Saturday’s rising sun briefly blinded the roughly 200-person crowd, so they heard the bagpiper before they saw him.
His tones cut air as he ambled through a patch of Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park that held 2,977 flags — each for a life that ended 20 years ago on Sept. 11, 2001.
Adults held kids and coffee cups just before 8 a.m. as the Marietta Kiwanis Club’s Field of Flags event began, one of several such remembrances in metro Atlanta on the somber anniversary.
There were 13 more flags at half-staff to honor the U.S. troops killed in the recent suicide bombing at Afghanistan’s Kabul airport.
Park superintendent Patrick Gammon said the Civil War battlefield was an appropriate place to honor the victims of 9/11 because it is where people contemplate about who we are as a country.
James D’Avolio said contemplation hurts but he knows it’s important. The retired New York Fire Department captain said he was playing on the kitchen floor with his 1-year-old daughter — “Daddy was a lot of fun back then” — when his mother-in-law called to tell him a World Trade Center tower had been hit.
By the time he reached his firehouse, the second tower had fallen. And by the time he got to ground zero? “There was a rainstorm of falling debris.”
He said firefighters dug with their hands or pieces of metal, whatever they could find. He left at 10 p.m., couldn’t sleep, had a couple drinks at a bar, slept a couple hours at the fire station and woke up to work the next day.
D’Avolio said he came home four times over the next 30 days, according his wife’s journal.
He said there were nine funerals for New York city firefighters in one day alone. Over the years, he said, the bodies for only eight of his 19 missing colleagues have been found.
D’Avolio shifted from rescue to retrieval. He worked with the medical examiner’s office on a system that sifts through debris and finds human remains to gives families closure. Just last week, he said, the system identified two more people.
To end the program at Kennesaw Mountain, the names of all 2,977 victims were read aloud.
Eric and Nancy Lucas had planned to go on their monthly hike with friends but saw the ceremony and stayed.
Credit: Ben Brasch/AJC
Credit: Ben Brasch/AJC
Eric Lucas, now 71, remembers being at his downtown Decatur office when his mother in Holland called at 3 p.m. her time saying he needed to turn on a TV. Nancy Lucas, now a 70-year-old retired court reporter, said she found out about the attacks when the security guard at her office wanted to examine her typing equipment.
They both agreed the United States hasn’t learned a lot these last 20 years because of “our fatal mistake of misunderstanding cultures.”
Kathrina Howerton and Ryan Rankin brought his 8-year-old daughter to Kennesaw Mountain to teach her a history lesson.
Howerton, whose father was in the military, remembers being on base in Germany and not believing the towers being hit on TV. “I thought it was literally a movie,” she said.
Rankin, 35, recalls being out of school for a week while in California with his mother after the attacks. Then followed more and more fire drills.
“Every year you don’t know if they’re going to do more terrorist acts,” Rankin said. He said he hasn’t gotten over the paranoia.
Like at the park and other locales around the nation, a moment of silence was held at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
Airport leaders briefly paused airport operations at 8:46 a.m., which is when the first tower was struck. Travelers, workers and officials paused and paid respects during the remembrance event at Hartsfield-Jackson.
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Credit: Jenni Girtman
But as it was 20 years ago, there was positive amid the fear Saturday.
Steven and Deborah Ludy’s daughter had signed them up to package meals at the Georgia World Congress Center for the Atlanta Community Food Bank. The day is personal to them.
Credit: Steve Schaefer
Credit: Steve Schaefer
On that day 20 years ago, he briefly paused his Civil War history lesson at a middle school in Brooklyn to look out the window and see the first tower on fire. Students were shocked, and he knew they needed something cathartic, so he told them all to design squares for his wife to quilt.
Many of the 140 pieces carried personal messages, like: “To my mom, who didn’t make it off the 50th floor.”
Credit: Ben Brasch
Credit: Ben Brasch
He said the quilt was displayed in the West Wing of the White House, and the students received a thankful letter from President George W. Bush.
Deborah Ludy is proud of her handiwork and is happy she could give back. The now-retired hospital nurse remembers wiping away tears and scrubbing up to receive the injured.
“We waited and we waited and we waited and we got no survivors,” she said. “And we cried, cried, cried … because we (had) no one to recover.”
Credit: Steve Schaefer
Credit: Steve Schaefer
And on Saturday, they were ready to help again.
The Ludys were among the hundreds of volunteers who joined together at the 9/11 National Day of Service effort to pack 200,000 meals for metro residents in need.
“It allowed us to reflect back on that day,” she said.
Credit: Ben Brasch
Credit: Ben Brasch
About the Author
