STANFORD, N.Y. (NEXSTAR) — You may not be familiar with the small New York town of Stanford. But outside its city hall, is a 9/11 remembrance that is difficult to forget.
Stanford firefighters placed 2,978 flags, one for each the terrorist attack’s victims, in the lawn outside of the city’s center. Among them are 343 red flags for the firefighters lost in 2001. Those flags are placed in a position designed to depict the twin towers.
The bottom of the display has 71 American flags tagged with blue ribbons to memorialize the police officers and police dog killed.
According to the Poughkeepsie Journal, the display was the brainchild of firefighter Edward Zick. He saw a similiar display in Massachusetts.
“I said this is going to be a lot of work but I think it would be really neat if we did this at town hall,” Zick said in an interview. “Part of it was we wanted to make a history lesson for the kids. it’s easy to say we’re never going to forget… but kids nowadays don’t fully understand.”
The display was put up last week and will remain in place through for another week.
“We will never forget our fallen firefighter brothers or the people that were killed in 9/11,” Zick said to the Poughkeepsie Journal. “It changed our history, it changed how we function in the world because of that day.”