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UB marks 10th anniversary of Sept. 11
Honors College students work in the 9/11 “Never Forget” community garden.
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President Satish K. Tripathi pays his respects to the victims of Sept. 11 by ringing a memorial bell.
Sept. 11 has been designated a National Day of Service and Remembrance, and for 50 UB students, that day was spent helping a local block club create a community garden in a vacant lot on Buffalo’s East side.
The garden, the students say, will serve as a tribute to the “spirit of togetherness and community involvement that allowed for physical and emotional rebuilding following the attack on our nation.”
The students, members of UB’s Honors College, worked with members of the None Like You/We Care Block Club to transform the lot at Sycamore and Johnson streets into a 9/11 “Never Forget” community action garden.
The Honors College recently was awarded a $500 9/11 Day of Service Grant from State Farm and Youth Service America, which it used for the service-learning project, along with donations from Fisher Bus, Home Depot, Elber’s Landscaping, National Grid, the city of Buffalo, Tops Markets, Casa Di Pizza, Lucky Mart and Grassroots Gardens.
Event organizer and UB alumnus Justin Karter, an AmeriCorps ABLE member working as a service-learning liaison for the Honors College, noted that block club president Elizabeth Triggs had faced numerous obstacles in obtaining the vacant lot from the city of Buffalo. Her efforts—as well as the efforts of other block club members—“exemplify the ways in which people can overcome obstacles and come together to rebuild community,” Karter said.
“The community has decided to come together to do something about the deterioration of their neighborhoods and have rallied around Mrs. Triggs,” he said. “With our (UB) support, this new community garden can serve as a permanent reminder of a time when the community came together to take a negative aspect of their neighborhood and turn it into a vestige of patriotism and pride.”
Bringing the UB students into the low-income neighborhood where the garden is located “will make them more aware of difference and more dedicated to understanding diversity,” Karter said. “Many university students do not realize the privilege of their own education and the struggles of the less-fortunate.”
Working on the community garden was just one way UB students remembered the events of Sept. 11. Members of the Undergraduate Academies held a “potluck remembrance dinner,” while other students, as well as faculty and staff members, attended a university-wide observance in the Student Union.
As part of the remembrance dinner, students took part in a discussion led by Barbara Bono, associate professor of English and academic director of the Civic Engagement Academy, and David Fertig, associate professor of linguistics and academic director of the Global Perspectives Academy.
Students shared their thoughts on what Sept. 11 means to them and talked about the outcomes of the day, focusing on how the day’s events shaped the nation’s direction, as well as their own lives.
Fertig noted students’ increasing interest in gaining a global perspective and encouraged them to continue that interest, despite the national tragedy.
“In a time when people are busy with the start of the semester and a day filled with heavy hearts, it was nice to come together as a community to reflect and share our common story,” said Hadar Borden, administrative director of the Undergraduate Academies
The observance on Sept. 9 in the Student Union recognized the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, honoring victims killed at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, as well as those on Flight 93 that crashed near Shanksville, Pa.
The program began with the University Police Color Guard presenting colors. Dennis Black, vice president for university life and services, remembered the 11 UB alumni who perished in the attacks, while members of the university community paid their respects by striking a memorial bell.
Featured at the observance was an American flag that had flown over the recovery site at the World Trade Center. It was donated to the university in 2002 by Capt. Steven Spall in memory of the members of the UB family who died on Sept. 11.
Spall is a UB civil engineering graduate and member of the New York City Fire Department’s Emergency Rescue Task Force who worked at Ground Zero.
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