Winona Lake firefighter Mike Cox wants to remind the community Warsaw’s 18th ceremony to commemorate the tragedies of 9/11 is next week.
The event has been taking place since 2002, the first year after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the twin World Trade Center Towers in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington, D.C.
Those attacks happened after 19 militant Islamists hijacked airplanes and crashed them into the buildings, killing those inside along with many first responders.
Cox was a police officer for 33 years and he’s been a firefighter since 1966. “So it hit home pretty close to me,” he said.
He heads the Kosciusko County 9/11 Memorial Remembrance Committee and invites the public to once again come out to the commemoration. It is slated for 6 p.m. Wednesday inside the Center Lake Pavilion.
The featured speaker this year is Tinisha Weigelt, district director for Congressman Jim Banks. She will speak on behalf of Banks regarding his thoughts and experiences since 9/11 as an officer in the armed forces and as a congressman, Cox said.
“We haven’t solved the problem of what happened that day. We still have terrorism in the world,” Cox said. “The purpose of the commemoration is to kep the thoughts alive because we said we’d never forget, and if we do then we let our guards down and that’s when it will happen again.”
Cox said half of the monument in front of the pavilion is dedicated to first responders in Kosciusko County who have lost their lives in the line of duty, and the other half is dedicated to those who died on 9/11.
“Unfortunately, there’s been a lot that have died since 9/11,” he said, from illnesses that were caused from exposure when responders arrived at the scenes.
“We’re a nonprofit group,” Cox said, urging people “If you see something, say something.”
