15 years later, service projects honor the memory of those who died

The volunteers showed up while the wreckage was still on fire.

In the hours after the worst terrorist attacks in U.S. history – at the World Trade Center in New York, at the Pentagon, and in a field in Pennsylvania – volunteers helped rescue survivors and aid the injured. They later assisted in the recovery of bodies. Then they cleaned up debris.

On the 15th anniversary of 9/11, volunteers are working still, giving time, energy and money to thousands of projects that make their communities better. School beautification. Urban gardening. Historic building restoration. Packaging meals and building furniture for the poor.

The commemoration of one of the most tragic days in American history has become one of the most productive times of the year for nonprofits across the country. In the Triangle alone, more than 2,000 people were expected to report for duty over the weekend at more than 100 sites. Many of those participating are youth who were not yet born when the attacks took place in 2001.

The first National Day of Service and Remembrance was organized in 2002 by family members and support groups as a way to honor the sacrifice of those who were lost and to recapture the spirit of unity that swept the country in response to the attacks.

Congress formalized the practice in 2009 by designating Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service and Remembrance.

Locally, many volunteers find meaningful ways to mark the day through Activate Good, launched by NCSU graduate Amber Smith in 2005 as ME³ (motivate, educate, empower and engage) and renamed in 2011.

Smith was a freshman in college when the attacks occurred. Just a few weeks into her first semester, she was asleep in her dorm when her roommate woke her up and they turned on the TV to see what was going on.

“Over the course of the next hour, everyone in my dorm was running around crazy, trying to figure out what to do, how to help,” Smith says.

“What came from that, for me, was a knowledge that people wanted to help. People have a heart to help, and sometimes, someone needs to be a guide for them. They aren’t quite sure how to focus that.”

On Activate Good’s website, volunteers can peruse a list of nonprofits and their projects that need labor, then sign up for ones that interest them. The website connects nonprofits and volunteers year-round, but the days around 9/11 are the busiest, Smith says.

Carter Ellis is community manager for Loading Dock Raleigh, a co-working office space where Activate Good is based. He and his team of seven employees took the day off Friday to volunteer at several projects in honor of 9/11.

Ellis said he would be placing flags on veterans’ graves in a local cemetery, cleaning up a park and helping to pack meals for the hungry.

He said he likes the day of service because, though the nation is divided in many ways, people are still united in regarding the loss of 2,996 souls to terrorist attacks as grievous and senseless.

“It was a really tragic event, but I think it brought our country together in a really beautiful way,” he says. “And that unity is the strength of our country. The day of service is a testament to that.”

More than a dozen volunteers traveled to Granville County to help the Tar River Land Conservancy build footbridges on trails it’s constructing through its Jordan Tract, a 380-acre spread along a tributary to Falls Lake. Eventually, the conservancy plans to open the property to limited use by the public.

Derek Halberg, executive director of the conservancy, said the crew was mostly made up of students from Franklin Academy, a Wake Forest charter school.

“Some of them weren’t even alive 15 years ago,” Halberg says.

Halberg was living in Washington, D.C., in 2001, working in natural resources for the Army. He had friends who worked at the Pentagon.

He, too, saw in others that urge to help after the attacks.

“In our collective conscience, there is a sense of wanting to do good in the face of tragedy and those who seek to seed discord,” he says. “It’s a great legacy of our country that we respond to things like this in lots of ways, but one of the great, lasting ways is in our care of and service to one another.”

While the immediate need to help the injured and to comfort the families of the dead has long passed, there is much work that needs to be done elsewhere. The Day of Service and Remembrance is a good time to do it, Halberg says.

Those children who are too young to remember the events of the day should be taught about it, he says, but there is more than one lesson.

“We don’t want to forget,” he says. “We want the next generation to understand [about 9/11], not to scare them, and not just to mourn it. We want to pass along the tradition of caring for and reaching out to one another, even in the face of horribleness. We need to not let it be ultimately what defines our country and the way we behave as a people.

“We need to show we can counteract with things like days of service,” Halberg says. As Americans, “That’s what we do best, isn’t it?”

This story was originally published September 10, 2016 at 2:12 PM with the headline "15 years later, service projects honor the memory of those who died."