Commemorating the Sixth Anniversary of the September 11 Attack

Floor Speech

COMMEMORATING THE SIXTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACK -- (Senate - September 11, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, 1 year from today, the first of America's three official 9/11 memorials will be dedicated at the Pentagon. It will feature 184 stainless steel benches, each surrounded by a pool of water; one bench for each of the 184 innocent victims who died in the Pentagon and on the plane that struck it 6 years ago today.

This morning on the front page of ``The Washington Post'' there is a story about a small company of master metalworkers who are finishing these benches, grinding and polishing them, transforming them into perfectly uniform, flawlessly smooth memorials.

The company is called Bucthel Metal Finishing Company. It is located outside Chicago. They do work all over the United States. The owner of Bucthel Metal Finishing is Abe Yousif. Mr. Yousif is an Iraqi immigrant who left his homeland in 1978, months before the start of the Iraq-Iran war. He has never been back.

All 24 of Yousif's employees are also immigrants, from Mexico, Bosnia, and many other nations. For Abe Yousif and each of his employees, polishing those benches for the Pentagon memorial has become a deeply personal mission. As ``The Washington Post'' describes it:

If he can make the benches perfect, he believes he will help others to heal. If he can make the metal shine brilliantly, they will feel hope. He wants people to run their fingers along the steel and find, in its clean, immaculate smoothness, something affirming, redeeming even, on a site now scarred by murder and death.

Today on the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on our Nation, many Americans in Illinois and across our Nation are searching for their own ways to rescue some lasting good out of the evil of 9/11.

There were 3,000 innocent victims from more than 150 nations who died in New York, at the Pentagon, and the field in Pennsylvania. Jeff Mladenik, a husband and father of four from Hinsdale, IL, outside Chicago, had just been named interim CEO of a new e-commerce company. But he had another job that meant more to him. He worked as an assistant pastor at his church in Oak Brook. He was on American Airlines Flight 11, the plane that struck the first tower; one of nine men and women from Illinois who died on Ð9/11.

After Mladenik's death, his parents told a reporter:

I can guarantee that Jeff would tell us that hatred and bitterness must not have the last word.

One of America's first memorials to the victims of 9/11 was a tiny, little makeshift memorial created by a woman in Shanksville, PA, in her own front yard weeks after the attacks.

Within days, the first tribute arrived, a bouquet of flowers. Next to it was a note that read:

Thanks for saving our lives--the Capitol employees.

We who are privileged to work in this building have a special obligation to work together to prevent the next attack and remember the heroes who saved our lives on 9/11.

Six years after that date, America is safer, but we need to do more. We need to listen carefully and follow the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

We have passed important legislation this year to move in that direction. We need also make sure that as a sign of respect, we remember those who have given their lives on that sad day.

As a sign of respect, I would like to read the names of the eight other Illinoisans who died in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

Kathy Bantis, Andrea Haberman, Suzanne Kondratenko, Darya Lin and Sue Sauer, all from Chicago; and Robert Rasmussen, from Hinsdale, were all in meetings in the Twin Towers when the planes hit.

CDR Dan Shanower, of Naperville, a Navy intelligence officer, had just sat down at his desk after briefing his admiral on the World Trade Center attacks when the third plane smashed into the Pentagon. He died there, along with Navy Reserve LCDR Patrick Murphy, who grew up in Flossmoor, IL.

We remember them today, along with Jeff Mladenik, also of Hinsdale, and all of the nearly 3,000 innocent victims who died on September 11, 2001. We also remember those they have left behind, and those who still suffer today. May they, and we, continue to heal and find peace.

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