McPherson County marks 25 years since Sept. 11 with first responder posts, Meadowlark March
Saturday's 12.9-mile Meadowlark Trail march from McPherson to Lindsborg raised money for veterans and first responders
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Become a subscriberThe McPherson Police Department, the McPherson County Sheriff's Office and the McPherson Fire Department marked the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks with Facebook posts Friday, Sept. 11. On Saturday, Sept. 12, the Meadowlark March sent walkers, runners and ruckers 12.9 miles along the Meadowlark Trail from McPherson to Lindsborg in honor of the anniversary.
Both the police and sheriff's posts counted the 2,977 people killed and the first responders among them.
In its Day of Remembrance post, the police department said thousands more were forever changed, and it named the agencies whose members died in the 2001 response: New York City Fire Department firefighters, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police officers, New York City Police Department officers, emergency medical technicians and paramedics from private medical services, and a patrolman from the New York Fire Patrol. "We cannot and will not forget the acts of heroism on this day all those years ago," the department said in the post.
The McPherson Fire Department marked the anniversary with its own post, simply stating, "Never forget."
The sheriff's office, in a separate Facebook post the same day, broke the toll down by site — 2,753 people killed at the World Trade Center, 125 at the Pentagon and 40 aboard Flight 93 — and by agency, counting 343 New York firefighters, 23 New York Police Department officers and 37 Port Authority police officers among the dead. The post also counted the 19 terrorists who died. "On this day, we remember how a nation became a family and how the world came together with limitless compassion," the sheriff's office said.
The Meadowlark March checked participants in at Riverside Park in Lindsborg in waves from 8 a.m. to noon and shuttled them by van to the McPherson trailhead for the untimed walk back, which organizers billed as a day of reflection rather than a race. A 2.2-mile family reflective walk looped from the park starting at 10 a.m. Proceeds went to The Battle Within, a nonprofit that provides no-cost mental health retreats for veterans, first responders and front-line medical workers, and American Legion Post 140 in Lindsborg served finishers a meal.
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