COLUMBIA — In preparation for mid-Missouri’s 9/11 remembrance ceremony, members of the University of Missouri’s Sigma Nu Fraternity chapter and United States Exercise Tiger Foundation placed over 250 flags outside of the Boone County Courthouse.
Around 20 members of the fraternity placed flags in the shape of the Pentagon, honoring the troops and civilians that died there during the attacks in 2001.
Another 40 flags will represent the Missourians and MU grad who died at the World Trade Center that day, and 20 flags for the Missouri soldiers who died in Afghanistan the past 23 years.
“Us at Sigma Nu, we came out here to build this assemblage for 9/11 to give back to the community,” Vince Nerviani, a sophomore with the fraternity, said.
“Just to pay tribute to the victims. We are a very patriotic fraternity and we enjoy giving back,” Bennett Steffan, another member of the fraternity, said.
United States Exercise Tiger Foundation, which is a veteran honors foundation and supplied the flags, supports veterans from all over the nation. It moved to Columbia in 2012.
“It gives us an opportunity to thank all of those who have served, those who are serving today, and those who think they would like to serve tomorrow,” Susan Haines, the national executive director for the foundation, said.
“It gives me a personal opportunity to thank everyone and ask the other families that join us for the ceremonies to thank the families who have children that have served in the military,” Haines said. “Each one of them has given part of their life for the time they have been in uniform and they come back sometimes with unseen wounds and it affects them the rest of their life.”
Haines has a daughter that served in the army in the early 2000s.
“As a mother I look at my daughter serving in the military as a chance to be proud of her, but it was also a stressful time on me knowing that my daughter was in a foreign country and that if there was a conflict or she was injured there was nothing I could do to help her,” Haines said. “And I know that other families feel that way.”
The mid-Missouri Patriot Day Remembrance and Wreath Tribute will begin at 7:30 a.m. on Sept. 11th at the Boone County War Memorial Plaza.
