A Bowie man who lost an older cousin and a University Park woman who lost a childhood friend on 9/11 found different ways Sunday to honor the memory of their loved ones as well as the thousands of other people who died in the terrorist attacks a decade ago.
Bowie resident Damon Sinclair, 20, a firefighter in training at the Forestville Volunteer Fire Department, was among a class of Prince George’s County firefighter recruits who climbed the equivalent of 110 flights of stairs at the Maryland Trade Center in Greenbelt on Sunday in Prince George’s County’s first 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb.
Firefighters came from as far away as Texas and the Carolinas to participate, walking up 10 flights of the 16-story office building, then catching the elevator down before walking up another 10 flights until they had done it 11 times to mark the 110 flights in the World Trade Center in Manhattan.
Sinclair’s cousin, Tarel Coleman, was a firefighter who died with other members of Squad 252 Brooklyn after rescuing people from an elevator in the World Trade Center.
“I was remembering my cousin, and the other 342 firefighters, some of who I knew too,” said Sinclair, who was 10 years old when his cousin died.
“It was the least I could do to honor their memories,” he said Sunday after making the climb with his class, which is due to graduate in November.
The climb in Greenbelt was replicated in cities around the country, with proceeds from the events to be donated to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, which will use them to help the families of firefighters who have died in the line of duty.
Also on Sunday, Julia Ruth, 19, a University Park resident and student at the University of Maryland, College Park, found a way to remember her friend, Zoe Falkenberg, who was killed on 9/11, by walking the labyrinth in the Garden of Reflection and Remembrance at the Memorial Chapel at the university.
Zoe, a University Park resident and student with Julia at University Park Elementary School at the time, was 8 when she and her family died aboard American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon.
Shortly before Zoe was to leave and spend two months in Australia with her family, Julia and another childhood friend of Zoe’s had gotten together to buy three identical Beanie Babies cats, one for each of the friends.
“I still did not fully understand until years later, because Zoe’s death is something that I have had to process over time,” Julia Ruth said in an email. “Today, when I walk, I will have a chance to further process what I could not at age 9.”
More than 700 students, faculty, staff and others volunteered to walk the labyrinth Sunday in memory of those who died, said Marsha Guenzler-Stevens, director at the Stamp Student Union at the university, who helped organize the event that continued for 24 hours.
Some volunteers walked with biographies of victims in their hands, while others sat on benches after they walked the labyrinth, recording their thoughts in provided journals.
Also walking the labyrinth were members of the university’s Muslim Students Association, who were also children at the time of the attacks.
Muneer Zuhurudeen, 19, a junior studying mechanical engineering, was in fifth grade at Capitol Heights Elementary School when the attacks took place.
“They chose not to tell us what happened,” he said. “I thought the president might have died. They sent us home early.”
Zuhurudeen remembers his older sister being harassed at Kenmoor Middle School because she wore a head scarf. He and fellow engineering student Osama Eshera, 19, who lives in Howard County, said they were often called upon to explain Islam to fellow classmates, but they saw that as a good thing because it helped promote understanding.
Young firefighters and college students both said they were defined by 9/11 because it has shaped the country they grew up in, a county that no longer feels invincible after terrorist hijackers crashed American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 into the World Trade Center in New York and American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.
United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pa., after passengers attempted to regain control of the hijacked plane.
Prince George’s County Fire Chief Marc Bashoor evoked memories of that day by asking his 911 dispatchers to broadcast a request for a moment of silence at the exact times that the planes hit the buildings, the towers collapsed and Flight 93 crashed into the ground in Shanksville.
The requests were broadcast from the 911 call center in Bowie to volunteers outside the Maryland Trade Center and were also heard in fire stations around the county on Sunday morning.
Jaimee Joroff, a career firefighter who works in the quality assurance office of the Prince George’s County fire department, also made the climb wearing a firefighter suit that weighed at least 20 pounds.
She, along with other volunteers, carried photos of the people who died at the World Trade Center assembled by the Ladies Auxiliary of the Prince George’s County Volunteer Fire and Rescue Association .
“We’re here completing what they couldn’t do that day,” said Joroff, who was 20 and in college, and working as a volunteer at the Hyattsville fire station, when the planes hit.
“We were lucky to grow up in safe country and now it’s over,” she remembers thinking.
“But there’s hope for peace as well,” she said Sunday. “It’s not over. We can still believe in something better.”
vterhune@gazette.net
Copyright © 2012 Post-Newsweek Media, Inc./Gazette.Net