Mariposa honors victims of 9-11 on the 25th anniversary

Kerry Whitfield may have driven home the most important point last Friday morning during a memorial service marking 25 years since the terrorist attacks on America.

Whitfield, the current vice principal at Mariposa County High School, is the daughter of a retired New York Police Department detective and was sitting at her desk during her freshman year in high school on Long Island when two jetliners crashed into the Twin Towers just 25 miles away in Manhattan.

She spoke eloquently about her father and her uncle, who was a member of Fire Department of New York that day, but her most relevant words may have been about what happened next.

She said 9-11 does mean “never forget,” but added, “If you want to honor it, you also need to remember Sept. 12. The reason, she said, was obvious the next day after those fateful attacks.

“It didn’t matter if you were black or white, gay or straight, Republican or Democrat,” she said. “Everyone came together.”

It’s a lesson that certainly applies to this day, when tensions and divides are evident across the country.

Yet last Friday morning, in Mariposa, people of all backgrounds stood as one in honoring those who were killed that day in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

Whitfield said on the day before, her father, Ken Monahan, a detective second grade for the NYPD, was on a golfing outing with some of his buddies. After golfing and staying up into the wee hours of Sept. 11 drinking Coors Light, she said they ended that gathering sitting on the dock looking at the New York City skyline.

“They didn’t know it would be the last time they would see that skyline,” she said.

Incredibly, he had an appointment later that morning in a building just several hundred yards from the towers. He knew his late night on the dock meant he should cancel that appointment, which he did.

A jet engine landed right next to where he would have been for that appointment.

But it didn’t stop him from going straight to Ground Zero, where he spent “days” digging through the rubble.

Whitfield said to this day he has medical problems because of doing that, but called it a “small price to pay” when pondering the bigger picture.

But it wasn’t just her dad.

Whitfield said her uncle was a member of the Fire Department of New York and was on duty that day.

“We didn’t know for two days that he was okay,” she said.

Whitfield said when she was in the classroom that morning, a teacher from another class entered her classroom and whispered to her teacher.

“There was confusion and fear,” she said. “And the realization the world was not going to be the same.”

A month later, she said her father took her to Ground Zero.

“It was not just debris,” she said of the truckloads that were being hauled out of the are in a steady stream. “It was carrying people’s lives.”

That included notebooks or keepsakes and even “fingers or toes,” she said, noting the family members were looking for anything to identify their relatives killed in the attacks.

A few months after that, during a family gathering, Whitfield said her uncle was talking about the impacts it had on his life. He had worked for Canter Fitzgerald and on Sept. 11, 2001, more than 600 people from that firm had died when the towers collapsed.

“He said he can throw away his phone book because everyone is dead,” said Whitfield.

And then, in a special moment, a video was shown that had been recorded by Monahan, Whitfield’s father.

In a moving moment, he recalled a fellow police officer, John Perry, who was at what is known as Police Plaza “filling out his retirement papers.”

When the planes hit, Perry “dropped the papers” and ran toward the towers.

When he got there, it was then the South Tower collapsed, killing the police officer who was going to retire that day.

“Two months later, his body was recovered,” he said. “His gift to humanity was courage. He did die a hero that day.”

The local ceremony

Each year, the Mariposa County Sheriff’s Office organizes the ceremony in honor of the victims of Sept. 11.

“Never forget really rings true,” said Mariposa County Sheriff Jeremy Briese.

One memory Briese recalls vividly of that day was when 150 boats came together in New York Harbor. He said they were varied, from fishing trawlers to transports to pleasure boaters.

“Nothing organized,” he said. “No formal training.”

Yet those boat pilots rescued and evacuated more than 500,000 people from the city that day, he said.

That, said Briese, shows how even a major city like New York can unite and come together as a community in the worst of times.

“We’re a community and we’re united,” said Briese.

He then noted the 2,977 flags that were placed on the hillside in front of the stage at the Art Park. Those represent each victim who died as a result of the attacks.

“It represents more than a just number,” he said.

Briese also asked everyone in attendance to sign a banner that will be sent to the 9-11 Memorial in New York.

The sheriff also said his office would continue to host the ceremony each year.