Over 2000 Attend Amherst Candlelight Vigil

By Izzy Lyman
September 13, 2002

"You're only going to get a hundred people," taunted the peace activist.

That gloomy prediction was made to Larry Kelley, an Amherst resident, just a short time before the September 11 candlelight vigil he was organizing was to occur on the town common.

But Kelley had the last word.

"I am told we had about 2200 people show up," he said.

Hundreds of people -- from a college coed, whose father was a New York firefighter, to a bagpipe-playing Amherst College employee, to a Boy Scout from nearby Hadley - gathered on the common to honor those citizens who lost their lives in the terrorist attacks on American soil.

"Nobody was making a political statement to the right or to the left. It was just a commemorative ceremony," noted Adam Sloat, a martial arts teacher. Indeed, the typically verbally combative residents of Amherst were untypically subdued.

Many in the crowd held 12" lit candles that had been donated by Yankee Candle for the occasion. The candles each had a sticker that bore the name, age, and hometown of a victim. The event was emceed by Ron Hall of WHMP radio. Local citizens, like Kevin Joy, delivered short speeches.

Joy, a former FBI anti-terrorist agent who recently moved back to Amherst, built a Twin Tower float for the local Fourth of July parade. The float was prominently on display during the evening. Joy, who had never before undertaken such a project, told the crowd that he "had to do it" as a way of working out his grief.

Former Amherst selectman David Keenan attended the ceremony with his wife and young daughter. He fondly remembered former Amherst resident Christoffer Carstanjen, a young man who had taken Keenan's real estate course at the University of Massachusetts.

"He puts a face on the plane that went into the tower. I can't imagine that a can-do guy like Christoffer wasn't trying to do something," said Keenan.

"I am also here because it's important to remember all the people that perished," he added.

And on 9-11-02—on a blustery night in famously liberal Amherst, Massachusetts—that seemed to be the general consensus.

 


Tuesday January 13, 2004


 


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