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September 11, 2006

Green's smallness was comforting today

WARWICK – Business travelers and vacationers mixed this morning at T.F. Green Airport as they arrived and departed from an airport whose size put some travelers at ease.

“If we were flying out of Logan [in Boston] or LaGuardia [in New York], I would have probably been a little more nervous,” said Michelle Stolaronek, 32, of Lisbon, Conn., who was preparing to fly to Disney World this morning with her siblings and their families.

The security checkpoint seemed to be going slower than normal, said Stolaronek’s sister, Holley Ohar, 34, who has always hated flying. That slowness was just the right approach to make Ohar “feel better about” flying, she said.

On this Monday morning, which is mostly a business travel day, passengers were halted from going through airport-security screening for a few minutes, starting at 8:41 a.m., to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America, said Joseph S. Salter, federal security director at T.F. Green and a Transportation Security Administration employee.

Salter had retired from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey when the terrorists flew airplanes into New York’s twin towers and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. five years ago. He said today that he lost 37 friends, former colleagues and former employees from the Port Authority in those attacks.

Remembering all those he and so many others lost on that day, Salter spoke this morning to about 70 TSA employees who had gathered for the commemoration. Then, they held a moment of silence and listened as one of the TSA officers sang “God Bless America.”

As for the actual travel today, “it’s a typical Monday morning, which is a good thing,” Salter said.

-- Kate Bramson, projo.com staff writer

Posted by Kate Bramson  at 10:58 AM | Permalink

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