Gardner Magazine has a special report on the 9-11 Terrorist Attacks featuring a lengthy podcast, CLICK HERE.
City of Gardner to hold 9-11 Memorial Ceremony
The City of Gardner will hold a memorial ceremony on Friday, 9/11/26 at Monument Park at 5 p.m.
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts holds a deeply tragic connection to the September 11, 2001 attacks, serving as the physical point of origin for the destruction in New York City and suffering an immense loss of local lives.
Aircraft Connection: Boston Logan International Airport was used by the al-Qaeda hijackers with 10 hijackers successfully breaching security to board to morning transcontinental flights bound for Los Angeles. American Airlines Flight 11 was a Boeing 767 that departed Logan and was crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46am. United Airlines Flight 175 was a Boeing 767 that also departed Logan and crashed into the South Tower at 9:03am. Because both aircraft wer fueled for a cross-country trip to California, the immense volume of jet fuel caused the rapid, catastrophic structural failure and ultimate collapse of both towers.
Fatalities Connection: 206 people with direct ties to Massachusetts were killed in the attacks including victims in the aircraft and on the ground working or attending meetings in the World Trade Center Towers. The youngest victim of the entire 9-11 tragedy was Christine Lee Hanson, a 2 1/2 year old girl from Groton, Massachusetts who was a passenger on Flight 175 with her parents on their way to Disneyland
Local Heroism: Massachusetts also remembers the tragedy through the heroic actions of Madeline “Amy” Sweeney, an American Airlines flight attendant from Acton, Massachusetts, who was working aboard Flight 11. Before the plane struck the North Tower, Sweeney managed to discreetly contact the airline’s ground crew via an airphone, calmly relaying critical specific seat numbers and details about the hijackers that provided the FBI with its first vital leads of the day. Today, the Commonwealth honors her legacy annually with the Madeline Amy Sweeney Award for Civilian Bravery.