Karen Ann Charters of Howard Beach, Queens has opened her boat for the Remembrance Voyage in commemoration of 25th Anniversary of September 11th terrorist attacks. She asks only for the fuel that will keep her vessel cutting through the tide—$350, a modest sum for a journey that spans more than miles; it spans months of waiting, years of sorrow, and a promise of remembrance.
On September 10, four souls will step aboard. Each bears the weight of that fateful day in a different way:
- The breath of dust—lungs that still echo the acrid whisper of fallout, a reminder that even the air we inhale can hold history.
- The eyes of the unseen—faces that learned of loss through grainy photographs and looping news reels, the digital echo that never truly fades.
- The quiet guardian—a heart that carries the invisible scar of a community forever altered, yet still standing watch over its streets.
- The hopeful pilgrim—a spirit that seeks closure not in forgetting, but in honoring every name, every story, every life interrupted.
Their vessel will thread the waterways that stitch together Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island—each borough a chapter, each current a soft chant of collective memory. The journey will culminate at New York Harbor, where the skyline watches over the ripples of the past and the promise of tomorrow.
“Let us navigate together—through water, through memory, through hope—and let the harbor hear the quiet oath we all make: We will remember”, says Victor Mooney of Remembrance Voyage.
In 1973, Mooney’s brother began his career as an EMT. Then an appointment from FDNY in 1977 landed him at Engine 248. A later transfer brought him to Engine 231 in 1992. His last transfer took on another role as fire marshal. In 2011, he died from cancer at Long Island Jewish (LIJ) Forest Hills, part of Northwell Health, formerly known as North Shore University Hospital. His Eminence Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop Emeritus of the Archdiocese of New York and the Diocese of Brooklyn, Bishop Emeritus Nicholas DiMarzio sent letters of bereavement for the family.
In the summer of 2002, Victor Mooney, the youngest of four brothers and two sisters, once paddled a canoe around Long Island as a personal tribute to the heroes and victims of September 11. That journey was anchored in sacred elements: a bucket of soil and dust from Ground Zero, gifted by the Construction & General Building Laborers’ Local 79, AFL-CIO, which was mixed with sand and soil dispatched from eleven Permanent Missions to the United Nations Headquarters in New York.
After 21 months on a fourth try, Mooney completed a transatlantic row from Africa to New York’s Brooklyn Bridge.
