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Twenty-five years after the 9/11 attacks, Albany veterans dedicated a monument installed through the efforts of American Legion Post 30 and the Exchange Club of Albany.

Members of the Young Marines unveil Albany’s Global War on Terror monument Friday at Veterans Park. The memorial chronicles the conflicts and events that led to and defined U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Staff Photo: Kathryn Crockett

ALBANY — Twenty-five years to the day after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, veterans and their families gathered Friday at Veterans Park here to dedicate a monument to those who served in the Global War on Terror.

The monument, sponsored by American Legion Post 30 and the Exchange Club of Albany, joins the park’s World War II, Korean War and Vietnam War memorials. Its inscription reads: “Dedicated to those who fought and sacrificed for the freedom of others, having been led by love of country.”

Retired Army Lt. Col. Ed Northrop, who led the project for the post, served 20 years as an infantry officer, including two combat tours in Vietnam — first as an infantry company commander, then as an advisor to the South Vietnamese military. The deployments kept him from his wife and two children for 24 months.

“I knew what I was doing. I may not have been doing everything just right, but I knew what I was, where I was, and what I was doing,” Northrop said. “But my wife did not know. My parents did not.”

His father served in World War II, and his brother spent 30 years in the Army.

Northrop also was sent five times to tell families — twice wives, three times parents — that a soldier had died.

“Those five occasions where I had to notify families about losing their son or their husband were probably five of the hardest things I ever did in my life,” he said. “… It’s the family’s sacrifice that I always want to emphasize.”

That sacrifice continued through the decades of conflict that followed the Sept. 11 attacks.

“This war was decades in the making,” Jonathan Siskey, a 2009 West Point graduate who deployed to Afghanistan three times with the 101st Airborne Division and the 75th Ranger Regiment, said. “I was blessed to come home,” Siskey said, noting that 2,459 Americans who served there did not.

Siskey wears a bracelet bearing the names of five friends killed in Afghanistan.

Retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. Don Gray Jr., an Afghanistan veteran who was stationed in Okinawa, Japan, on Sept. 11, 2001, also spoke during the ceremony.

“Like many, I’ve seen things that I can’t unsee, and been in some places I never want to return to or talk about,” Gray said. “The best that we can do to continue to honor your sacrifice is by answering the call in service, whether that is in arms or in service to our community.”

For Army Lt. Col. Tim Palmer, an active-duty recipient of the Bronze Star and Purple Heart medals, that call came with another Sept. 11 — this one two years after the attacks. On Sept. 11, 2003, Palmer’s platoon in the 10th Mountain Division led its battalion task force from Kuwait into Iraq. Of the task force’s 765 soldiers, 18 were killed and more than 100 were wounded.

“We learned that the names on casualty reports were not numbers; they were our friends,” Palmer said. “One day, a young person will walk through this park, and they will ask, ‘What was the global war on terror?’ Tell them ordinary Americans did extraordinary things because they were asked to serve their country, and they loved those who they served with.”