TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — From stair climbs to 5ks, community members in Tallahassee were did part to help honor the first responders and victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks Sunday.
"We had power in the stairwells. There was no smoke filling up the stairwells, the building wasn't coming down around us, people weren't screaming, so it's a very small thing that we can do to honor those who lost their lives," said Alan Hanstein.
Hanstein is describing the two hour stair climb that he and over 30 others did Sunday morning at Florida's Capitol building, climbing from the lobby to the 22nd floor five times and adding more than 40 pounds of weight in ruck sacks to honor the sacrifice the 343 firefighters made on September 11, 2001.
"It's a brutal stair climb, we do it with 40 pound packs, we have firefighters that did it full gear today," Hanstein said.
After Hanstein's morning stair climb, he joined people like Tim Templeton and dozens of others for a 5K ruck around Cascades Park.
The group passed around a flag with the names of each of the 2,977 souls lost on Sept. 11, 2001.
"People become very comfortable in the world today, so we want to get out of our comfort zone and do something that's difficult and what we're doing is no comparison to what our first responders are doing everyday, and what our military is doing every day," Templeton said.
Tallahassee also honored the victims of 9/11 by reading the names of the 343 firefighters lost in New York with a steel beam from the south tower of the World Trade Center in the background.
Michael Terhune of Team Guardian held the special vigil at the Red Cross Building in Tallahassee, the future spot of Tallahassee's 9/11 Memorial.
Terhune said he hopes those here in Tallahassee will remember the victims lost and the sacrifices made on September 11.
"The way we act at the airports, the way we work around, the world has changed because of that. The fire department, some of their tactics have changed as a result of that is real important. We really have to think about that day and where we have come over the past 21 years," Terhune said.
