Every year for the last 10, the volunteers of the Tacoma Fire Department Honor Guard have gathered to remember on Sept. 11.
Some years, Honor Guard members are almost alone in paying solemn respect to the firefighters who died in the attack on the World Trade Center on that bright, late-summer morning.
One year, only five people attended their ceremony at Firefighters’ Memorial Park, which annually honors the 343 fire service members who perished in the New York attacks.
This year, organizers hope hundreds will come to the park at 3301 Ruston Way, at 9:15 a.m. Sunday.
“We said we would not forget, and we haven’t,” said Karen Leming, firefighter and commander of the Honor Guard.
They are calling the event “A Decade of Courage: Remembering Lives Lost and Lives Forever Changed.”
It’s built on the pattern of formal mourning that, with two wars and the murders of peace and safety officers, has become too familiar in Pierce County since 2001. The Honor Guard will post the colors. There will be an invocation and the singing of the national anthem. Local leaders – in this case Tacoma Mayor Marilyn Strickland, Fire Chief Ron Stephens and firefighter and retired Army Reserve Command Sgt. Maj. Tim Culver – will put words around the tragedy. The Honor Guard will unveil a plaque and lower flags to half staff. Pierce County Firefighters Pipes and Drums will play “Amazing Grace.”
Doves trained to return to their cote at Mountain View Funeral Home will fly off. “You feel the release,” Leming said of seeing the birds. “Let it go. Let it go.”
The observance won’t end there.
“Following the ceremony, there will be a gathering at The Ram Restaurant,” Leming said.
All who take the commemorative pin offered at the park will be welcome at the Ruston Way restaurant. There, the Honor Guard will host another tribute that’s customary among those who risk their lives for strangers.
“Part of the police and fire tradition is you raise a glass to the fallen, and then, the pipes,” Leming said. “They are our brothers, our sisters, our family, our fire service family.”
They will toast the departed, hear, once again, “Amazing Grace,” then turn toward Commencement Bay for a fireboat display.
“We will socialize and be there for each other,” Leming said. “We are definitely resilient people.”
That resilience has become more important as time has passed.
With the first 343 funerals a decade in the past, new horrors have risen from the dust.
The toxins from the planes, the fuel, the buildings, are revealing their work. Those who put their lives at risk in the rescue and recovery efforts are paying with their lungs.
“Now we have the cancers, the respiratory illnesses,” Leming said of the lonely battles going on in the big extended family of heroes.
Survivors have had to battle bureaucrats, politicians and employers for medical coverage. Some have won help for specific diseases. Some, especially those with cancer, are still in the twin fight for life and the money to pay medical bills.
These are the same people we call heroes and have promised to remember.
“You’ll see that everywhere, ‘We won’t forget,’” Leming said. “We stand by it. It’s not like we’re dwelling on it. I think it brought the fire service closer, with more camaraderie, more depth.”
Leming has worked two years, on her own time, toward this celebration. To cover costs, she and other Honor Guard members have arranged for fundraising souvenirs – a $15 commemorative coin and a $10 miniature version of the Halligan, a steel tool used by firefighters.
They wanted to make this a day not just of remembering those who served but of service to the community.
As Lakewood Police did on last year’s anniversary of the murder of four officers, they will wrest some good from the loss. They are asking those who come to bring a non-perishable food item – preferably that all-American staple, peanut butter – to donate to Emergency Food Network.
Caring for each other in that small way is a fitting tribute to those who cared for us all.
Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677 kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/street
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