At Berwick ceremony, people remember the shock of 9/11

BERWICK — Monsignor Douglas Courville was working at the Diocese of Lafayette main office, in a room with no TV or radio.
But Courville did have email. And at some point in the morning, an email from the diocese said information would follow about a response to the events taking place.
“I’m like, what events taking place?” Courville said.
He found out soon enough. This was the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when two airliners hit the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, another struck the Pentagon and a fourth was crashed in Pennsylvania by passengers who fought back against the hijackers.
Courville was among the people, mostly law enforcement officers and firefighters, who gathered Saturday morning to observe the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
One measure of how deeply the attacks affected people was the special Mass conducted by then-Lafayette Diocese Bishop Edward O’Donnell at St. John the Evangelist Cathedral within hours of the attacks. More than 600 people attended, Courville said.
“It shook up everything,” Courville said of 9/11. “It really did.”
Berwick Mayor Duval Arthur told the audience that on that Tuesday morning, he was in a police car on La. 182 passing Patterson State Bank when he heard the news. He was Berwick’s police chief then.
“By the time I got back to the office,” Arthur said, “the second plane had hit the tower. That’s when I knew it was an attack.”
In his remarks, Arthur mourned the loss of the unity that brought the nation together in the days following 9/11.
Current Berwick Assistant Police Chief JP Henry, the master of ceremonies for Saturday’s observance, said he was a new police officer headed to Franklin for a court case when he heard the news.
“Being a rookie police officer,” Henry said, “I was so angry and eager to go after those people. … I want to honor the people who went running into danger. …”
Berwick police Sgt. Quentin Menard read statistics counting the cost: 2,947 people died in the attacks, including 411 first-responders. They included 345 firefighters and 23 New York Police Department.
Capt. Lisa Daigle read a tribute to firefighters, and police Sgt. Billy Chapman read his own poem about the event of Sept. 11. Patrolman Brendon Rodrigue led the Pledge of Allegiance.
The Berwick High School Band’s trumpet line played “The Star-Spangled Banner” and, at the time when the first tower was struck, played taps after a moment of silence.
Attending the event were members of the St. Mary Parish Sheriff’s Office, including its current academy class, along with Acadian and AMR paramedics. They were joined by police officers and firefighters from Amelia, Bayou Vista, Berwick, Morgan City and Patterson.
The ceremony took place near the Berwick lighthouse, beneath a giant American flag held aloft by firetrucks from Amelia and Bayou Vista.
The people in Berwick joined others from across the nation in observing the 20th anniversary of the attacks.
Among the four men who have been president since Sept. 11, only George W. Bush made a speech Saturday. Bush warned of the threat from domestic as well as foreign terrorism.
Bush spoke at the 9/11 memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where an airliner that hijackers hoped to crash into the U.S. Capitol was instead flown into the ground as passengers rushed the terrorists in the cockpit.