It wasn’t that cold, it wasn’t that early, but the attendance at the Sept. 11 commemoration ceremony held at the fire station on Cook Street in Santa Maria was dismal.
The Santa Maria Fire Department invited the community of Santa Maria to gather city wide at any of the city’s five fire stations at 7:20 a.m. on Sept. 11.
Of course, as is the way of things, the ceremony at Fire Station 1 didn’t run as planned. A call came in and the engine, rather than giving the scheduled three sets of five horn blasts (derived from the three used when a firefighter dies) was forced to give the small crowd a single blast from its horn as it pulled onto Cook Street to answer the call.
Alex Carrillo, who attended the ceremony and is a member of the California Highway Patrol, was surprised.
“I heard the tone and said, ‘That’s a real call,’” he said.
The ceremony was supposed to be 10 minutes of remembrance dedicated to a moment many people feel should never be forgotten. But it seems to be; Fire Station 1 only saw 10 people in attendance.
Of the attendees, there were only five civilians, including a Starbuck’s representative who provided coffee and pastries, and this reporter. One attendee, who wished to remain anonymous, remembered his time as a relief worker at the World Trade Center. He was there as the horrors of Sept. 11, 2001, unfolded.
“The smell permeated everything, a sweet burned smell,” he recalled. “Any time you ever thought about it, you smelled it, and now, I can’t smell it any more.”
At Fire Station 3, Firefighter Tom Crakes lamented that perhaps the day won’t always be remembered like it should.
“We’ll never forget,” Crakes said solemnly, “but the public will.”
Santa Maria Mayor Alice Patino alluded to big traumatic events being part of generational memory: Those who saw and experienced it will remember it.
“There’s a generation that will remember [Pearl Harbor]. This generation has to remember [Sept. 11],” she said.
It was Patino who fought to have a piece of one of the Twin Towers brought to Santa Maria and installed as a memorial at Fire Station 3. Mark Neal, one of the attending civilians who attended the Fire Station 1 ceremony, said he was very grateful for everything the fire department goes through to protect the city.
“These guys are still here for us,” he said in a brief, impromptu, heartfelt speech.
This article appears in Sep 18-25, 2014.