Marion 9/11 memorial dedicated to unity

MARION — Tom “Spanky” Russell was in Marion for a visit when the call went out: An apartment building was on fire, and a child was trapped inside.

“I was sitting there in the recliner, all kicked back and waiting for breakfast,” said Russell, a lifetime member of the Marion Volunteer Fire Department who now lives in Blacksburg. “I left the house in shorts, a sleeveless T-shirt and flip flops, but I went and I was there all day. It’s just what you do.”

A 2-year-old girl died in the blaze. In a building that was collapsing in flames, no one — not even the firemen who rushed to the scene — could get to her. Everyone took it pretty hard; the tragic fire came as a painful reminder of how everything can change in an instant.

A community somewhere faces a disaster like this every day, Russell said. In America, there are always those who run toward the flames rather than away, who accept the risks in hopes of saving others. It was no different 12 years ago when the community was New York City and the flames were coming from its two largest skyscrapers — even though the risk was much greater.

“I feel sure that some of those guys, maybe in the back of their mind, thought, ‘We ain’t going to make it out of this,’ ” Russell said. “I feel certain that some of those guys thought that, and they went anyway.”

Among those killed were 343 firefighters when the World Trade Center, which represented the heart of American financial power, toppled on Sept. 11, 2001. It’s a number that Ken Heath, the town’s economic development director and a volunteer firefighter, brings up a lot when he talks about the town’s 9/11 memorial, which is to be dedicated today in front of the Marion fire station.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed when terrorists flew two commercial airliners into the World Trade Center, flew another into the Pentagon, and brought down a fourth in Pennsylvania.

Heath said he remembers the intense shock and grief as if it were yesterday.

“It’s something that we didn’t used to worry about when got up and we went to work and we went home,” said Deputy Fire Chief Jerry Breen. “Then, all of a sudden, one day everybody’s lives are turned upside down and it’s a different world that we live in.”

In Marion — a rural, blue-collar Southwest Virginia town of about 6,500 people — the memorial features a piece of World Trade Center steel. It’s designed to remind people not only of the tragedy, Heath said, but of the way people came together afterward all over the country. It’s a feeling he said can get lost in the midst of bickering politicians and shock-value entertainment news.

“I think regretfully the lesson has been forgotten by too many people. Our financial center was struck, our military was struck, they were heading for our political center … but we all pulled together and said, ‘We’re not going to let this define us,’ ” he said.

“That’s the legacy I want to see this steel bring to the community: to remember what it was like to be Americans first.”

Even in Marion, he said, the attacks have left a lasting impact. Police and fire agencies still get a lot more calls about suspicious people and things — reports that, in light of the common backpack used in the more recent Boston Marathon bombing, can’t be ignored. Contingency planning has become a new norm.

“You can’t assume that it’s just a backpack anymore,” Heath said. “You can’t make assumptions based on how things used to be. You have to take a darker, more sinister look at things. As long as you have people out there who are willing to give up their lives to take ours, I don’t know that you’ll ever get rid of that.”

The 2-ton, 12-foot-long steel beam that is the centerpiece of the Marion memorial is the largest piece between Atlanta and Baltimore that was awarded through this particular program, Heath said — a big honor for a tiny town that spends every patriotic holiday draped in American flags and where hundreds just turned out with a big sendoff for local troops headed to Afghanistan.

Heath said the town sought, with the help of Virginia Tech students, to design a memorial that would both express reverence and be accessible to the public. Ultimately, they settled on a design that fit within a realistic budget: with the steel as centerpiece, set low enough that everyone — even children — can walk up and touch it.

It consists of a concrete base with two concrete blocks that symbolize the twin towers, with the beam resting askew on top of them. Plaques around it will tell the story of the attacks, and of this piece of steel.

Its dedication will be held at 6 p.m. today rain or shine, Heath said. A World War II veteran will sing the national anthem, and the keynote speaker will be Washington County Administrator Jason Berry, who was working at the Pentagon on 9/11.

“We’re extending an invitation for everyone to come,” said Heath. “If you’re in a [fire, police or EMS] department, wear your uniform and bring your apparatus,” he said. “I’d love to see Main Street lined with fire trucks.”

Heath, who joined the fire department in response to the sense of duty and patriotism that he felt after 9/11, was one of five firefighters who took an emotional journey to New York two years ago to pick up the steel and bring it home — five years after he initiated the process in 2006.

It began with a letter he wrote to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, he said, after he read online that several hundred pieces of World Trade Center steel would be available for memorials. Some while later, to his amazement, he learned that Marion would receive a sizable piece. They brought it home on a flatbed trailer, draped in American flags.

After a 12-hour drive home — strangers honking, waving and saluting as they went — they arrived in Southwest Virginia just before the 10-year anniversary of the attacks and were met for the final miles by a local fire and police escort.

Russell and Breen were in that group, along with volunteer firefighters Tracy Sledd and Andrew Moss, an investigative lieutenant for the Marion Police Department who also joined the fire department in response to 9/11.

“I felt the need to do something more,” said Moss, noting that since then it seems like everyone has become more involved, stepping up to help keep their communities safe. The memorial, he said, is a monument to America’s strength in the face of tragedy.

“If their goal was to kill people, I guess they accomplished some of that,” he said of those who perpetrated the attacks. “I think their real goal is to take America’s foundation out from under it, but America’s foundation is its people, and they’re just not going to be able to do that.”

Sledd said not a month goes by when he doesn’t hear somebody in Marion talking about 9/11; it changed the way people here see the world.

“It gives you cold chills thinking about it because you weren’t there the day when it happened, but yet you’re involved in it,” he said. “It’s always in the back of your mind.”

Russell said the memorial, besides paying tribute to those who died on 9/11, honors the way Americans step up in a crisis; in the aftermath, people all over the country joined volunteer fire departments and other emergency response agencies to serve their communities.

“I’m just proud to be part of it,” he said. “It probably won’t be as elaborate as some of the memorials that were made with the steel, but it will have the same meaning and the same effect.”

Moss, who is reminded each year at Marion’s Patriot Day ceremony of the range of emotions he experienced on 9/11, says that while the memorial may finally be set in concrete and steel, it will forever be a work in progress for a community — and a nation — that must move forward in part by remembering the past.

“It’s open-ended closure,” he said. “We’ve gone through with what we said we were going to do [in building the memorial], but to me it’s something that will continue to be expanded upon and made relevant. To me, it doesn’t end with just setting it there.”

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