Photos by Steffen Klenk
Ocean City’s annual “A Day to Remember” 9/11 memorial ceremony was held Monday, Sept. 11, at the Ocean City Tabernacle (it had originally been scheduled to be outdoors across from the Ocean City Fire Department).
The ceremony included music, prayer and reflections on the memory of lives lost and on the community spirit that was renewed in the wake of the tragedy. The event included the Striking of the Four Fives, a fire service tradition noting the death of a firefighter in the line of duty.
This year’s keynote speaker was Frank Larkin, who was in the World Trade Center working for the New York Office of the U.S. Secret Service when the planes hit on Sept. 11, 2001. Larkin served for more than two decades as a special agent and senior leader in the Secret Service.
Among positions in a long and diverse career in the public and private sectors, he was a Navy SEAL, a Norristown police officer, a Montgomery County (Pa.) homicide detective, a Maryland State Trooper flight paramedic, director of the Counter IED Operations-Intelligence Integrations Center, the 40th U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms (overseeing the 2,200-member Capitol Police Department), and he’s an advocate for veteran suicide prevention and traumatic brain injury research.
“I’m honored to have Mr. Larkin join us in Ocean City for the ceremony, and I want to encourage everybody to attend,” Mayor Jay Gillian said. “Even on the night of the attacks in 2001, Mayor Bud Knight invited the community to a prayer service at the Tabernacle, while the fear of that day was still fresh. This was the 23rd time we’ve gathered in Ocean City on 9/11.”
