David Kotok, a financial adviser and a survivor of the 9/11 attacks, recalls watching a plane hit the South Tower.

On a hot and humid Tuesday morning, about 75 people — local folks and community leaders — convened at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee to commemorate the 17th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York and The Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

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In an event featuring performances by a first-grade choir from Saint Stephen’s Episcopal School and a flag-raising by the Marine Corps color guard from the 4th Amphibious Assault Battalion in Tampa, speakers described the unity with other Americans they felt as their world fell apart around them.

“I remember a particularly intense feeling of the need to make eye contact, to greet in some way, to reach out, to connect with people I passed on the campus of the university where I was at the time, even people I didn’t know,” USFSM Regional Chancellor Karen Holbrook said. “As all of us were together in our suffering for our nation and for the people who suffered intolerable loss, we all understood what others were feeling as well.”

David Kotok, a financial adviser and a survivor of the 9/11 attacks, spoke on the tripartite need to remember victims, support survivors and try to learn after national crises. Though the U.S. was good at fulfilling the first two duties, he said, the third posed a complication. Properly learning from 9/11 involves moving beyond ceremonies and “revealing ourselves openly (and) transparently” by sharing stories and documenting history, he said.

Continued at the Sarasota Herald Tribune: www.heraldtribune.com

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