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GVSU students honor those who lost their lives 14 years ago

Posted at 5:43 PM, Sep 11, 2015
and last updated 2015-09-11 19:06:19-04

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. --  On Friday millions mourned those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001, even those who were in grade school at the time.

Students at Grand Valley State University spent the day doing something special to honor those victim's lives.

A group of GVSU students built a day-long memorial honoring the victims of September 11, 2001.

That memorial, made up of thousands of flags representing someone who lost their life 14 years ago, every 2,977 one of them.

GVSU Senior, Benjamin J. Soltis, the chair of Young American's for Freedom helped build the memorial said he will never forget that tragic day. His eyes never left his television as he watched the twin towers fall.

"I’m a big believer in remembering those who fallen and remembering our first responders especially in this day in age, they rushed into the rubble and they knew they were going to die," Soltis said.

Flags were placed on GVSU's main Allendale campus and on the courtyard lawn of their Grand Rapids campus as well.

But it's not just GVSU paying tribute with flags, we're told it's a nationwide project with over 300 schools hopping on board.

This memorial marking a day these students say will never get easier, and a tragedy they will never understand.

"It's a devastation. It's big, it's a lot of people, we lost a lot of service men and women an fire fighters and policemen that shouldn't have died that day, they didn't come home," said Lauren Schuler, a student at GVSU.

"Every single person that lost their life, they were all unique individuals, every single one of them, nobody knew that was going to happen nobody could have planned for that," said Tara Galovich, another GVSU student.