Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Matt Rush speaks at the Friday Sept. 11 remembrance event at the James Polk Stone Community Bank parking lot. With the event held on Friday, Rush spoke of his completely normal Sept. 10, 2001, and how the next two days put him through a range of emotions from fear to anger to hope.
With a bit of local tradition, and possibly a new nationwide tradition, eastern New Mexico last week marked the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Friday saw Portales gather for a morning parking lot event hosted by James Polk Stone Community Bank. The annual event is put on by bank President David Stone to thank local first responders and never forget the events of that day.
Speaker Matt Rush, noting the event was held on Sept. 10, spoke of the perfectly normal Sept. 10, 2001, he had, completely unaware of what would unfold in just 24 hours.
"You probably don't remember what you were doing on Sept. 10, 2001," Rush said, "but you were probably doing something similar the day before that, and the day before that, and probably the day before that."
Rush spoke of that three-day period as a spectrum of America, and recalled the America of Sept. 12, 2001, when there were no party lines and everybody was simply an American.
On Saturday, about 100 gathered to honor a selection of Sept. 11 victims by name. Curry County, through its teen court program, was one of 60 founding communities in the inaugural Flag of Honor Across America Memorial. Emcee Kristian Price, the county's community programs coordinator, took the crowd through the events of Sept. 11. A trio of guest speakers talked about how a nondescript Tuesday morning, and their lives, were uprooted by the attacks.
The back half of the program featured volunteers reciting the names of 55 people killed either on Sept. 11 or during the Feb. 26, 1993, attack on the World Trade Center.
For more on each ceremony, see our special Sept. 11 section.
