By June Mathews
A stirring Patriots Day ceremony of honor and remembrance took place Sept. 11 at SoHo Plaza in Homewood.
The cities of Mountain Brook and Vestavia Hills joined Homewood in marking the 22nd anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. City leaders, first responders and representative students from Homewood’s three elementary schools were among those who attended.
“The images we witnessed and the emotions we carried remain as vivid today as they were back then,” Homewood Mayor Patrick McClusky, (fourth row, far left) said in his opening remarks. “Everyone from every background and from every corner of our nation was affected by the happenings of that morning. We faced the darkness that day but also found the light of unity, courage and resilience that continues to guide us forward. We’re here to celebrate, to acknowledge and to remember.”
In a touching part of the ceremony, keynote speaker Melissa Turnage (second row, far left) of Mountain Brook shared her 9/11 story of loss and forgiveness. Her 27-year-old son, Adam White, was one of 658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees lost in the attacks on the World Trade Center.
“He loved New York, and he loved his job,” said Turnage, who lived in Baltimore with husband Ben and their two young daughters at the time. “I spent many wonderful days with him in New York. I would just hop on the train and go up.
“Adam was fun, smart, talented, zany, did not know a stranger, creative, adventuresome, loved his family, and (he) was handsome to boot. He was quite a package,” she said.
On that fateful Tuesday, Turnage was working at St. Paul’s School, where she was the head of the lower school dance faculty.
“I was walking to our weekly chapel service, holding hands with two preschoolers and commenting what a beautiful day it was,” she recalled. “As I was walking up to the chapel, I overheard that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.”
Having heard of planes hitting buildings before, she prayed during the chapel service for the people involved. After the service, however, Turnage noticed the principal moving purposefully in her direction.
“He ushered me out of the building, took me aside and told me what had actually happened,” she said.
At that point, she began repeatedly trying to reach Adam via cell phone. She’d heard by that time that phone service had been disrupted in New York, but she kept trying.
“I tried for a full 48 hours, while his friends were frantically searching hospitals and rescue centers for survivors, hoping to find him,” she said. “I laid on the sofa in disbelief for three days.”
But Adam, she finally realized, was gone.
And yet, after all the heartache she suffered, Turnage offered her Patriot Day audience a strong message of forgiveness.
She told of being asked by a reporter if she thought she’d ever be able to forgive the terrorists, to which she promptly responded, “I already did.”
The reporter followed up with, “How is that possible?”
Turnage had no ready answer.
But as she pondered the question later, the lyrics of a song from the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical South Pacific came to mind: “You’ve got to be taught/ Before it’s too late/ Before you are six or seven or eight/ To hate all the people your relatives hate/ You’ve got to be carefully taught!”
“Maybe, just possibly,” she said, “the terrorists were wounded children who had been taught to hate all the people their relatives hated and believed that they were carrying out a mission that would make their relatives proud of them.”
Members of the Homewood Fire Department followed the keynote presentation with a Bell Ceremony, a traditional firefighter signal of honor and respect for a comrade who died in the line of duty.
Soloist for the Patriot Day observance was Lexi Bresnan, (third row, far right) daughter of John Bresnan, Homewood’s longtime fire chief until his death in 2020. She was backed by Homewood High School’s Show Choir on Dolly Parton’s “Color Me America.”
Next year’s shared Patriot Day ceremony is slated to be organized by Mountain Brook.
Journal photos by Jordan Wald
