Newtown 9/11 Ceremony To Honor First Responders Past and Present

NEWTOWN, PA — Newtown is set to host a 9/11 memorial ceremony at Pickering Field to honor first responders past and present.

Former Gov. Mark Schweiker, a Bucks County native, is scheduled to be the featured speaker at the ceremony on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed almost 3,000 people. More than 400 were first responders, including 343 New York firefighters and 60 police officers.

Schweiker was Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor on that fateful day in September 2001. He took the state’s top office less than a month later, when then-Gov. Tom Ridge left to serve under former Pres. George W. Bush as the nation's first Homeland Security advisor.

As lieutenant governor, Schweiker met with families of the victims of the Flight 93 crash in southwestern Pennsylvania in the days after the attacks. Flight 93 was hijacked by terrorists on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, before passengers on board tried to retake control of the plane. The hijackers deliberately crashed the plane near Shanksville.

Flight 93 was the only plane hijacked that morning that did not reach the hijackers’ intended target.

First responders from the Newtown Police Department, Newtown Fire Association and Newtown Ambulance Squad are invited to attend the borough’s ceremony, which starts at 6 p.m., Bucks Local News reports.

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