Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College and Indiana State University teamed up again for an annual tribute – placing thousands of miniature flags across both campuses Tuesday in remembrance of the worst terrorist attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor.
The nation will honor the 24th anniversary of the Sept.11 attacks later this week. Around 20 student volunteers at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College placed 1,500 memorial flags along The Avenue.
“I’ve helped with something like this back home in remembrance of 9/11, but this is my first time helping here,” said Guerin Cassell, a junior Graphic Design major from Forsyth, Ill., as he knelt to place a flag along The Avenue. “This is just a good thing to do every year to make sure no one forgets what happened that day.”
Another 1,500 flags were placed between ISU’s Career Center and its Welcome Center. Each flag represents a victim of the attacks on the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a hijacked passenger plane that crashed into a Pennsylvania field.
“I don’t think any of us out here today were alive when 9/11 happened,” said Jeanna Erin Brown, a senior Biology major from Carmel, Ind., and vice president of Service 31, as she looked around at her classmates. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t participate in remembrance like this. My generation needs to get involved in events like this, so we never forget all the lives that were lost that day.”
In this fifth year of the partnership with ISU’s Sigma Alpha Lambda (SAL) chapter, members of SMWC’s Saint Mother Theodore Guerin Scholars and Service 31 students participated in the project. This commemoration was started by ISU’s SAL chapter in 2007 and has since become a tradition for SAL chapters nationwide to honor the lives lost.
“Most, if not all, of our students were born after the events of 9/11,” said Tim Tesmer, SMWC campus minister and SMTG Scholars coordinator. “While it is good that they were spared the horrors of watching the unthinkable unfold live on television, they must know so that it might be long remembered that America is not immune from external attack and that eternal vigilance truly is the price of freedom.”
Dustin Bryant, ISU’s Sigma Lambda Chi chapter advisor, said his organization partners with SMWC because of the important work the College does within the Wabash Valley community on a wide variety of initiatives.
“The events of Sept.11 forever changed our American Republic and it’s important for us always to remember this vital day in history,” he said.
The flags will be on display on both college campuses through Sept. 12.