PEF honors WTC workers

Flags, flowers symbolize victims

SAYING GOODBYE — PEF Executive Board member John Duengfelder of the state Transportation Department drops a rose into Niagara Falls in memory of a member at DOT who died at the World Trade Center. At left, PEF Regional Coordinators Frank Besser, Ruth Gaines and Joyce Degenhardt light candles at the vigil and service at the falls during the October PEF Convention. — Photos by Ken Dischel

By DENYCE DUNCAN LACY
PEF paid public tribute several times during October to its 34 members and the other state employees who were killed in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

Exactly one month after the horrific tragedy, the union joined with state managers and the Civil Service Employees Association in honoring the employees with a huge memorial service at the Harriman State Office Campus in Albany.

Forty-two New York state flags covered 42 empty chairs in front of the podium, symbolizing the lost workers.

PEF President Roger Benson and other speakers told the 3,000 state employees attending the afternoon service that the slain workers would never be forgotten.

“Buildings collapsed and the rubble fell, and scattered in it are shattered coffee mugs, family photos, half-written memos and half-lived lives,” Benson said.

“We will use all our resources to ensure that the work they were doing, on behalf of the citizens of the state of New York will not be lost,” he added.

“What state employees do is critical. We will not forget and we will not let anyone else forget this ultimate sacrifice that was made to assure that our taxes are fairly collected and our transportation systems work.”

That memorial service, like the one held a week later in Niagara Falls, featured somber remembrances, the stirring sounds of “Amazing Grace” played by a bagpiper, and singing.

PEF leaders set aside time during the union’s annual convention to pay respects to the 31 Department of Tax and Finance and three Department of Transportation PEF members who lost their lives in the attack.

After a memorial service in the state parks’ Visitors’ Center at Niagara Falls, hundreds of convention delegates marched to the pedestrian bridge to Goat Island for a candlelight vigil. There, one by one, white roses were dropped into the rapids below as Benson and other union leaders read the names of each of the lost workers.

“These roses will disappear over the Falls the way the state employees disappeared when the Twin Towers collapsed,” Benson said. “But their memory is not lost. They are with us forever.”

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Department of Tax & FinanceJeremiah Ahern