MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Several West Virginia communities marked the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
There were two ceremonies in Morgantown, one at the National Guard Armory and the other on the WVU campus.
Keynote speaker at the Morgantown National Guard event, state Attorney General J.B. McCuskey was a sophomore at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. when the attacks occurred. McCuskey said family members of his fraternity brothers were Manhattan residents, and there were several 19-year-olds trying to find family members and looking for more details about what happened.
McCuskey said September 11 was the most tragic day in U.S. history, but it’s possible the unity displayed on September 12 could make that one of the best days in history.
“We should really try to emulate how Americans treated each other and how we saw our country,” McCuskey said. “I think moving forward, if we can act more like we did in those times, we can really solve a lot of the problems that have befallen our country since that day.”
At the WVU ceremony near the Wise Library, WVU President Michael Benson noted many of the students have no memory or connection to the attack. He said this is a moment to educate those young people about how Americans unified in that time in an effort to ease the current volatile state of political discourse.
“The shrillness of our discourse is a little, not only a little; it’s very concerning,” Benson said. “We have to rally around our leaders and say at a time of crisis we’re all Americans.”
Retired WVU Professor Tom Witt, who was staying in the hotel between the Twin Towers the day of the attack, told the crowd gathered on the downtown campus Friday spoke of unity.
Witt also said this a particularly tough remembrance of the events of that day because the first time he is going through it without his wife who died earlier this year. She was with him in NYC when the attack occurred. They became separated for several hours but reunited in another part of the city later that day.
U.S. Attorney for Northern West Virginia Matt Harvey attended the Morgantown Armory event. He was a first-year law student at the time of terrorist attacks. He said he had many classmates from New York City.
He said it was a shocking series of events that were trying to process as a group while clinging to news reports to get more details.
“I was seeing at a distance, but they were watching home being attacked directly,” Harvey said. “It was my homeland, but it was where they grew up and they had a lot of concerns.”
Executive Director of the West Virginia First Foundation Jonathan Board was a 19-year-old college student trying to process what happened that morning when he learned one of his friends could be deployed. He also said it was a shocking moment that generated a level of unity that we so desperately need today.
“I received a call from a very dear friend of mine who was actually getting ready to deploy, and his plans were changed in that moment along with thousands of others,” Board said.
State Senator Mike Oliverio, R-Monongalia, an Army veteran, said the display of respect at the Armory event was inspiring.