Dearborn Candlelight Vigil Sept.11 at The Henry Ford
The city of Dearborn, the Dearborn Area Ministerial Association (DAMA) and The Henry Ford are coming together to remember the events of Sept. 11, 2001 during a “Remembrance & Unity” candlelight vigil at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 11, 2011 on the front lawn of the Henry Ford Museum. The event is free to the public.
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder will join Dearborn Mayor John B. O’Reilly, Jr. and The Henry Ford President Patricia Mooradian at this solemn ceremony that will offer both reflection on the past events and a shared hope for the future.
“We are inviting everyone to join us at this event, which will highlight the unity of our community,” O’Reilly said. “The tragic events of September 11 drew us together like never before as a nation, a state and a city. We will remember with respect the impact of that day 10 years ago, and at the same time reinforce the enduring community connections that comforted us then, and continue to strengthen us now.”
The vigil will include community leaders, members of the clergy and music. It will be held regardless of the weather and last about one hour. Candles will be provided and seating for people who are disabled will be available.
“It is truly an honor to host this event at The Henry Ford,” Mooradian said. “In 2001, days after the events that occurred on September 11th, we found people coming through our museum gates in an effort to seek solace and refuge and to be inspired by our nation’s history in a time of great uncertainty. Ten years later, we feel it is so important to gather as one community, to remember and to move forward with great hope and optimism for the future.”
For more information, please call The Henry Ford at 313-982-6001 or visit the website at www.thehenryford.org
September 7th, 2011 at 12:31 pm
I attended the gathering 10 years ago and intend to attend this one – Diane
September 7th, 2011 at 11:12 pm
I too intend to go and remember, and pray. One nation, America, under God.
September 7th, 2011 at 11:19 pm
Is this event going to be a whitewashing of the Islamic basis for the attacks? Certainly it can be said that the attacks were by ‘Islamic extremists’ but in Dearborn over the last ten years the extremists have gained ground. We now have publicly-funded footbaths at public universities, one of our public high schools holds practice in the middle of the night, and we have widespread support for terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Will this candlelight ceremony even acknowledge that the horror of 9/11 happened because of Islamic hatred of American freedoms? Will anyone call for an end of support for Islamic terrorism?
September 7th, 2011 at 11:32 pm
By the way, the events of 9/11 did not pull us together as a community. There was public celebration of the attack by some Muslims in Dearborn. A professor at HFCC was addressing his class about religious extremism and a Muslim student tried to shout him down. The professor couldn’t get him to stop shouting, so he pulled him by the arm to the door and put him in the hall. The professor was vilified by our local Arab ‘community leaders’ as being anti-Arab, even though the professor IS Arab-American. The professor was suspended, and the county tried him for assault. Yep, the same county that let a Muslim gunman walk free tried a college professor for trying to keep order in his classroom. Surely I am not the only one who remembers the truth about that time. I had a Muslim neighbor tell me angrily a few days after the attacks that ‘the Jews did it.’ He would not admit the truth. No logic would pierce his denial of the truth. One of our local Arab leaders denounced the Dearborn police a few days after the attacks when they called in the FBI to investigate some Arab men they had arrested. The three men were armed with knives, they had out-of-state driver’s licenses, and two of them worked at the airport, but this ‘leader’ still condemned the police for their caution. The only semblance of ‘unity’ at the time was a survey of the local Arab-American community revealed that they thought it only logical that their group should be subject to greater scrutiny because of the background of the attackers. Now that scrutiny is called ‘profiling’ and denounced by the community. So, there still isn’t any unity in our city…