Southern Oregon will mark a quarter-century since the September 11 terrorist attacks Friday, with firefighters and residents gathering in Grants Pass and Ashland for public ceremonies commemorating the victims, first responders and events of September 11, 2001.
The anniversary will be especially visible in Grants Pass, where a piece of the World Trade Center will be displayed at Reinhart Volunteer Park during Rural Metro Fire’s annual 9/11 Patriot Day Track Walk. The event is scheduled from 9 to 10 a.m. at the park, 1690 SW Webster Road, and is open to the public.
Local firefighters and emergency vehicles will assemble near the track as residents participate in the commemorative walk. American flags are encouraged, and attendance is not limited to those who want to walk. The park track is accessible to people with disabilities, allowing residents to participate in the observance from along the route as well.
The World Trade Center artifact gives this year’s Josephine County ceremony an uncommon connection to the attack site in Lower Manhattan. Twenty-five years after the Twin Towers were destroyed, a surviving piece of the complex will stand in a Grants Pass park surrounded by the firefighters, first responders and community members gathered for the anniversary.
The walk follows the approximately 102 minutes between the first aircraft striking the World Trade Center and the collapse of the North Tower. It was during those minutes that four hijacked commercial airliners carried out attacks in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania, leaving scenes that would define one of the deadliest mornings in American history.
American Airlines Flight 11 struck the World Trade Center’s North Tower at 8:46 a.m. Eastern time. United Airlines Flight 175 hit the South Tower 17 minutes later. American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m., while United Airlines Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 10:03 a.m. after passengers and crew members attempted to overpower the hijackers.
The attacks killed 2,977 victims, excluding the 19 hijackers. The death toll included 343 New York City firefighters, 23 New York City police officers and 37 Port Authority police officers, along with airline passengers and crews, military and civilian personnel at the Pentagon and thousands of people working in and around the World Trade Center.
Southern Oregon’s observance will extend into Jackson County, where Ashland Fire & Rescue is preparing a separate ceremony Friday morning.
The 9/11 Remembrance and Painting Dedication Ceremony will run from 8:30 to 10 a.m. at Ashland Fire Station 1, 455 Siskiyou Boulevard. The public event will commemorate the anniversary while incorporating the dedication of a painting at the station.
Fire stations have remained prominent gathering places for September 11 ceremonies across the country because of the extraordinary losses suffered by emergency services that morning. Firefighters climbed the stairwells of the World Trade Center towers as civilians descended toward the streets, and hundreds of emergency personnel were still conducting rescue operations when the buildings collapsed.
Friday’s ceremonies arrive with September 11 crossing a generational boundary. Twenty-five years now separate the Rogue Valley from the morning of the attacks. Residents who were young adults in 2001 are approaching or have entered middle age, children who watched the events unfold are now adults with families of their own, and an increasing share of the community was not yet born.
The anniversary nevertheless remains embedded in the nation’s civic calendar. September 11 is federally designated Patriot Day, with American flags lowered to half-staff and ceremonies conducted by government agencies, emergency services, veterans organizations and communities throughout the United States.
In Southern Oregon, the anniversary will be marked without a large centralized regional ceremony. Instead, the Rogue Valley’s confirmed public commemorations will take place within the communities themselves, beginning at Ashland’s Fire Station 1 and continuing at Reinhart Volunteer Park in Grants Pass.
For Josephine County residents, the Grants Pass ceremony offers a particularly tangible encounter with the history being commemorated. The piece of World Trade Center steel that will be displayed Friday survived a site where two 110-story towers once dominated the Manhattan skyline and where firefighters, police officers and civilians died by the thousands.
It will be nearly 3,000 miles from New York when it goes on display in Grants Pass.
Twenty-five years after September 11, Southern Oregon’s firefighters and residents will gather around it Friday morning.