BARNEGAT – The skies cried intermittently as Barnegat marked the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. A large American flag hung from a Barnegat Fire Department ladder truck, serving as the backdrop for what appeared to be the most extensive commemoration in Ocean County. Deputy Mayor Fred Rubenstein organized the event as he did five years ago, in remembrance of two decades since the horrific incident on American soil.
Fred Rubenstein was working in the administration of then-New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and was scheduled to attend a 9 a.m. meeting at 7 World Trade Center. An eight-minute subway delay may have saved his life. Rubenstein was near City Hall when the first plane struck and remained in Lower Manhattan when the second plane hit.
“There was no script,” Rubenstein said. “Nobody had ever done this before. We didn’t have readiness drills. So what did we do? We went. We tried to help people.”
Rubenstein returned to the site and helped search through the wreckage, digging with his hands and shovels whenever there appeared to be signs of life. He also spoke of friends who never came home and the illnesses he later developed following his time at Ground Zero.
Retired Brigadier General Lawrence S. Thomas III offered a view of that night from the cockpit of an armed F-16. Thomas, then director of operations at New Jersey Air National Guard headquarters and a mission-qualified pilot with the 177th Fighter Wing in Atlantic City, took off with his wingman at 10 p.m. to defend the skies over the Northeast.
As they approached New York, Thomas looked down at Lower Manhattan. “Smoke and a fiery glow rose from the devastation,” he recalled. “From our altitude, it looked like a great wound upon the earth. I have never forgotten that sight. I never will.”
A full story on Barnegat’s observance of the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks will follow.
