NANTICOKE — The wind flapping the flags above, behind and around state Sen. John Yudichak stirred a childhood memory.
The flags flew high at the start of the ceremony Friday to mark the 20th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001 at the Walk of Honor Memorial on the campus of Luzerne County Community College. Even when the Nanticoke Fire Department lowered one to half staff to honor those killed in the terrorist attacks two decades ago, it fluttered in the wind.
“I can remember as a boy, my mother telling me when we had a warm gusty wind, just like we knew on this September day, that wind was produced by the wings of angels,” Yudichak told the hundred or so firefighters, students, guests and school personnel gathered for the event. “I’d like to think that on today, that the wings of the angels of nearly 3,000 Americans are pushing that wind to remind us never forget.”
For nearly all of the past 10 years, with last year the exception because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the school has kept the lives of those lost alive in memory, honoring the wish of the mother whose son was among the 343 New York City firefighters who responded to the World Trade Center and perished when the twin towers collapsed.
Yudichak recalled how he and LCCC President Thomas Leary met the late Phyllis Carlo of Wanamie and worked with her to create the Walk of Honor at the school’s Public Safety Training Institute as a legacy to her son, firefighter Michael Scott Carlo, and first responders.
“Phyllis Carlo, God Bless you for teaching us that although tragedy may cast a long shadow, hope will always draw us to brighter days and hope will always cast a…
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