Frank Lautenberg: “I commend my colleagues from Virginia for their comments and for the recall of their memories regarding that terrible…”

“I commend my colleagues from Virginia for their comments and for the recall of their memories regarding that terrible day. Today we commemorate the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks we now refer to as 9/11. It is a day heavy with sadness for me personally. Before I became a Senator, I was a commissioner on the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and had offices on the 67th floor in the Trade Tower. The Port Authority lost 84 of its people on 9/11, including 37 brave police officers who gave their lives as they tried to save the lives of others. Fifty-one of those Port Authority employees lived in the State of New Jersey. I knew many Port Authority employees and others who died on this date 2 years ago. And I know many more families who lost a loved one. One of my oldest daughter's dearest friends perished that day. They had worked together on Wall Street before she went to Cantor Fitzgerald. That firm lost nearly 700 people out of the 1,000 who worked for it on the morning of 9/11. The husband of my daughter's friend searched hospitals for 3 weeks looking for a sign that perhaps his wife had escaped death in that terrible calamity. Because of its proximity to New York, my home State of New Jersey suffered catastrophically. Of the 3,025 innocent people who lost their lives on 9/11, nearly a quarter of them--700 in all--came from my home State. Thirty-seven of them came from a single town, Middletown, NJ.”