Frank Larkin describes the horrors of 9/11.
By MADDY VITALE
Frank Larkin was in the World Trade Center when the planes hit on Sept. 11, 2001. He was working in the New York office of the U.S. Secret Service.
What he witnessed during the hours after the attacks will forever be in his memory. Larkin told his story of that horrific day in history to an audience at the Ocean City Tabernacle Monday night during the annual 9/11 remembrance ceremony.
“I was walking. Something caught my attention and I stopped. And I turned and an indescribable sound occurred right in front of me,” Larkin said. “Someone had jumped from one of the floors above.”
What he witnessed, he said, was “something that was unconscionable.”
It was, he said, “The raining of fellow human beings out of the sky from those confronting a terrible situation and making a very intimate decision about the last moments of their life.”
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Larkin who served more than two decades as a special agent and senior leader in the Secret Service, had taken a run the day of the attacks. He showered and then he heard a message over the loudspeaker.
“I remember I finished my run and showered and over the loudspeaker they said it was not a drill. ‘Evacuate the building,’” he said. “I got my gear on and I looked up at Tower 1 and you could see a giant hole of fire.”
Then the second plane hit Tower 2.
"Chunks of stuff were coming at us,” Larkin said of the debris.
Larkin tried to get out. He went to the stairwell. It was filled with people trying to escape. He took the elevator and ran for cover under a fire truck. That is what saved his life.
Frank Larkin describes the horrors of 9/11.
There was “incredible noise. I tried to breathe. The air was thick with dust,” he said.
When Larkin crawled out from the fire truck, he saw that the back end of the fire truck was crushed. The person he had spoken to lay dead near him.
The whole World Trade Center complex was encircled in fire. The jet fuel had caused other fires to break out.”
The towers came down.
“You all saw the ghostly figures that came out covered with dust – total shock. That’s what we had turned into and the fires were getting worse on the ground,” he said.
The wreath is displayed at the Fire Department headquarters.
Choked with emotion, Larkin described the day he discovered Ryan.
“I came home one morning and found him. He was dressed in his Navy Seals shirt,” he said, adding that his decorated son had his medals displayed.
“When we talk about 911, we can’t ever forget the sacrifices of these men and women who have done something selfless, so beyond themselves for the love of our nation.
More than 400 firefighters, police officers other emergency workers died in New York on 9/11. On 9/11, nearly 3,000 people lost their lives.
"Twenty-two years ago still feels like yesterday,” Larkin said. “I’m still asking why.”
Mayor Jay Gillian recalls how the country came together.
During the ceremony, Mayor Jay Gillian spoke of how the country came together in the wake of tragedy.
“In the wake of attacks our nation stood united. We drew strength from one another, proving that even in our darkest hour we could rise together,” Gillian said.
He continued, “America that day and the days that followed was what I believed our nation’s founders wanted. There were no Republicans or Democrats. No sides. It was just one team, an American team.”
A poignant part of the ceremony was the Striking of the Four Fives by Fire Chief Jim Smith.
He told the audience what the act means. The Striking of the Four Fives is a tradition steeped in symbolism and is a responsibility that no chief wants to bear because it signals the loss of firefighters in the line of duty.
The presentation of the colors.
Smith struck the bell over and over again in honor of the victims of the 9/11 attacks from the twin towers, to the Pentagon to the field in Shanksville, Pa.
“The fire service will always be linked to the tragedy that occurred at the twin towers that day,” he said.
“Sadly on that day the fire service lost 343 firefighters while they were just doing their job,” Smith said.
The ceremony also included many other significant traditions such as the laying of a commemorative wreath.
After the service, Firefighter John Simonson and Patrolman Shane Rauner brought the wreath across the street to the Fire House headquarters at 550 Wesley Ave.
There, they laid the wreath at the city’s 9/11 memorial, which features a beam recovered from the charred remains of the World Trade Center at the Fire House headquarters across from the Tabernacle.
Callie Bellwoar sings the national anthem.
