Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you. As I was sitting here on the stage, I was watching in the second row this mother hold her baby and thinking about 2001, Jordan was six. And I remember coming home that night and talking with him. He asked about his uncle, Bernard, my brother, and he asked about my other cousins that were members of the New York City Police Department.
And he asked about the large number of people we lost. And every year around this time, we sit down and we talk about this because we're living in a society now where our heroes are demonized. It is unimaginable when you watch on social media some of our young people were lifting up the name of bin Laden, and thought that America deserved what happened.
We have to reclaim the lives of our children and realize that they're living in the greatest country on the globe and that there are many people who hate our way of life, both foreign and domestic. And we have an obligation as we hold our children and our family members as Chief Esposito stated. These were parents. These were sons. These were brothers. These were sisters.
We need to humanize what happened those 24 years ago and [not] allow time to erode how significant it was. The countless number of men and women ran towards danger, and we're still losing their lives every day. And when we add these names on this wall to give honor to them, let's also educate the young people of our society that this is the greatest country on the globe and this city is representative of that.
I'm proud to have served as a first responder, and I'm proud to be the mayor of this city. And we will never, never forget. Never forget. And the terrorists thought they broke our spirits and broke our resiliency on September 11, 2001.
But, as you and I know, September 12th, we showed them who we were. We got up. Teachers taught. Builders built. Retailers sold their goods. And because we got up, America got up, and America knew what our resiliency represents.
And so I want to thank the current commissioner who's here serving this department, but also want to thank Sal and Dan and others who were here during those difficult times and rebuilt the department to make sure we can do what we always have done, respond to danger and save the lives of New Yorkers. God bless the FDNY, and God bless America.
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