COLORADO SPRINGS — Gordon Butler Jr. has prayed a lot in the past 20-odd years.
In the late 1980s, he prayed that his sister, Pamela Butler, would take a desk job. She became a Colorado Springs firefighter.
“I wasn’t thrilled with the idea, because I wanted her to be safe,” Gordon Butler Jr. said.
On Saturday, he bowed his head once more — this time as a firefighter presented the family a flag honoring his sister’s cancer-shortened life.
With bagpipes, drums and solemn prayers, hundreds of people packed Memorial Park for the annual Fallen Fire Fighter Memorial Service. Pamela Butler and 86 other fallen firefighters had their names added to the International Association of Fire Fighters Wall of Honor.
“This is how we cope. This is how we mourn,” said Harold Schaitberger, union president, during the service. “We know how to do this all too well because we do this all too often.”
A procession of motorcycles and firetrucks rumbled from Briargate to the park before the service.
As always, the name of each firefighter was read, marked by the sound of a bell acknowledging the end of their shift.
But 10 years after the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the service carried a slightly different feel, Schaitberger said.
Several families from New York decorated the black granite wall with roses and pictures of firefighters lost in the 9/11 attacks.
Tears welling in her eyes, Patricia Hess looked on in silence.
Her husband, Lt. Robert Hess, spent the first two days after 9/11 at ground zero, combing through the wreckage for his fellow New York City firefighters. The ash in the air stayed in his lungs long after he left the pile.
Robert Hess’ name was added to the wall this year. He died of a tumor in his chest.
“It just reminds you that you never really heal completely,” Patricia Hess said.
One of Maureen Santora’s four grandchildren adjusted a flag while she taped a picture of her son, Christopher, to the wall.
Maureen Santora has traveled to Colorado Springs before to honor her son, who died on 9/11 when the towers fell. She brought her grandchildren for the 10th anniversary.
“These are the people that really stand up when it matters,” Maureen Santora said of the crowd of blue-jacketed firefighters.
