By Paul Tennant
ptennant@eagletribune.com
— Click HERE to read Katrina Marino's personal reflections on the 9/11 anniversary ceremonies.
HAVERHILL — Most of the students at Sacred Hearts School had not been born when terrorists crashed planes into the twin towers in New York City, killing nearly 3,000 people.
They have grown up with the specter of 9/11, however, and yesterday they heard from a woman who experienced first-hand the horror of that day.
Katrina Marino's husband, Kenneth Marino, was among more than 300 New York City firefighters who were killed Sept. 11, 2001, as they rushed into the burning World Trade Center towers to rescue people.
Marino, whose son Tyler is a sixth-grader at Sacred Hearts, said Osama bin Laden and his cohorts thought they could intimidate the United States of America and gain support for their crusade against this nation by attacking it.
Instead, "It strengthened our pride," she told the first- through eighth-grade students.
Many young people, she pointed out, "joined the military with a sense of pride and honor."
Kenneth Marino had just turned 40 when he and other firefighters assigned to Rescue 1 received that Tuesday morning call to respond to the World Trade Center. Their station was on the West Side Highway in Manhattan, so they were among the first to be sent.
"He really enjoyed the job," Marino told The Eagle-Tribune after she spoke to the children yesterday.
He had been fighting fires since he was 18, she said, starting as a volunteer firefighter on Long Island before landing a career post with the Fire Department of New York.
Kenneth Marino's remains were never recovered from the rubble of the Trade Center, but rescuers did find the front piece of his helmet, bearing the number 1. That item has been placed in a display case, which Katrina Marino showed to the students yesterday.
Asked what the most important lesson is from 9/11, Katrina Marino said, "Live in the moment. You just never know what the next day will bring."
She told the Sacred Hearts students and staff that "those lost will never be forgotten."
Indeed, Principal Kathleen Blain announced that Kenneth Marino's service and sacrifice will not be forgotten. The school will plant a perennial garden in his honor around a flagpole outside the building, she said.
After her husband's death, Katrina Marino and her children moved to Greater Haverhill, where she lived when she was younger.
During her visit to the school yesterday, Sacred Hearts students honored the 10th anniversary of 9/11 with prayers and patriotic songs. Teacher Donald Moss read from the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus tells his followers that they must be both the "salt of the Earth" and the "light of the world."
Saying that "salt is an inner attitude of respect," Blain challenged the young people to sprinkle that salt "on the people we meet" and to be positive lights as well.
Eric Gebski, an eighth-grader who acted as the flag bearer for the observance, said the 9/11 attacks happened on his first day of preschool.
"We should care for the country and be ready for anything that might happen," he said when asked what the event means to him.
Katrina Marino, a Haverhill High School graduate, certainly cares about America. Besides the talks she has given about 9/11, she served on active duty in the Navy for four years, attaining the rank of cryptological technician, second class. She then put in another two years in the Naval Reserve.
Her daughter, Kristin, an eighth-grader at Pentucket Middle School, also attended Sacred Hearts School. She showed a picture of her husband holding Tyler and Kristin when they were very young.
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