Vice President JD Vance is scheduled to attend the 25th anniversary commemoration of the September 11th attacks at Ground Zero on Friday. He will be joined by Matthew Palazzo, the son of New York firefighter Jeffrey Palazzo, who died on 9/11.
Palazzo, an active-duty member of the Coast Guard, never knew his father, who was part of FDNY Rescue 5 when he responded to the World Trade Center attacks. Jeffrey Palazzo and 10 colleagues from his unit, known as the “Staten Island 11,” perished when the towers collapsed. At the time of his death, he was also a Coast Guard reservist.
Matthew Palazzo, currently a machinery technician second class, followed in his father's footsteps by joining the Coast Guard in 2020.
Coast Guard Honors First Responder
The U.S. Coast Guard will commission the Fast Response Cutter Jeffrey Palazzo on Saturday in New York. The 154-foot vessel will be based in Guam. Another cutter, the Vincent Danz, will also be named after a first responder who died on Sept. 11, 2001.
In total, 343 members of the Fire Department of New York were among the more than 2,700 victims of the al-Qaeda attacks in New York City. The attacks on September 11, 2001, also targeted the Pentagon and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Vice President Vance will be joined at the Ground Zero ceremony by former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. President Trump is expected to lead a separate commemoration at the Pentagon.