Twenty-five years after a September morning that changed the country, Worcester will pause Friday to remember those who were killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — including a 30-year-old Worcester mother who boarded a flight in Boston that never reached its destination.
The city’s observance begins at 9:55 a.m. Friday at the Grove Street Fire Station, 141 Grove St. Fire vehicles will line the front of the station, flags will be lowered to half-staff and those gathered will observe a moment of silence.
The Worcester Jewish Community Center will also mark the anniversary Friday with a commemoration from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. in the lobby of the JCC, 633 Salisbury St. The observance begins more than an hour before the city’s ceremony at the Grove Street Fire Station.
The ceremonies come a quarter-century after 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four passenger jets on Sept. 11, 2001, crashing two into the World Trade Center in New York and another into the Pentagon outside Washington. A fourth plane crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers.
The attacks killed 2,977 victims, along with the 19 hijackers, and claimed lives from communities across Massachusetts.
Among them was Tara Kathleen Creamer of Worcester.
Creamer was 30 and a planning manager for TJX Cos. She lived in Worcester with her husband, John, and their two young children, Colin, 4, and Nora, 15 months. On Sept. 11, she was making a relatively rare business trip to Los Angeles when she boarded American Airlines Flight 11 at Logan International Airport.
At 8:46 a.m., hijackers flew Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
Creamer, who was born in Westfield and graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1993, had worked for TJX for eight years. She had initially worked as a buyer before moving into a planning position after becoming a mother, reducing the amount of business travel she had to do.
A profile originally published by The New York Times after the attacks described a young woman devoted to her family and recalled the life she had built with the college sweetheart she married. Her sister, Liz Waldo, remembered Creamer’s radiant smile and told the Times that her sister had packed an extraordinary amount of happiness into her 30 years.
Creamer was not the only Worcester County resident lost that morning.
Linda George, 27, and Robin Kaplan, 33, both of Westborough, were also TJX employees traveling on business aboard Flight 11. The two women have been memorialized in Westborough, where a steel beam recovered from the World Trade Center became part of the community’s remembrance of the attacks.
Kaplan also had deep ties to Worcester. A 1990 graduate of Worcester State University, she is memorialized on campus in the Robin Kaplan Memorial Garden. According to Worcester State’s Archives and Special Collections, the university’s original Sept. 11 memorial was located near its former gym before being relocated and rededicated in 2016 with the opening of the Wellness Center. The university is also marking the 25th anniversary with an exhibit on the third floor of its Learning Resource Center featuring materials connected to the attacks and their aftermath.
Herbert W. Homer, 48, of Milford, was aboard United Airlines Flight 175, the second hijacked aircraft to strike the World Trade Center. A federal employee with a 27-year career, Homer worked with the Defense Contract Management Agency coordinating government work at Raytheon. He was also active in his church and community.
Flight 175 struck the South Tower at 9:03 a.m., 17 minutes after Flight 11 hit the North Tower.
The Massachusetts 9/11 Fund maintains a memorial directory honoring the Massachusetts victims of the attacks.
For Worcester, the anniversary has a particularly local face in Creamer. Twenty-five years ago, she left her Worcester home for a business trip, joining thousands of other travelers heading to work and airports on an otherwise ordinary Tuesday morning.
Friday morning, the city again lowers its flags and fall silent in remembrance.
Have a story tip, community concern, or insight to share? Email Editor Charlene Arsenault at carsenault@theworcesterguardian.org.
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