Never forget

In my September 11th post I used a picture from our local newspaper. The picture was from the Tempe Beach Park Healing Field Memorial. On our way to a company picnic in downtown today, we stopped at the Memorial for an in person visit.


The Memorial display, there for September 11th over the past several years, is made up of rows of flags. One flag for every life that was lost in the attack on the United States. 2,996 flags. Each flag has a yellow ribbon and a laminated card that displays the name, home town, place of work or profession, where they lost their life that day and in most cases, a photo. Some have stuffed animals at their base. Those represent the children. I anticipated that it would be an emotional sight. I’ve heard that the number of flags is sobering and it was. And the fact that planes fly low overhead in the flight path to Sky Harbor made it almost eery. But as I began to look at the cards -- reading the names and seeing the photos – I was overwhelmed with a feeling that I needed to look at them all. I didn’t want to walk by a flag without looking at the photo and reading the name. It was the least I could do to honor them. To pay them and their families respect for their needless loss. Not to think about what I was doing or where I was when I first saw the news, but to think about what it must have been like for them in those last moments on what began as a typical Tuesday morning.

Unfortunately we didn’t have the time today. But I will go back. Perhaps each year. And I will read the names and look at the photos and remember.