Stayin' Alive

 

Shortly before 6 pm on Saturday, September 11, 2021, Margaret accompanied me to the Boardwalk at the 16th Avenue Beach in Belmar so she could, herself, bear witness to the beauty that is the 9/11 Memorial Run.  Tim Mahoney's labor of love, which has happened without interruption for twenty years, and which shall undoubtedly go on in the same way for as long as Tim Mahoney has anything to say about it, drew a bigger crowd than it has for any of the half-dozen or so prior iterations of it in which I had been a participant.  It was a sight to see.  

After reading a number of the names of the 147 souls murdered on September 11, 2001 who had been born in, raised in, or who had been living in Monmouth County at the time of their death, Tim Mahoney led the assembled walkers, runner, and cyclists - in silence - south along the Belmar Boardwalk into Spring Lake.  

We traveled silently to the September 11 Memorial in Spring Lake, which is located on Ocean Avenue, and where on Saturday night a new addition was unveiled.  There, Tim Mahoney read aloud the names of those from Spring Lake Heights and Spring Lake killed on September 11.  Their number included Paul Keating of Spring Lake is one of the 343 members of the FDNY killed at the World Trade Center on September 11.  This year, due in no small part to the incredible efforts of one of his brothers, a new monument was unveiled, the design of which incorporates a piece of a steel beam from the World Trade Center.  So, when those participating in the Memorial Run reached the Spring Lake September 11 Memorial, there were a couple of hundred people already there, awaiting our arrival, which coincided with the unveiling. 

 

Spring Lake September 11 Memorial 

New monument - unveiled September 11, 2021

Photo Credit:  Adam Kenny

From the Memorial, we crossed back over Ocean Avenue, and onto the Spring Lake Boardwalk.  We continued our journey in silence on the boards, which silence was punctuated by interludes of joyous noise in the form of people standing on the front porches and balconies of the homes, restaurants, and B and Bs that weave the tapestry of Spring Lake's oceanfront properties, many of whom applauded and cheered as our procession approached, reached, and continued on past their location.  

Upon reaching our final stop, we gathered on the sand and on the boards, where Tim Mahoney completed the reading of the names of those from Monmouth County who had been killed twenty years earlier.  Thereafter, people added names of their own to the roll call, whether someone they knew or someone of whom they had heard who had also been killed.  Those who had not yet placed an American flag and/or a flower did so at the temporary memorial that graces this part of the beach at this moment every September. 

Margaret and I were on the boards, almost but not quite directly above the memorial.  At the event's end, which this year featured a surprisingly on-key rendition of "God Bless America", we bore witness  to something of such exquisite beauty I feared that the tear in my eye might have blurred the photograph, ruining it.  

I was relieved to see that it did not. 

I, like Forrest Gump, am not a smart man but, like him,  I too know what love is.  And if I ever forget, I need only to look at this photograph and this little girl and I shall remember. 

-AK