IUP to Offer Annual Memorial Program to Mark September 11 Attacks

Indiana University of Pennsylvania will mark the twenty-third anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on September 11 starting at 11:10 a.m. in front of the 9/11 memorial in the IUP Oak Grove. The program is open to the community.

In addition to an opportunity to reflect on and mark the anniversary of the attacks, the event includes a remembrance of the three IUP alumni lost in the World Trade Center attacks: Donald Jones, a 1980 graduate; William Moskal, a 1979 graduate; and William (Bill) Sugra, a 1993 graduate.

Jones and Sugra worked for Cantor Fitzgerald in the north tower of the World Trade Center. Jones was a bond broker from Bucks County.

Moskal, a safety sciences graduate and Johnstown native, was a risk consultant for Marsh and McLennan in Cleveland, specializing in heavy construction. He was in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, for a meeting at the World Trade Center.

Sugra lived in Manhattan and worked for e-Speed, Cantor Fitzgerald's electronic trading unit. Sugra's family, of Allentown, continue to provide the funding for an annual memorial scholarship in his honor for IUP students.

The university's September 11 memorial in the Oak Grove is located between Sutton Hall and Stapleton Library. It includes a 13-foot remnant of the World Trade Center, on long-term loan to the university from the Kovalchick family, of Indiana.

Speakers for the 2024 event will include IUP President Michael Driscoll and James Leda, managing director of KRyS Global USA, Inc., New York City.

Lt. Col. Erich Steffens, chair of IUP's Department of Military Science, will serve as master of ceremonies.

Leda, a 1995 IUP graduate, is president of the Foundation for IUP Board of Directors. He was honored in 2013 with induction into the IUP Eberly College of Business Hall of Distinction and with the 1998 Young Alumni Achievement Award. He served as the IUP student member of the Council of Trustees, IUP's governing board, from 1993 to 1995. He joined the Foundation for IUP's Board of Directors in July 2018.

Leda has nearly 30 years of experience addressing highly complex financial matters in his roles as bulge-bracket investment banker, investor, financial advisor, and fiduciary. He specializes in advising boards, senior management, and other parties in high-stakes international insolvency and litigation matters.

He earned a bachelor of science degree in finance and accounting (double major) from IUP and his MBA with a concentration in analytic finance from the University of Chicago.

On September 11, 2001, Leda lived in Lower Manhattan with his wife, Leslie (Vanderhoof) Leda, a 1998 IUP graduate, and worked with Merrill Lynch at its global headquarters, located at the World Financial Center. At the time of the attacks, he was one block away from the World Trade Center.

Music will be performed by the IUP Wind Ensemble under the direction of Timothy Paul, director of bands.

In the event of inclement weather, the program will be moved to Gorell Recital Hall, Sutton Hall.

Past speakers for the event have included national award-winning journalist Tim Lambert, a 1992 communications media graduate, whose family owned part of the land where Flight 93 crashed on September 11, 2001 and who produced a National Public Radio series about the crash; student Abigail Knapp, then a cadet in IUP's ROTC program whose family owned land that was the site of the Flight 93 crash; Michael Tyree, the IUP faculty lead for the Flight 93 National Memorial Reforestation Monitoring Project; Danny Sacco, a lifelong resident of Center Township, who was deployed to Ground Zero in New York City in September 2001 and who has been recognized locally, regionally, and nationally for his a five-decade career in public safety; and the late Glenn Cannon, a 1971 graduate of IUP and former member of the IUP Council of Trustees, who was the founding director of Pittsburgh's Emergency Medical Services Department, director of disaster operations for the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency.

This annual event has been scheduled in conjunction with IUP's Common Hour, a time period on weekdays set aside for events and programs.

During September, the IUP Libraries offers a special display in the first-floor lobby area about the attacks.