Sep. 9--PEABODY -- The city will honor two former Peabody residents who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with a ceremony at a new memorial park on Friday, the anniversary of the tragedy.

The remembrance will begin at 8 a.m. when participants will gather at the corner of Fairmont Road and Grandview Avenue and walk up the short hill to the park on Grandview. The service at the park will pay homage to the passengers and public safety personnel who lost their lives on Sept. 11, according to an announcement yesterday by Mayor Michael Bonfanti.

Family members of N. Janis Lasden and Christine Barbuto are expected to attend, said Bill Power, chairman of the Community Preservation Committee. Separate honor guards from the police and fire departments will also participate. A police car and fire truck will be used to symbolize the public safety personnel who died that day, Power said.

The city recently purchased land for the park with $79,000 of Community Preservation Act funds. The CPA combines a 1 percent surcharge on Peabody taxpayers and state funding.

The half-acre parcel at 0 Grandview Ave. will include a memorial, benches and a flagpole. Lasden, 46, and Barbuto, 32, were en route to Los Angeles aboard Flight 11 when it was hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City.

Barbuto, a former basketball cheerleader and West Peabody native, graduated from Peabody High in 1986. She worked as a buyer of women's sportswear for TJX and was on a business trip with six other buyers.

Lasden and her boyfriend, Donald Ditullio, were headed to Palm Springs for a vacation at the time of the crash. The park site is two doors down from her Grandview Avenue home. Work to set aside a park started in 2001, within weeks of Sept. 11, when Lasden's neighbors started collecting signatures on a petition.

"It will be brief, but I think very poignant," Power said of the ceremony. It will become an annual event in Peabody. "It's something we can be proud of," he said.

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