Cayce, SC (Paul Kirby) - Each year on September 11th, communities around Lexington County choose to honor and remember those who gave their lives on that fateful September 11th in New York City 18 years ago. There’s a large ceremony in Columbia at the memorial near the convention center. There are smaller public opportunities to grieve, meditate, and draw toward other Americans for comfort and strength. Some choose to remember alone.
Anyone who lived through the day will never forget where they were and what they were doing. The ceremonies are out of respect for the dead and to remind the young. We now have the children of police officers and firefighters that died that day graduating high school. They were born just before or just after the tragic day and didn’t know the parent that the older family members speaks about. It’s the young who need to be aware of just how dangerous forgetting might be. That’s why so many people and places do something to remember.
The City of Cayce has a tradition that both honors the departed and reminds the parents, family, teachers, and story tellers to explain to the young what happened on September 11th, 2001. At just the right moment, the Cayce Department of Public Safety raises the American Flag at the Blossom Street Bridge coming into the city. It is hoisted at 8:46 a.m., the time this all began. That’s the time that American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center 18 years ago. In Cayce, this is just one way the city remembers the many heroes and the innocent lives taken on that tragic day in our America’s history.
If you don’t already have plans on how you will honor and remember that day, check out the City of Cayce of the Cayce Department of Public Safety on Facebook. They will be live streaming Wednesday morning at 8:46 a.m. as their officers and firefighters raise this symbol of hope, honor, patriotism and remembrance; the flag of the United States of America. #NeverForget
