I found a wonderful story posted by the Chicago Tribune – Chicagoland – and wanted to share it with our readers:
By Becky
Schlikerman, Ashley Rueff and Jennifer Delgado, Tribune reporters
6:49 a.m.
CDT, September 12, 2011
Watching the attacks on the towers motivated her son, Phillip E. Frank, to join the Marines in 2002. Two years later, the 20-year-old was killed April 8, 2004, while serving in Iraq.People throughout the Chicago area on Sunday marked the 10th anniversary of the attacks in different ways. Some ceremonies were somber and clouded with grief still evident a decade after the attacks. Others marked the resilience that Americans have shown since that devastating September day.
At Little Cubs Field in Humboldt Park, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago fire Commissioner Robert Hoff, among other politicians
and officials, spoke to the several hundred who gathered for the memorial service. The service, which was held at the charity softball game played between Blackhawks alumni and members of Chicago’s police and fire departments, included the sounding at noon of the sirens of the engines, trucks and ambulances in all 96 Chicago firehouses.Emanuel urged Chicagoans to use the memory of those who perished for “something larger.””Use that remembrance to make a further good and do something for your city, your community, your neighbors, your family, your country,” he said.
Hoff, who went to New York to assist in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, agreed. But he said that in the last 10 years, Americans have slipped away from the unity and camaraderie they showed in 2001.
“9/11 — as terrible and as disastrous as it was — it showed what people can do when they want to, and that’s what we need to do,” Hoff said.
At the Bears season-opening game in Soldier Field, sun-drenched football fans watched as the American flag was unfurled to cover the entire field. Following a moment of silence, fans began chanting, “USA! USA!”
At the nearby Field Museum, a somber crowd filled the small space for the “Ground Zero 360” exhibit. Visitors quietly surveyed photos of the attack and its aftermath, reading tributes to the emergency responders. A recording of police radio calls played over the visitors’ whispers.
Among the museum crowd was Jean Mann, who flew to Chicago from New York on Sunday morning to attend a conference and stumbled upon the exhibit.
“I still look at the New York skyline, and it’s hard not to see the twin towers,” Mann said.
Solemn ceremonies marked the anniversary in many of Chicago’s suburbs.
As she sat near a new monument in Des Plaines made with a 114-pound steel girder salvaged from the World Trade Center, Louise Rudd reflected on the tragic day 10 years ago that changed the way she and others live.
“There’s always been a kind of arrogance that it wouldn’t happen in the U.S.,” said Rudd, 62, a Des Plaines resident at a ceremony where nearly everyone sported red, white and blue attire. “It kind of shook my whole foundation of being secure in my homeland.”
In Darien, where a monument that includes a steel beam from the World Trade Center site was unveiled, resident Thomas Jones told of the harrowing escape he made from the south tower at a memorial service at the Darien-Woodridge Fire Protection District.
Jones, who was on the 60th floor for business, remembered the chaos. He and hundreds of people ran down the crowded stairs as
they felt the tower trembling. He slowly made it to the ground level and escaped.
“I’m here not to share my story, but here to share our story,” Jones said. “The terrorists didn’t know that Tom Jones was in the World Trade
Center that day. They were after all of us and our way of life.”
Emma Blaser, 9, a Wheaton resident who attended a ceremony at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, said she learned exactly what first responders hope people will understand on such a momentous anniversary.
“Today taught me you have to give back,” she said, “because there are people who do a lot for this country.”
Tribune reporters Jeff Vorva, Jonathan Bullington,
Bridget Doyle, Erin Meyer, Michelle Stoffel and Fred Mitchell contributed.
Freelance reporters Joseph Ruzich and Jack McCarthy also
contributed.
