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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Thursday, September 12, 2002

From sunrise to sunset, Hawai'i remembers

 •  Nation united in grief
 •  If words fall short, Hawai'i lei say a lot
 •  Photo gallery
 •  Full text: Bush addresses nation
 •  Sept. 11 anniversary events
 •  Readers reflect
 •  Yesterday's Front Page
 •  Special report: 9/11... One Year, One Nation
Share your thoughts as the country observes the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attack

By Dan Nakaso and Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writers

One year later, on the 11th day of September, 2002, the people of Hawai'i shared the pain and defiance of a nation still grieving.

A large crowd gathered at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific yesterday to commemorate the terrorist attacks.

Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser

From sunrise to sunset across Hawai'i yesterday, the distance disappeared between the islands and the sites of last year's terrorist attacks.

In churches and schools, at military installations bustling with security and through patriotic speeches, the people of Hawai'i prayed for dead friends and family. They prayed for heroes. And for countrymen they will never know.

Flags flew at half-staff at firehouses, schools and businesses. At about 10 a.m. — the time when the first of the World Trade Center's two towers collapsed — county and state officials and thousands of people observed a moment of silence, their thoughts focused on the more than 3,000 victims who died when hijacked airliners plowed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a grassy field in Pennsylvania.

As the day ended with sunset ceremonies at the National Cemetery of the Pacific and at Hale'iwa Beach Park, Dot Mattingly stood on the North Shore watching a postcard-perfect sunset.

The tragedy of Sept. 11, Mattingly said, is universal.

"Even though it didn't happen here, we're remembering," said Mattingly, a 41-year-old civilian worker in Hickam Air Force Base's housing office, who came to watch flowers scattered from canoes into the ocean for each of the victims of Sept. 11.

"We're paying respect," Mattingly said, "because we all have this in common now."

Her friend and co-worker, Luz Brand, 30, said: "It didn't matter where it happened. The pain was the same. And I cried the same."

Some 2,000 people who came last night to Punchbowl, home of the national cemetery, heard of a nation's resolve to overcome evil and move forward as one.

"This evening, the focus rests on us as much as on the victims," said chaplain Gary Councell. "For what we do to protect and preserve liberty, justice and good, will validate and give meaning to the sacrifices of innocent lives and our comrades in arms."

Leah Salmon and Chelsea Jacobs bow in prayer during Hawai'i Pacific University's memorial service held in downtown Honolulu.

Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

Even before sunrise, people gathered in Hilo at the rotunda of the Wailoa State Center. More than 60 Big Island residents — bleary-eyed and dressed in red, white and blue — held lighted candles at 2:48 a.m. to mark the moment that the first hijacked plane found its target, the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

"This tragedy is still being digested in every home and every school, this unbelievable thing that took place, like something from hell," said Yasuf Tamimi, a retired agricultural professor and longtime Hilo resident.

The Hilo Exchange Club rededicated its Freedom Shrine at the Hawai'i County Building, where retired pastor Richard Uejo said he made a personal resolve a year ago that he would "never add to hatred in this world."

At Hickam Air Force Base, several hundred people saluted the raising of the U.S. flag and its lowering to half-staff. Chief Master Sgt. Normia Carter sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," her voice rising in the morning air. She followed Col. Al Riggle, base commander.

"We remember the innocent lives that were lost in a terrible cascade of smoke and flames and twisted metal," Riggle said. "Think back to that morning when our lives were changed forever. When our purpose was clearly defined for us. When the world paused to watch us, first in shock and then in awe of our response."

Army chaplain Jack Herron stood next to a collage of items at Schofield Barracks' Main Post Chapel: a doll that Herron said represents "the many children who lost their loved ones on that dreadful day;" a New York City police rescue cap; a New York firefighter's helmet; an American flag that flew at the Pentagon; a soldier's boot that "reminds us of the many soldiers who are, at this very moment, fighting terrorism on foreign soil."

Students at the University of Hawai'i Campus Center in Manoa, joined by the staff of a local radio station, read the names of victims, each accompanied by the haunting clang of a brass ship's bell.

A microphone passed from student to student so they could read each name. When Corine Armstrong's turn came, the 18-year-old freshman — whose father is in the military — wiped away tears.

"You don't actually think of who the people are until you read their names," Armstrong said.

The ringing of the bell drew an ever-growing crowd. But it still took three hours to read just the first 1,500 names of the dead.

