HONESDALE, Pa. -- A moment of silence was held Wednesday morning at the 9 /11 Memorial in Honesdale.
The honor guard from the county jail and others in the community attended the ceremony.
When Vinny Canosa moved to Honesdale from Long Island last year, he accidentally came across something he never expected, something that truly made Honesdale feel like home.
"I was walking through town one day just trying to get familiar with things. I saw the flag and I walked over, and I was like, 'They remember,'" Canosa said.
This 9/11 monument stands on Court Street in Honesdale. It's a permanent reminder and tribute to that day in 2001.
"I came down here this morning because I could never go to Ground Zero."
Canosa thought he would be alone here at the monument, remembering one of his closest friends who he lost on September 11, but he wasn't.
"That's amazing, it really is beautiful. Small Honesdale remembers."
Another person waiting in line to pay tribute at the memorial in Honesdale was a retired New York firefighter. He hasn't been back to Ground Zero either.
"I just don't want to go back down there. It would serve no purpose to me other than to bring back bad memories," Richard Ardisson said.
Ardisson was a chief firefighter in lower Manhattan. He retired two years earlier, but he returned to his post on the morning of September 11, 2001, to help. He's had a home here in Honesdale since the 1980s.
"I was fine until I got here, seeing the monument. Then I became a little apprehensive going back to that day. It brought me back to the day the towers fell," said Ardisson.
Ardisson doesn't even remember how many funerals he went to after 9/11, but he does remember who was there for him.
"I have to say a dozen, two dozen, who remembers? All over the New York area. We had a lot of support from the fire companies, Dickson City and Honesdale who came down to join us for the funerals," he recalled.
All of them remembering not to forget.