FORT GORDON, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - Fort Gordon paused Friday morning to remember the nearly 3,000 people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, along with the first responders and survivors who have carried the burden of that day for 23 years.

The post hosted a Remembrance Ceremony at Freedom Park, adjacent to Woodworth Library, beginning around 8:30 a.m.

The event was led by Maj. Gen. Ryan Janovic, commanding general of the U.S. Army Cyber Center of Excellence and Fort Gordon, who served as the keynote speaker.

He told the crowd that 25 years after the attacks, “a lot can happen” — including the risk that people “forget” or “lose granularity” about what actually happened that day.

Janovich noted that many soldiers and family members in attendance were not yet born, or were too young to remember when hijacked planes struck the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. That’s why, he said, remembrances “demand a lot of us.”

“This one demands empathy,” Janovich said, urging listeners to think of “those who suffer, those who lost, those who still today don’t understand why evil flew into town and stole their family.”

He shared stories of people with firsthand memories of 9/11 and its aftermath — including a Fort Gordon community member who, as a young soldier, was ordered into the burning Pentagon to recover classified material and human remains, and a former Pentagon employee who spoke at last year’s ceremony about staring into “billowing smoke” at the military’s headquarters.

Janovich also drew from his own experience in Afghanistan on the 10th anniversary of the attacks, recalling how a nearby truck bomb shattered the walls of his plywood office. He said he still carries a piece of metal from that blast as a reminder of how quickly life can change.

In his remarks, he challenged those who do remember 9/11 to share their stories “from one generation to the next,” and encouraged others to watch documentaries, listen to podcasts or newsreels and “place yourself in that chaos” to better understand the impact. From those reflections, he said, must come action — both in remembering and in staying ready.

“Our commitment to remembering the past is preparing for the future by being ready,” Janovich said, calling readiness — in uniform or as first responders — “a national strategic imperative and a local assurance of American strength.” By staying prepared for war, he added, service members and first responders help “foreclose on any opportunity for our homeland to again be threatened.”

In a separate interview after the ceremony, Janovich said the 25th anniversary underscores how the audience has changed. Some people at Freedom Park had “a vivid memory of it, participated in it, went to war as a result of the actions of that day,” he said, while many others only know 9/11 through family stories or television.

“Our challenge is to honor and respect those that were lost that day, to remember the tragedy that happened and remember what it required of our nation,” he said, “so that we can keep focused on training young men and women to serve…with a commitment to preventing something similar from happening in the future.”

Janovich said the milestone also reminds him of a full generation of post‑9/11 service members whose careers may now be complete.

“The men and women who raised their hand and volunteered to join the military shortly after might have completed their entire career by now,” he said. He added that, along with memorializing the dead, the country should be “capturing the stories of those who served and making sure that becomes a fabric of our history.”

He described writing his remarks alone and late at night, revisiting his own memories — from being stationed in Hawaii on 9/11 to deployments that followed — and then asking what the ceremony should mean to those without firsthand experience. His message, he said, came down to two points: “Be ready” and “reflect.”

“We have an obligation to humbly share the story,” he said of those who lived through the attacks or their aftermath. “We now have an opportunity to pass on that story…solely focused on awakening the spirit of the young Americans…making sure they’re prepared for the worst day when we might need them the most.”

As in past years, the Fort Gordon ceremony featured sirens and cannon fire to symbolically “crash you awake,” Janovich said. The main program lasted about 30 minutes. Additional cannon volleys were scheduled through 10:03 a.m. to mark the times of each of the four plane crashes on Sept. 11, 2001.

Post officials shared the schedule in advance so nearby residents and workers would understand the source and significance of the sounds.

Janovich called Freedom Park “the quietest, most beautiful place on Fort Gordon,” and said he hopes those who attended — and those who watched coverage later — will take time on their own to “go deeper into their understanding” of what happened on 9/11, what followed, and “what we can do as a nation” to keep that kind of attack from happening again.

He said the strength Americans showed on Sept. 11 and in the days after should be “the strength we show every day.”

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