9/11 Hero: 'We Should Celebrate'

Dennis Letts said Sunday he has not been back to the site of the fallen World Trade Center in 10 years.

He said he did not want to revisit the destruction, the death and the pain.

But, he told the nearly 1,000 people who gathered at the Morris County Sept. 11 Memorial in Parsippany for the 10th Annual memorial ceremony, he will return now that the Liberty Tower is rising.

"I spent 18 years at the World Trade Center," he said. "I thought it was stately and beautiful. I saw too much in one day when the towers fell to become Ground Zero. But now there is a rising."

Letts, a former U.S. Secret Service agent who served under seven presidents, was the keynote speaker at the county's memorial service. He was in the Secret Service for 23 years, 18 of which he worked in New York, including nine years in the World Trade Center. He survived the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and was presented awards for disinguished service and valor following the 2001 attacks.

The centerpiece of the Morris County memorial is three pieces of steel from the trade center towers, with soil from the Pentagon, and a piece from United Flight 93.

The ceremony featured the presentation of colors by hundreds of police, firefighters and emeregncy medical technicians, who marched to the site in near silence.

The silence deepened as Freeholders Margaret Nordstrom and Douglas Cabana read the names of the 64 Morris County residents who died on Sept. 11, 2001. Each name read was accompanied by the single toll of a bell.

The fading light was brightened by the lighting of  small candles.

"A candle can be a symbol," said Freeholder Director William Chegwidden.  "It can be a symbol of triumph or a symbol of faith. The smoke from a candle can be our thoughts being sent to a loved one. But a candle can not fulfill itself. It must burn."

Then he asked those in the audience to light their candles, and a sparkle of light flickered across the dark field.

Letts said that in 1993, he and another agent were at lunch when the building shook and the stairwells and hallways began to fill with smoke. They tried to leave by a stairwell, but the smoke was too thick. They tried again later, he said, and ran down 40 flights of stairs to the lobby.

"What I learned in 1993 saved my life in 2001," Letts said. "I was lying the floor trying to stay under the smoke. I could see the West Side Highway as I laid there. I felt helpless."

When he got to the lobby in 1993, he said, there was no one giving directions or aid. No one appeared to be in charge.

In 2001, he said, when he and other agents reached the lobby, he saw two Port Authority police officers and told them to send people to Tower Seven. There, another agent recalled the building had a health club where there would be medical supplies.

"My selfless colleague Craig Miller went back to  Tower Two. He didn't survive," Letts said.

After the towers collapsed, Letts said, he comandeered a Hudson River ferry, and the crew helped hundreds of people escape smoldering Manhattan for Hoboken.

Many Americans selflessly ran to the trade center sites the day of the attacks to help, Letts reminded the audience. Doctors and nurses, police, fire, medical technicians, many of whom died in the towers' collapse, had arrived to help, Letts said.

Then after the attack, hundreds of construction workers and others arrived to clean the smoking pile of rubble. Many of them are suffering from diseases related to that work, and many more have died.

He warned that the radicals who attacked on Sept. 11 wanted to attack the United States and the way of life it represents. He said they would view the last decade of wars and economic and political unheaval as a victory.

But the towers are rising, he said. The fallen are not forgotten. Thousands of tourists visit Lower Manhattan each year to gaze at the site of the attack, to share in its meaning, or to mourn the loss of a loved one.

"The World Trade Center is rising again. We should celebrate," Letts said.