Stow Remembers 9/11

City officials have poured their hearts into creating an inspirational event that will bring Stow residents together to honor the memory of all whose lives were forever altered by the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

The 9/11 ceremony entitled “We Remember” will be held from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Sunday at .

will feature music performed by the Stow Symphony Orchestra, and patriotic songs sung by a youth choir representing and elementary schools.

Messages of hope will be delivered by city officials, area clergymen and Ohio’s top non-commissioned officer, Ohio Army National Guard Command Sergeant Major Albert M. Whatmough.

A chime will sound 403 times in honor of the 343 firefighters, 23 police officers and 37 Port Authority officers who lost their lives in the line of duty on that fateful September day 10 years ago.

And on display will be some touching 9/11-related pieces of memorabilia that just materialized Friday.

City Law Director Brian Reali was surprised Friday afternoon to walk into his office and see a 200-pound steel girder from the World Trade Center sitting on a dolly.

It had been more than four months since Reali – at the suggestion of Mayor Karen Fritschel – applied to secure a piece of steel from Ground Zero. It arrived just in time to be displayed at the city’s 9/11 remembrance ceremony.

( to read Reali’s letter that accompanied the city’s application to the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey).

Linda Nahrstedt, community information coordinator for the , was surprised to receive a phone call Friday from Robin Kline, a second-grade teacher at .

“She wanted to give me drawings done by her second grade class at the time of 9/11, 2001. These students are now in 12th grade,” Nahrstedt said. “(Kline) said she waited a couple of days after the events of 9/11 and – never having covered the topic in class – she asked the students to draw pictures of what they were thinking. The drawings are very telling.”

Nahrstedt said the laminated drawings created by the now-grown-up students will be on display Sunday.

Reali – a major in the Ohio National Guard who serves as a judge advocate – has a very personal connection to keynote speaker CSM Whatmough.

“We were deployed together in 2008 to Kuwait in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. We were there approximately nine months,” Reali said. “I knew him before that, but got to know him much better through our deployment.”

In a June e-mail letter to Mayor Fritschel, Whatmough said he had spoken with Reali and told him “that I would be honored to speak at your memorial event.”

The Columbus resident explained that he works as the senior enlisted advisor to Major General Debbie Ashenhurst, Ohio’s adjutant general. His job is an appointed cabinet position for the governor. 

“It is a hectic pace and we continue to deploy our Ohio National Guard soldiers all over the world, but I love what I do,” Whatmough wrote. He added that his son is enlisted in the guard, had recently completed infantry basic training and is set to deploy to Afghanistan late this year.

Whatmough, who enlisted in the guard in January 1986, told Fritschel that “growing up as a young soldier in the Stow Armory has served me well.”

After Sunday’s ceremony, the one- by three-foot piece of I-beam from the World Trade Center, will be moved to . Reali said it will be permanently displayed “prominently and respectfully beneath the flags of the United States, State of Ohio and City of Stow.”