The Tempe Healing Field, a 9/11 Memorial and a Spiritual Restoration

Bill Salvatore, Realty Executives East Valley, placing flags at the 2015 Healing Field, September 11 Memorial, in Tempe Arizona.

For the past 3 years I’ve had the honor of assisting in the placement of flags for 2,977 victims of September 11. This year, the 12th year of the memorial and the 14th year since the attacks, seemed especially moving.

Each year since 2003 the city of Tempe, with the help of somewhere around 200 local volunteers has constructed a Healing Field, erecting one flag for each of those who lost their lives in the attacks of September 11, 2001. A bio card with a name and personal details is placed on each flagpole, a yellow ribbon indicates a First Responder. A memorial service takes place on 9/11 at Tempe Beach Park at exactly 5:46am corresponding with the 8:46am attack on the first of the twin towers. A candlelight vigil occurs in the evening.

US Marine installing rebar posts to hold flags at the Tempe, Arizona Healing Field 2015.

This year I arrived early. While we located a parking space several small groups of ROTC cadets began gathering across the lot. Later, from my vantage point at the sign-in table, I noticed the groups in the parking lot getting larger and larger. They proceeded to the venue and stood in formation in the center of the empty Healing Field. It’s ‘Marine Week’ in Tempe and a short time later the cadets were joined by a small contingent of Marines in uniform. It was somehow a remarkably sobering sight… such an impressive gathering of military personnel on the same field that I knew would soon be covered end to end with nearly 3,000 flags. These young people, most of whom were children when the events of 9/11 occurred, had no idea the impact they made on this year’s event.

It’s difficult to express what doing something like this can mean to someone. I was living back east when this all went down and as devastating as it seemed to us at the time, I can’t even imagine what the residents of New York City, Washington DC, and Stonycreek Township P.A were experiencing during those mind-numbing moments. I know there were people at the Healing Field yesterday morning who had closer associations and were much more affected by the horror of September 11 than I was. But I believe nonetheless that every person who arrived to help with the event, myself included, was feeling the presence of something larger than themselves. Something that you can only feel when the last of 3,000 flags has been placed in the ground.