Former Mayor Giuliani to speak at We Remember event on Sept. 9
9/1/11 – Riverdale, NY -To mark the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, Manhattan College is presenting a five-day We Remember series of events, Wednesday, Sept. 7 through Sunday, Sept. 11 to pay tribute to the victims of the tragic attacks. The events include: a commemorative ceremony, a panel presentation by graduates of the College, a faculty teach-in, a campus-wide service day on Sept. 10 in honor of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, an act signed by President Obama in 2009 officially designating Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service and Remembrance, and a memorial Mass.
“On Sept. 11, 2001, the College lost 20 graduates and scores of relatives and friends of our extended community; in honor of them, their families and all of the other victims, the College is hosting the We Remember series,” said Brennan O’Donnell, Ph.D., president of Manhattan College.
The College will also introduce an exhibition at the Mary Alice and Tom O’Malley Library during the week consisting of: a memorial to the 20 Manhattan College alumni who perished in the Sept. 11 attacks with pictures and remembrances from their family, a copy of William Langewiesche’s book American Ground and three-part series of articles by Langewiesche from the Atlantic Monthly, which covers the story of the recovery effort at Ground Zero and mentions the three Manhattan College alumni panelists (Michael Burton ’84, George J. Tamaro ’59 and Richard Tomasetti ’63) who assisted in the immediate constructive response in the aftermath of Sept. 11. The exhibition runs through Friday, Nov. 18 and is open to the public.
On Sept. 7, the panel discussion and first We Remember event will be held from 3 to 4:30 p.m. in Smith Auditorium with Francis Lombardi, the former chief engineer for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, moderating the event. Michael Burton ’84, former executive deputy commissioner for the New York City Department of Design & Construction and current senior vice president and national operations manager for the LiRo Group; Eugene McGrath ’63, retired chairman and chief executive officer for Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc.; George J. Tamaro ’59, former partner and current consultant for Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers; and Richard Tomasetti ’63, founding principal and current consultant for Thornton-Tomasetti are among the featured panelists who assisted in the immediate constructive response in the aftermath of 9/11. The panelists will explain the challenges they and the city faced, and what that experience has meant to them throughout the past decade.
“The panel will help to inform our students, who were 8-12 years old on 9/11, of how knowledge, expertise, and professional training–as well as strength of character and dedication–helped to put the city and the nation on a course of rebuilding,” added O’Donnell.
The faculty teach-in on Sept. 8 will include Manhattan College faculty from multiple disciplines examining and presenting the impact of the events of 9/11 on certain aspects of American life from 4 to 5 p.m. in Smith Auditorium. Moderated by Daniel Collins, Ph.D., director of the recently established Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) and associate professor of English, the faculty will address the questions of what has changed during the last ten years through the lens of their academic specialties and how we have all grown from the events of 9/11.
The We Remember series continues with the commemorative service on Sept. 9 from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. in the Chapel of De La Salle and His Brothers with the Honorable Rudolph W. Giuliani ’65, former Mayor of New York City and chairman & chief executive officer for Giuliani Partners, as the featured speaker. Two Manhattan College students also will read from “THE GUYS,” an off-Broadway play by Anne Nelson about a writer working with a fire captain to draft eulogies for firefighters who perished in the World Trade Center. The names of the fallen Manhattan College alumni will also be read aloud.