The toneless burst of a sole bagpipe pierced downtown Atlanta Monday morning, gradually giving way to a mournful rendition of “Amazing Grace” that hushed the police officers, firefighters and others gathered to commemorate the events that rattled the nation on Sept. 11, 2001.
The ceremony on the eve of the 11th anniversary of the attacks was mostly for, and focused on, the first responders who were among those who died in the terrorist attacks. But the pomp and massive American flag held by a Atlanta firetruck crane over the city’s public safety headquarters also drew a handful of passers-by.
“At first I thought it was a graduation, something happy,” said Ralph Strickland, a dishwasher who paused and fell into the somber reflection. “You’ve got to let folks know. We all remember.”
Since the last time the nation observed the grim anniversary of 9/11, American forces have killed the purported mastermind of the attacks, Osama bin Laden. Military strikes also have decimated al-Qaida, the terrorist organization bin Laden led.
Such public safety work continues on the global and national scale, while in Atlanta, the city continues to close in on its goal of 2,000 sworn officers to protect the community, Atlanta Police Chief George Turner said.
“It takes something special to be in the roles we find ourselves in,” Turner told fellow officers, firefighters, paramedics and emergency medical technicians. “When other people are running away, we are running to the fight. It’s important to know young men and young women are continuing to run into this line of work.”
Allies are everywhere. Mario Vieira was in the Brazilian army and watched 9/11 unfold from half a world away.
Now, he is in his second year as an Atlanta firefighter, drawn to the United States for love and to a new profession out of a sense of duty to his adopted country. That duty includes the choice he and his wife, already parents to two children, made to recently adopt five siblings who would have otherwise been separated in their search for a new home.
“It wasn’t only the United States that was hurt. Our hearts were broken, too, at all the lives that were lost,” said Vieira, whose parents flew from Brazil to witness the ceremony. “When I came here, it became a part of my story.”
That sort of unity is what Nicola Sime remembers of that morning in New York and hopes for again.
Sime was a three-year veteran of the New York Police Department who worked to help guide people from the rubble and search for nonexistent survivors.
Sime, who has worked as an Atlanta police officer since moving away in 2005, said people from all over helped in the aftermath. The power of togetherness should be the real legacy of the attacks, he said.
“We are here to serve one another, to help one another,” Sime said. “United, we are stronger and can overcome any challenge.”
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