September 18, 2013 THE VILLADOM TIMES III • Page 5 Allendale State and local officials mark 9/11 anniversary by John Koster Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno and State Senator Kevin O’Toole joined area mayors and the Allendale Borough Council in commemorating the victims and heroes of the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. Mayor Vince Barra and Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno Robert Delapenha, teenaged son of the only Allendale 9/11 victim, joined the lieu- tenant governor in placing a wreath at the Allendale memorial installed shortly after the attack. The new memorial -- made from a 20- foot girder from the World Trade Center - - will be completed some time in the near future. “It’s a piece of the evidence of a crime,” said Guadagno, a former prosecutor who has a son in the service. “I want the children to know that...Every one of us lost friends and/or feared their loss...It’s the evidence of a horrible crime.” She said that 760 New Jersey residents had been killed in the attack and that the total of 3,000 dead exceeded the death toll of Pearl Harbor. “We will never forget what happened on 9/11: A crime was committed,” she told the audience. The Reverend Father Michael Allen of Allendale Trinity Episcopal Church did not diminish the loss, but urged in his invoca- tion that while hate was strong, love should be stronger. Senator O’Toole, who arrived early and spoke to the Delapenha family at some length, said all children should always remember what happened. He remembered taking a boat tour of the site a month after the catastrophe with other members of the New Jersey State Assembly and New Jersey State Senate and seeing the enormous wreckage of the Twin Towers from the Hudson River, along with the flowers and letters left in mourning for the victims. “What I saw will never be erased from my memory,” he said. Then he spoke to Robert Delapenha, saying, “I also have a son who is 13 years old and is thinking about college, and when it comes time for you, we will be there for you as your father would have been.” Stiles Thomas, a World War II Air- borne veteran and retired Allendale Marsh Warden, led the pledge of allegiance. Mayor Vince Barra, whose brother-in- law, Wyckoff resident Craig Silberstein was also killed in the attack, served as the master of ceremonies and welcomed mem- bers of the borough’s first responders and other municipal workers. The Northern Highlands Regional High School “Voices” chorus sang the national anthem and “God Bless America” and the Clan Na Vale bag- pipers escorted the colors to the ceremony and played “Amazing Grace.” Uniformed firefighters and ambulance corps members were present in force and the entire eighth grade from the Brookside School also attended. (continued on page 17) Kevin O’Toole (right) with the Delapenha family.