She was born several years before the World Trade Center opened, but as a child sightseeing in New York City, Laurie Marx thought the Twin Towers had forever been part of the skyline. "I was born in 1966 - I turned 40 this summer - and it opened in the 1970s," said Marx, Marion. "When you're a kid, you don't realize that kind of thing." 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 Marion City Hall on Monday evening to honor those who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and to thank those who continue to fight in wars overseas and at home. "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 Thailand recently with a group of local children participating in the World Children's Games, recalled stories told by the Israeli team of taking shelter from regular bomb threats. But he said the threat of terror is not always so far away. "There are things that go on that we don't let you know, sometimes in Marion, Indiana," he said. "So let's not forget this nation, Indiana, Marion, Indiana, we're still at war." Marion police and fire honor guards carried to the front of the crowd two memorial wreaths. 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 Marion. She hopes to donate the finished product to a proposed Sept. 11 memorial museum. "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 Grant County residents described seeing the devastation at Ground Zero in person. Taylor University spokesman Jim Garringer boarded a bus bound for New York City with a group of students and staff several weeks after Sept. 11. Their trip was not to include a visit to the World Trade Center site, but that soon changed. 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 New York counseling workers at Ground Zero. 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 Grant County, providing emergency services to area residents. As their names were called, members of local police and fire departments, paramedics, conservation officers, dispatchers and others raised a hand and were acknowledged for their efforts. Marion fire Capt. Paul Thompson recalled attending a ceremony in New York when families received medals on behalf of more than 300 firefighters killed Sept. 11. "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 | 