More than 300 people attended a memorial service in Hale'iwa yesterday. Flowers were scattered from canoes into the sea.

Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser

Feelings of loss were even more personal at Kaiser High School, where students, teachers and staff remembered Maile Hale, a 1993 Kaiser graduate. Hale, the 26-year-old chief operating officer of Boston Investor Services, was attending a conference at Windows of the World restaurant atop the World Trade Center's North Tower when the planes struck.

"Maile Hale was one of the gentlest, most caring people," said Diane Ueki, school librarian. "It just seems unfair that something like this would happen to her."

That's how Charlotte Keane felt, too, as she sat in the back pew of Kawaiaha'o Church, where hundreds of people heard a 115-member choir sing the Latin verses of Mozart's Requiem as part of a worldwide performance that rolled from time zone to time zone.

Keane fought back exhaustion. She had been up late listening for her brother's name on a televised presentation of services at the World Trade Center. She never heard the words "Richard Keane."

But at the historic Hawai'i church, she could still remember her brother, an insurance executive at Marsh & McLennan who died in the north tower. Overpowered at times by the strains of Mozart, Keane cried as she sat with a photograph of her brother.

At St. Andrew's Cathedral, for the Solemn Requiem Eucharist, Bishop Richard Chang spoke of the transforming power of faith. Across town in Kapahulu, the Rev. Darrow Aiona spread the message of tolerance by reading from prayers of Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jews, Hindu and Muslims.

After the Mozart Requiem performance at Kawaiaha'o Church, Keane walked out to King Street to listen as churches across town rang bells one minute before the statewide moment of silence.

The moment was timed to match those in each county across Hawai'i. It was followed by a second moment of silence at about 10:30 a.m. to mark the collapse of the North Tower.

Carla Estimba, a Hawaiian Airlines flight attendant, was one of nearly 1,000 people who gathered around the steps of Honolulu Hale. "Not one day goes by that I don't think of the day they perished," Estimba said.

Across the street in the State Capitol's atrium, 500 people bowed their heads for the first moment of silence. Many held hands.

"It was very moving," said graphic designer Christine Higa. "I was just praying for our leaders and for our country."

Those who couldn't make it to a memorial service expressed their feelings in other ways. Graphic artist Dan Fletcher and his 10-year-old daughter, Betty, waved an American flag from an H-1 Freeway pedestrian overpass in 'Aiea as cars below honked their horns in support.

"I just wanted to show my gratitude today," Fletcher said.

The four-man crew on duty at the Central Fire Station on Beretania Street observed the moments of silence by standing at attention beside a gleaming, polished engine. Several dozen Hawai'i Pacific University students also paused, gathering beneath an awning as they stared at the firefighters through a light drizzle.

Among the 100 people attending a brief ceremony on the lawn fronting the County Building in Wailuku were Maui firefighters Rockne Matsuda, Lani Gomes and Capt. Jeff Shaffer, along with New York firefighter Pat Smith, who is stationed in the Bronx.

Smith said he felt "a little weird" marking the Sept. 11 anniversary on Maui instead of back home. But his wife insisted he needed a break and should accompany his brother-in-law on a Hawai'i business trip.

Once on Maui, he sought others like him.

"When I got here I called on the firehouse," said Smith, 36, who worked at one time or another with 40 of the New York firefighters killed last year. "I wanted to be with guys who understand the same things I do and who feel the same — that it's not just a job."

In Windward O'ahu, the children, staff and teachers at Lanikai Elementary School honored one of their own — alumna Christine Snyder, who died aboard the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 when it crashed in Pennsylvania.

Tonya Taylor, Lanikai's Parent Teacher Association president and a friend of Snyder, presented the school with a 7-foot shower tree. Snyder had a passion for trees that she shared with the community as arborist for The Outdoor Circle.

To close the ceremony, students presented a peace pole to the school. They also offered a book that listed how each of them could make the world better.

It was a simple list. But on a day filled with so much emotion, there was power in its simplicity.

Share, some children said. Be kind. Pray for peace.

Advertiser staff writers Eloise Aguiar, Lynda Arakawa, Hugh Clark, William Cole, Beverly Creamer, Kevin Dayton, Scott Ishikawa, Curtis Lum, Mary Kaye Ritz, Suzanne Roig, Treena Shapiro, Catherine Toth and Christie Wilson contributed to this report.