Across the country, people are creating a living memorial — built of sweat and elbow grease — to those who lost their lives eight years ago in the Sept. 11 attacks.
“We don’t have to wait around for another tragedy to stick together and work together in continuous service,” said Jeremiah DeMoss, 22, a business-management student at Metro State College of Denver who helped paint offices at YouthBiz in Five Points on the eve of the first National Day of Service and Remembrance. “This is the good that came out of 9/11.”
The new way of marking this day is part of a larger plan.
“If the future generation learns only about the attacks, we’ve lost something here,” said Jay Winuk, who led the grassroots movement to create a national day of service. “They need to learn about how good people of the world responded when disaster struck. That’s a meaningful lesson to be learned from that day.”
The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act made Sept. 11 the official National Day of Service and Remembrance. The law passed with much bipartisan support and was signed into law by President Barack Obama in April.
Today, in Washington, D.C., more than a dozen senior administration officials and Cabinet secretaries will honor the heroism of 9/11 by painting homes, working in food banks and reading to students.
In Colorado, 25 employees of De loitte Consulting will volunteer at the Denver Rescue Mission’s Lawrence Street shelter, while 30 employees at Kaiser Permanente will deliver more than 70 pieces of donated furniture — including a new desk for the assistant principal’s office — to the Martin Luther King Jr. Early College.
The National Day of Service and Remembrance is the result of seven years of behind-the-scenes work by families of the 9/11 victims.
Winuk said he has seen a shift from national mourning of the early years to a yearning for something different. “Some people are saying, ‘Enough already. We feel terrible that it happened, but we need to move on.’ “
Ken Foote, a University of Colorado geography professor who has spent decades studying how events of violence are commemorated in the national landscape, observed that there is always a struggle for at least a decade after a tragedy to interpret its meaning.
The transition has been particularly tough for the 2001 terrorist attacks.
“Because 9/11 was so tightly tied to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there was a very militaristic theme, it was highly politicized,” he said. “But because of the length of the war, people are saying ‘Let’s take a fresh look,’ and the notion of a volunteer spirit is pulling the meaning in a different way.”
The struggle to interpret the event will continue for years, he said.
For Winuk, the service day is a way to honor the heroic way his brother, Glenn Winuk, lived his life.
Glenn Winuk received a posthumous Medal of Valor for his bravery on 9/11. The attorney, trained as an emergency medical technician, ran a few blocks from his office to the south tower of the World Trade Center in New York to help. He was killed when the building collapsed.
“I wanted to get involved in something that reflected the way he lived his life,” Winuk said. “He lived his life largely in service to other people, and he died in service to people he did not know.
“To be heroic, you don’t need to run into a burning building — you just need to lend a hand to someone in need.”
Colleen O’Connor: 303-954-1083 or coconnor@denverpost.com
