Seventeen minutes of silence marked the heart of this morning’s 9/11 memorial service at Syracuse's Forman Park. The city’s police chief, Joe Cecil, was at the event and recalled how ominous and tragic it felt working on September 11, 2001.
"They put me over at the federal building, in case there was another attack that came from some other direction in the air," said Cecil. "So I was over there monitoring the federal building, and anytime we heard something that sounded like a plane, we all looked up…"
The memorial brought together a fairly small crowd, of about 50 first responders, two dozen Syracuse residents, along with city officials, but Cecil says commemorating the attacks is still important 22 years later.
"We continue to come out and remember, not only the first responders that died, the firefighters and law enforcement, but also a lot of the civilians," said Cecil, from 102 different countries.
Some 3,000 people from around the world are said to have been killed in the attacks.
Today’s 17 minutes of silence commemorated the time between the first and second planes crashed into the two World Trade Center towers in New York City on 9/11.