For years now, Tommy Flanders and Audie Powell have been using Sept. 11 as a day to give something back to the county’s first responders, and last Thursday was no different.

The two men, along with family members and their employees at Pembroke’s Flanders Powell Funeral Home, spent around three hours serving up Johnny’s Grill barbecue and homemade desserts to a mixture of law enforcement officers, firefighters, EMS personnel and others who stopped by to take a lunch break.

“We do this because we feel like just saying thank you isn’t enough,” Flanders said. “They get the brunt of everything, the fussing and the cussing. Very seldom do they get a pat on the back, so this just is a way to say ‘thank you for what you do. Come in, sit down, let’s take 45 minutes or whatever time you can spare to have a meal together, because we appreciate you.’”

Despite the somber anniversary – 24 years ago the 9/11 terrorist attacks rocked the U.S. – there’s no ceremony involved in this event.

“That’s by design,” Flanders said. “We didn’t want it to be a lot of pomp and circumstance.”

Powell, a Marine Corps veteran, said the laid back approach helps first responders feel welcome.

“Just to give them an outlet where they can get out of their patrol car or ambulance or fire truck or whatever, and come relax for a minute and eat and enjoy the company of their fellow first responders, that’s what this is about,” he said.

And it is appreciated.

Bryan County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. James Hardy and Deputy Derrick Shea were among the approximately 100 first responders who stopped by for lunch. So was Bryan County Fire Marshall Tim Stillwell and Cindy Roberts, a deputy clerk in the Probate Judge’s office. All were grateful for the reason behind the meal and the meal itself. 

“Tommy and Audie, they’re the sweetest, best people ever,” Roberts said. “I do appreciate everything they do, they really go all out for it, and it’s a good thing. It lets the officers know, and the fire department and the paramedics know, ‘hey, you aren’t forgotten about.’”

Remembering 9/11

While the lunch itself is a way to give back to first responders, the events of 9/11 are never far from the surface on Sept. 11, and it is usually vividly remembered by those old enough to recall what occurred on Sept. 11, 2001.

Hardy and Shea were in middle and elementary school, respectively, and remember utter silence as the morning’s events unfolded on TV, then parents coming to pick them up.

“The whole day was just silence,” Hardy said.

Stillwell was working construction at the time and at a supply warehouse in Savannah. He went back home to watch it on TV, and recalled not knowing at first whether to be angry.

“We didn’t know if it was malicious, at first,” he said, and “then we found it was, and there was anger. And then anger subsided and it was more a concern for our country.”

Powell was stationed at Camp Lejune, N.C., where he served as a rifle range instructor. He recalls being locked down, “then we all went and drew our weapons and we all stood at our posts throughout the entire base.”

Flanders was in a hardware store when the attacks began.

“I remember the people who were supposed to be checking me out got distracted by watching whatever was on TV,” he said. “I started watching, asked what was going on, asked what was going on and they said a plane had hit the first tower.”

Flanders said he went behind the counter to watch when the second tower was hit.

“I came back here and my phone was blowing up,” he recalled.

Among those to call were peers who act as an informal emergency response team of funeral directors, who, for example, had gone to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

“It’s people who have the skills and maybe some assets we could take and were willing to go,” he said. “But we got a call shortly after that to stand down because there was nothing there we could do.”

Bryan County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Joey Waters doesn’t have to go far to see a reminder of 9/11. It’s tattooed on his right arm.

“I got the tattoo probably a couple of months after 9/11 to remember fallen law enforcement,” said Waters, who was on duty at the Bryan County Courthouse when the attacks occurred. “I distinctly remember walking down the hallway going to a grand jury meeting that morning and it was on TV in the dispatcher's office. I asked her what was going on and she said an airplane hit a building in New York. We watched for a few more minutes and here comes another one, and I remember thinking, ‘that ain’t good there.’”

The tattoo, he said, is a constant reminder of the sacrifices his fellow law enforcement officers made that day.

“I see it every morning when I look in the mirror.”

Roberts, whose desk in the Probate Court office isn’t far from the main entrance of the courthouse, displays three reminders of 9/11.

One, a painting of firefighters responding on that day, hangs on a wall.

The other two, small Bradford Exchange 9/11 sculptures wrapped in flags, sit atop her desk where members of the public can’t miss them.

They stay up year round. Most of those who come to do business at Probate Court appreciate seeing them, Roberts said.

“It’s my way to keep it from being forgotten,” she said, noting she was working at the gate at Georgia Pacific in Rincon when a truck driver entering the plant told her a plane had just hit a tower in New York, and at first she thought it might have been an accident.

“Then the second one came and you realized it wasn’t an accident, it was deliberate, and then you heard about the other planes, the one that hit the pentagon and the one the passengers took over that went down in the field,” Roberts said.  

The loss of life was appalling that day, with 2,977 people dying as a result of the attacks in New York City, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pa., where passengers on a hijacked airliner forced it down before it could hit another target.

Looking forward, 24 years later

Roberts doesn’t wish a repeat of that day, but she does want a repeat of the day after, Sept. 12.

“I don’t want Sept. 11 to happen again, but I do want Sept. 12 to happen again, because we sold out of American flags that day,” she said.

Like Roberts, others lamented the discord that has long since replaced the sense of national unity that occurred in the wake of 9/11.

“We came together as a country then,” Stillwell said. “Unfortunately it didn’t last. We parted ways again fairly quickly, and got into our subgroups or whatever you want to call them. And here we are, 24 years later, and how many are there in the workforce now that weren’t even born then, and how many people are out there now celebrating life who have no memory of it, have no clue of what happened.”

Powell said the lessons learned then are fading.

“I think as time has progressed, unfortunately people have forgotten what happened and we’ve reverted back to what we were, if not worse,” he said.

Still, there was almost a consensus among those enjoying lunch that 9/11 itself should be a holiday of sorts as a memorial both to the victims and the first responders who tried to save them.

Almost.

Flanders said he would have to give it some thought, comparing it to similar holidays meant to honor sacrifice.

“Usually … it seems like 80 percent of the population forget about it [and] it’s just a day off work. For the other 20 percent, I would say yes, absolutely, it should be. But let’s don’t forget the reason we’ve got that day off, because a lot of times the reason itself gets lost, it’s ‘I’ve got the day off, let's go to the beach,’ kind of thing. I don’t think it should be that.”

Whitten is a freelance correspondent for the News.