Local heroes lead county in 9/11 retrospective
Speakers at downtown ceremony remind of need for awareness
She was born several years before the "I was born in 1966 - I turned 40 this summer - and it opened in the 1970s," said Marx, Forever ended five years ago this week, with images that are seared in everyone's memory. Carrying American flags, dressed in uniform or in red, white and blue, area emergency responders and others gathered in "It's important that we don't forget the day's importance and that we remember every day that we're still at war with terrorism," Marion Mayor Wayne Seybold said. "We have people who put their lives on the line every single day, whether it's here at home or whether it's abroad, so we as Americans can live our lives as we have for many years." Seybold, who was in "There are things that go on that we don't let you know, sometimes in During the ceremony, they flanked a memorial quilt Marx is piecing together from blocks she and others made after the material was passed out during 2002's National Quilting Day in "It should make a nice large wall hanging," Marx said. Growing up, Dianna Newton was asked where she was when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. A different question, about their whereabouts on Sept. 11, 2001, will be posed to today's youth, she said. "I can remember sitting with my co-workers watching the plane fly behind the second tower and saying to another dispatcher, 'Where did that plane go?'" said Newton, a dispatcher at Marion Police Department. "It still had not dawned on me that a plane could go into the tower. I never thought I would see anything like it." Other Many times since, Garringer has been asked to name the most enduring memory of the experience. "It wasn't seeing the buildings; I'd seen that on television. When I saw it in real life, it was just a smoking ruin," he said. "As awful as that was, what made a greater impact on me, on my heart, were the people we met. "We talked to a police officer whose eyes teared up when we told him we were praying for him," Garringer continued, his voice cracking. "We met a 12-year-old girl who said, 'We're here looking for my mother.'" Grant County Commissioner Mark Bardsley, chaplain for the Marion Police Department, read entries he wrote in a journal while in He read about a night spent praying for the dead over and over again as rescuers found more human remains. "'After a 14½-hour shift and more bodies exhumed, the day was done,'" Bardsley read. "'But this is what I came for - to serve.'" As the service drew to a close, the group recognized those in the room who serve in "I say to you all, God bless their memory and to their families, and may God keep us safe," Thompson said. "They raised the bar. They set a standard for us to live up to. ... They may be gone, but they are not forgotten." Originally published September 12, 2006 |
