye, NY Mayor Josh Cohn – remarks on 9-11-2025
Thank you, Reverend Raynor.
Today, we mark the 24th anniversary of the loss of thousands of our friends, neighbors and fellow Americans. As well as those from other countries who had the ill fortune to be among us as we bore the brunt of a brutal and suicidal act of religious fanaticism. We remember those who died that day and those who have died since from the effects of that day or as responders in the days that followed – including beloved members of our community. We feel the plight of those who are ill even now. Our hearts go out to all lost, all who continue to suffer and all the families carrying the weight of 9/11. We remain ever so grateful to the responders who hurried to help.
It has become common as we remember 9/11 to recognize the unity and spirit among us that followed the attack. We ask ourselves to conjure that again, even as we seem to feel more divided each year. (As reflected just yesterday and in so many other recent assaults, great and small.)
The day, 9/11, itself no longer has its initial evocative effect. I understand why. For many, like me, the attack itself remains vividly real. But I lived in lower Manhattan and watched the twin towers being built. I worked in them for 8 years and was in the lobby of tower 1 in 1993 when the bomb went off in the garage below. I watched on a tv in a midtown office conference room years later as the towers fell. I knew the people and the place. For me, as for others here, the meaning of the day will not vanish in the fatigue of the difficult years since.
I discussed this a few days ago with a woman in her mid-thirties who still remembers where she was (7th grade, way upstate!) and who feels the weight of the day. But there are so many, an inevitably increasing number, for whom 9/11/2001 is just an historical date. How can we teach them why it is important to remember 9/11? What should we want to teach them? I am not wise enough to answer that question, but I will hazard some guesses:
-We should want to teach them about the wonderful people who were lost – their lives, their stories. Let’s make them real and the event real.
-We should want to teach them that we lost those people in a global clash of cultures and power that continues. We cannot ignore that clash and we can’t cease to be ourselves to avoid it. And we should teach them that:
-We must be strong and unified if we wish to survive this clash.
-We can be that strong only if we can account to ourselves– in good faith – that we, that our cause, is just and that in protecting and promoting our values we benefit not only ourselves, but our shared world.
-We won’t ever be perfect, not even close, but we can try, always, to stand for good. From that we cannot retreat.
I apologize if this is too simply naïve. I see tyrannies of various stripes challenging us, even as we challenge ourselves to maintain our own ideals and norms. It has become complicated and so I fall back on simplicity. I believe that we must find in 9/11, besides the remembrance of great loss, an occasion to remember not only why we were attacked, but also that we were then and are now called the leaders of the free world– and why that has been.
Again, let’s remember those lost and those who are ill. In our hearts let’s hug them and their families.
Thank you.
