Update: 9/11 Ceremony Set for Sunday Morning on Mill St. Bridge

Update: There will be a ceremony commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on Sunday at 9 a.m., according to Trustee Stan Bond, who is working to organize it. The ceremony will take place on the Mill Street Bridge, and will include a moment of silence at 9:11 a.m. The bridge will be blocked off for the duration of the ceremony

Bond credits Montgomery resident Leotta Carroll, about whom you can read below, with sparking the idea. Anyone interested in participating in Sunday's ceremony is asked to call Bond at 630-440-1007.

On Sunday morning, the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the will fly American flags from the Mill Street Bridge. If you like this idea, you have a woman named Leotta Carroll to thank.

Carroll has lived in Montgomery for 26 years. She said she’s always loved the flags that the village puts up for national holidays, like Memorial Day, Independence Day and Veterans Day. And she felt that Sunday’s anniversary was the perfect time to fly them again.

“I thought we should, out of love and respect for all those people that died, all the policemen and firemen,” she said. “I’ll never forget that day for as long as I live.”

So she called Trustee Stan Bond, who set the wheels in motion. Bond got Public Works Director Mike Pubentz and Village President Marilyn Michelini on board, and Michelini gave the final OK.

This will be the first time the flags have flown on Sept. 11, which is not an official national holiday. But both Bond and Carroll said they would like to see it become an annual tradition.

Carroll, who is 78, said she was at home on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and her son called from Oregon, telling her to turn on her television. She spent the next few hours watching and pacing.

“I couldn’t sit down,” she said. “I just could not believe that someone did that on my soil.”

Carroll said her family has a long military tradition—two of her brothers are World War II veterans, and a third served in Korea. She said that even after 10 years, “people are still digesting that horrible thing that happened to us.”

Pubentz said the flags flying at village buildings will be placed at half staff on Sunday. He said Carroll’s idea to fly the flags on Sept. 11 is “tremendous,” given what a “monumental day it is in the history of our country.”

“There’s a lot of debate on the use of the flags,” he said. “My personal opinion, the more (often) the merrier.”