President Barack Obama commemorated the 9/11 attacks with tributes at the Pentagon, a moment of silence and volunteering at a Washington charity. Nedra Pickler reports for the Associated Press.
Among those gathered at the Pentagon Wednesday where family members of those killed on September 11, 2001. Many wore red, white, and blue striped ribbons and some cried as the president spoke.
“Our hearts still ache for the futures snatched away, the lives that might have been,” Obama said.
The morning was sunny as it was a dozen years ago at the time of the attack, but the temperature was hotter and climbing toward a high in the 90s. A few in the crowd were treated for effects of the heat by military medics, and the president wiped his face with a handkerchief as he spoke.
The president also paid tribute to the four Americans killed one year ago in an attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, asking the country to pray for those who “serve in dangerous posts” even after more than a decade of war.
In a commemorative event at the Justice Department, Attorney General Eric Holder called on an audience of several hundred employees to remember “the nearly 3,000 innocent people whose lives were lost” and to pay tribute to the 72 law enforcement officers who were killed trying to save others.
Obama opened the day with a somber remembrance at the White House. The searing memory of death and destruction brought him to the South Lawn for a moment of silence and reflection a dozen years after terrorists emblazoned this date indelibly in people’s minds, hearts and calendars as “9/11.”
Along with first lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and wife Jill Biden, the president walked out of the White House to the lawn at 8:46 a.m., EDT – the moment on Sept. 11, 2001, when the first plane hit the World Trade Center tower in New York.
Obama and staff assembled there with him bowed their heads to observe a moment of silence, and then listened as a bugler played “Taps.”
Later Obama visited Food & Friends, a Washington charity that delivers meals to people with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. He donned an apron and a baseball cap with the charity’s logo and packed apples, bananas and pre-wrapped sandwiches as part of a volunteer assembly line.
Obama said September 11th is an occasion not just to remember the victims of the terrorist attack, but for “neighbors helping neighbors” to commemorate the September 11th National Day of Service and Remembrance.
He encouraged Americans to observe the day by “look(ing) for a way to volunteer in your own community.”
Please join the Men’s Divorce Law Firm today by taking a moment of silence to reflect on the 9/11 attacks, to memorialize those whose lives were lost, and to seek ways to serve and help your community.
