Each year, we gather as an extended family bound by love, loss, and an enduring promise: to honor the Rhode Islanders whose lives were stolen in the senseless violence and terror of the September 11th attacks. Here in Warwick, that promise is personal.
Warwick lost neighbors on that day. People who had walked these streets, raised families here, built lives here. Their names are carved into stone at the memorial in Oakland Beach, and every year, those names are read aloud.
There is something powerful about hearing a name spoken out loud in a crowd. It breaks through the abstraction of history and reminds us that these were real people — not statistics, not symbols, but human beings with families who still grieve.
The annual commemoration in Warwick has grown over the years into something larger than a ceremony. It is a community gathering — a moment when people who might not otherwise cross paths stand together and acknowledge what they share: a city, a history, and a responsibility to remember.
For veterans in our community, this day carries additional weight. Many served in the wars that followed September 11th. They know, in a way that most of us do not, what it costs to answer a call to service. Their presence at these ceremonies is a bridge between the fallen and the living — a reminder that the promise to never forget is kept not just in stone, but in lives of service.
MB2B is proud to stand with Warwick in keeping that promise.