When the crowd at the 9/11 candlelight memorial began to disperse, several stayed behind and lit more candles, left flowers and some written notes.
The brief Sunset Flag Raising and candlelight ceremony at the Kitsap 9/11 Memorial in Evergreen Rotary Park was one of two remembrances held in Bremerton honoring those who died and first responders, and remembering the events of the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, 2001.
On Sept. 10, the Sacrifice of Service event was held at the 9/11 memorial. “It’s mainly an awareness where you don’t forget the tragedy, but you promote ways to be resilient and recover from the event,” Bremerton Mayor Greg Wheeler said. Besides the mayor, speakers included Kitsap County commissioners Christine Rolfes, Charlotte Garrido and Katie Walters, as well as state Sen. Emily Randall.
Wednesday evening’s keynote speaker was Capt. Daryle Cardone, commanding officer of the USS Ronald Reagan, an aircraft carrier that recently made Bremerton its home port. In the brief ceremony, Cardone gave a timeline of the events of 9/11 and discussed where he was at the time.
“It means the world to me,” Roy Lusk, retired chief of the Kitsap Fire and Rescue Department, said of the event. “It’s a beautiful, and tearful ceremony.”
Lusk was an assistant chief in 2008 when he wrote officials to ask if Kitsap County might receive pieces of steel beams from the World Trade Center for a memorial. “I found out that we were the first group in Washington state and the third in the United States to be approved.”
Getting the steel beam here was a ceremony in itself. Over 800 motorcyclists escorted the beam in 2010 from the Idaho border to the Kitsap Mall. “I-5 was stopped for us to get on,” Lusk said.
Lusk has continued his involvement with the 9/11 Memorial each year. “Every five years, we do a bigger ceremony, and we’re already planning the one for next year,” he said, adding this year 75 chairs were set out but around 200 showed up for the event.
David Raymond, one of the original planners of the memorial and ceremony, also attended the service. Raymond was part of a softball tournament that took place Sept. 11, 2001. “Because I wanted to do something to recognize the tragedy I created a plan to pause the tournament at 12 noon,” Raymond said. “My buddy brought in a sound system, a friend sang the Star Spangled Banner, and the head umpire took the microphone and said ‘Play Ball!’ There was not a dry eye to be found after that.”
The services aren’t the only time people come to the memorial. “We get a lot of calls telling us that they come to see the memorial,” Lusk said.
Today, the memorial also features a piece of sandstone from the Pentagon, as well as a glass brick containing soil from Shanksville, Penn., symbolizing all three plane attacks. “It really is a touching tribute, and it means so much to everyone, here in this county, as well as across the country,” Wheeler said.
