Today is 9/11 – Patriot Day in the United States since the terrorist attacks that destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
It is not a legal holiday, so government offices, schools, financial institutions, the markets, and the mail are on normal schedules.
President Barack Obama rededicated the date in 2009 as Patriot Day and National Day of Service and Remembrance, and flags are flying today at half-staff under proclamations by President Joe Biden and the nation’s governors.
Nebraska U-S Senator and former governor Pete Ricketts says “No one old enough to remember that day will ever forget it.”
Ricketts adds that “While 9/11 evokes sorrow, it also calls to mind the courageous patriotism” of firefighters, other first responders, and the passengers on Flight 93 who sacrificed their lives to bring it down before the terrorists could crash it into the Capitol.
Nebraska’s other U-S Senator, Deb Fischer of Valentine, reminds residents of the state that 5 of the 2,977 people killed in the 9/11 attacks were Nebraskans, and that others were killed over the following years in the War on Terrorism.
Fischer, too, says today is a time to pay tribute to first responders and their efforts to keep their communities safe” as we remember the sacrifices of the first responders killed when the twin towers came down or suffered crippling health conditions afterward.