9/11 Memorial
Additional Information
By: Carol Hazard, Times-Dispatch
Published: September 12, 2011
Artist Henry Kidd saw an image in his mind's eye the day after Sept. 11, 2001.It included a firefighter, a police officer, the two towers of the World Trade Center, a bald eagle and the sun's rays streaking across the American flag. Prints of the painting hang in every police and fire station in New York City and most in Northern Virginia.
One now hangs in the Chickahominy Volunteer Fire Department in Hanover County.
Kidd presented the framed print Sunday to the men and women of the fire station before hundreds of people, bagpipers, the color guard and representatives from the five branches of the military who came to mark the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.
"The towers (in the painting) represent the pillars of American strength," he said.
A memorial garden, a monument to the 343 New York City firefighters and the thousands of people who died that day, was dedicated at the ceremony.
It features a section of a steel beam that was part of a communications antenna on top of the World Trade Center.
The beam sits next to two stone pillars on a stone memorial bearing the words, "Sept. 11, 2001. In remembrance of the event of the day and the continued sacrifice made by so many. Neer we forget."
"The garden is a public reminder of the events that changed our country forever," said District Chief Kevin Egan of Company 10.
A huge American flag flew from two ladder trucks. Boy Scouts, born after Sept. 11, 2001, handed out American flags. Many people wore yellow ribbon pins and red, white and blue.
"Sept. 11 is a reminder of an eternal truth that there is good and evil in this world," said Fred Cosby, chief of the Hanover Country Fire-EMS.
Speakers relayed the stories of three people who perished in Sept. 11 or the aftermath, including Army Capt. Shane Timothy Adcock, who volunteered at the Chickahominy Fire Station before joining the Army in 2001. Adcock was killed in Iraq in 2006.
Sen. Ryan T. McDougle, R-Hanover, recalled how the community and the nation came together on Sept. 11. "As Americans, we rose to the occasion to show everybody throughout the world what we are made of. We will not shirk from the people who attacked us and we don't forget."