LFD Again Remembers
Twenty-four years have passed but our country will never forget what Lt. Jarrod Hill spoke of as “a day that forever changed the course of our nation.”
Hill, first lieutenant with the Lexington Fire Department, spoke at the annual 9/11 memorial ceremony in front of the fire station last Thursday.
He was in high school when the attacks happened in 2001. “When the first plane struck the north tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46, there was confusion,” he said. “When the second plane hit the south tower just 17 minutes later, the horrifying truth became clear. America was under attack.”
Many attendees could remember where they were on the day of the attacks, including Rose Meyer who had a clerical position in the Air Force Civil Service for 31 years.
She was in California at the time and can “still see a vision of that plane hitting the first building.” She was taking her daughter to the airport that morning but after she saw what was happening to the World Trade Center, she told her daughter, “You’re not going anywhere.”
Meyer now volunteers at the Jackson House Museum and her son-in-law teaches at Virginia Military Institute.
Ty Dickerson, Lexington’s fire chief, said he still has “very vivid memories” of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Back in 2001, Dickerson was a volunteer assistant chief with the College Park Volunteer Fire Department, which is part of the Prince Georges County Fire Department. He remembers “the chief of PGFD sent fire engines to the Pentagon.”
Dickerson has been the fire chief at the Lexington Fire Department for 16 years and has held a memorial ceremony every year where, along with a speech, the fire station bell is rung to honor the “343 firefighters who lost their lives while trying to save others,” Hill said.
“Long before radios and voice alarm, FDNY used the alarm telegraph system to announce the line of duty death of a firefighter,” Hill explained at the ceremony. “The signal 5-5-5-5 was transmitted over both the primary and secondary circuits. … Tolling of the bell five times, with four repetitions, represents how the New York Fire Department, FDNY, announced the line of duty death of a firefighter.”
As community members, veterans, first responders, and public safety officers observed a moment of silence for the fallen firefighters during the bell tolling, Hill reminded everyone that “their legacy is not only written in stone and memorials, or etched in the names on plaques. It lives on in every firefighter who suits up today and every call answered with courage and in every life saved because someone chose to act.”
