Bob Russo, mayor of Montclair during 9/11, speaks during a ceremony at the township’s 9/11 monument Friday, Sept. 11, 2026, as Mayor Dr. Renee Baskerville, right, looks on. Behind him, left, is Hillary Ruben Hans, whose brother, Ron Ruben, died at the World Trade Center. (MATT KADOSH/MONTCLAIR LOCAL)

For four and a half minutes, Hillary Ruben Hans stayed on the phone with her brother Ron as he waited inside the World Trade Center’s South Tower.

“We listened to the P.A. announcements telling everyone to stay where they were. Ronnie and I, we hugged through the phone,” Hans, now 62, said in an interview. “We connected, said our ‘love-yous.’”

Ron Ruben, 36, is among the nine names listed on the 9/11 monument steps from the Watchung Avenue Train Station, where the community gathered on Friday to mark the 25th anniversary of the attacks.

A Solemn Ceremony

Hans said she asked her brother to let her know what was going on. He told his sister that he would, Hans recalled.

“I just never heard from him,” she said. “Within 30 seconds of me getting off the phone, the second plane came, hit his tower.”

At the ceremony, a bagpipe sounded and the fire department color guard marched. Fire Battalion Chief John Fierro rang a fire department bell 20 times, in four sets of five. The solemn ceremony, known as the “ringing of the four fives,” recognizes a firefighter line-of-duty death, Fire Chief Robert Duncan said.

“Today, the ‘four fives’ you’re about to hear carries a meaning of its own,” Duncan told the gathering. “It honors every first responder and every person we lost of Sept. 11, 2001. It honors those whose lives we have lost in the 25 years since, including those whose lives were taken by illness and complications related to 9/11.”

‘Weight Has Not Vanished’

Mayor Dr. Renee Baskerville led township officials and first responders in the ceremony.

“We remember, not just the terror, but the tenderness that rose from the ashes,” Baskerville said. “We remember the stillness of the skies and the chaos in our hearts; we remember the silence after the sirens and the voices that we would never hear again. Twenty-five years has passed, but the weight has not vanished.”

Christopher Meletta, now a fire captain, was 26 at the time of the attacks and new to the fire department. Meletta was among the Montclair fire department members who stepped forward to assist in the recovery efforts at Ground Zero when called on by then-Fire Chief Bob McLoughlin.

“We worked alongside first responders from across the country in the wreckage of Lower Manhattan,” Meletta said. “I recall trying to grasp the enormity of what we were seeing on those days. From the leadership of this department, I began to understand what putting this uniform on truly meant.”

McLoughlin remembers the influx of department members who came forward to assist in the rescue efforts.

“Off duty guys were showing up,” the chief said. “Everybody said, ‘We want to help. What can we do?’”

Bob Russo, Montclair’s mayor during 9/11, acknowledged Ruben, who is also honored in a memorial at Montclair High School crafted from a steel beam salvaged from the wreckage of Ground Zero.

Russo noted that while the monument names nine victims from Montclair, the impacts on the township go beyond those people. Norma Taddei, 64, died in the World Trade Center. She was the mother of Andrew Taddei, a volunteer to the Montclair Ambulance Unit, Russo said.

“She didn’t live in Montclair, so we don’t have her name listed,” he said. “But you should understand that people like Norma Taddei and others beyond the names on the monument are victims of the tragedy.”

The victims on Montclair’s 9/11 monument:

• Michael L. Collins
• Caleb Arron Dack
• Emeric J. Harvey
• Scott M. Johnson
• Howard L. Kestenbaum
• Robert M. Murach
• David Lee Pruim
• Ron Ruben
• Michael Stewart