Coweta County Fire and Rescue Captain Mark Griffin was on one of two local teams that assisted in rescue and recovery efforts immediately following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Coweta firefighter raced to New York to help with recovery efforts
Written by EMILY KIMBELL
Photos courtesy of COWETA COUNTY FIRE AND RESCUE
“Where were you when the world stopped turning?”
Newnan’s own Alan Jackson asked that poignant question in a song with that title, which he wrote a few weeks after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington D.C. The country music superstar later told reporters that the song came to him “like a gift.” After waking up one morning around 4 a.m. with a chorus stuck in his head, he started piecing together his thoughts and emotions surrounding the tragic events. He has said that he “just didn’t want to forget how I felt on that day and how I knew other people felt.” When he first performed the song at that year’s Country Music Association awards show, he was met with a standing ovation – and gratitude for how he’d captured the weight of the event with such sincerity.
Twenty years have passed since that fateful day, but Jackson’ words ring true: It’s hard to forget where you were when the world stopped turning that day.
Coweta County Fire and Rescue Captain Mark Griffin remembers when he learned of the attack, and his response was one of action. ”I never would have fathomed that the towers were going to fall,” he said. “I immediately called the fire chief and said, ‘If we send anyone to New York, I would like to be considered as one to go.’ ”
Griffin did go to New York to help with the rescue and recovery efforts. He was one on a team of eleven sent from Coweta County; the first group of five left two days after the attack. Part of the second group, Griffin left the Sunday after September 11. By the time he and his group arrived, it was a recovery effort. “The dog teams would come at night,” he recalls. “They would do their smelling of everything and mark it. Then we’d come back in the daytime and start digging with our hands and a five-gallon bucket. Everything was just dust – compacted dust.”
Despite the tragedy around them, Mark recalls the spirit of patriotism that was inspiring during that time. “Everywhere we went, we didn’t have to pay for food, gas or a place to stay,” he said. “Everyone who knew we were going to Ground Zero, they paid for our entire way. While we were here, people felt compelled in their hearts to cook food, bring water, bring clothes, bring gloves, bring glasses, bring respirators. They just felt the need to come and help.”
After the Coweta firefighters returned home, the local fire department sent in an application to the Port Authority in New York to host a piece of the fallen World Trade Center as part of the agency’s program to memorialize the event. Coweta County’s memorial piece is located at the Coweta County Fire and Rescue Headquarters on Turkey Creek Road in Newnan.
The department received the piece in 2012. Griffin says the department chose to exhibit the piece unaltered, and he remains impressed by its size and significance. “Most got a piece the size of a cell phone,” he said. “Coweta got a piece that weighs hundreds of pounds.”
While many of the nation's fire departments that assisted after 9-11 received commemorative pieces of the Twin Towers in gratitude for their help, most of those remembrance pieces were small, while that given to Coweta County Fire and Rescue was an enormous piece weighing several hundred pounds. The gift was due to the local department's swift response, according to Firefighter Mark Griffin who was among Coweta's dozen who traveled to assist in New York City twenty years ago.
The firefighters who worked at Ground Zero memorialize September 11 in a variety of ways. Griffin gathers a group of people together to climb Stone Mountain each anniversary. They climb in their gear and take a moment of silence for each time a building was hit and fell. Griffin says the act is symbolic. “Our brothers climbed those towers to put out the fires, and we are continuing their climb,” he says.
September 11 was catastrophic, and the memorialization is certainly worthy, even twenty years later, according to Griffin. “New York lost 344 firefighters,” he says. “Coweta doesn’t even have 344 firefighters in its whole department. They lost over 80 pieces of apparatus. We don’t even have that many. They lost captains, lieutenants, chiefs, a chaplain.”
Not only were lives lost and mourned, but the entire landscape of the nation changed: airport security became federalized with the creation of the Transportation Security Administration, architecture codes for skyscrapers were changed, anti-Islamic violence saw a staggering increase, and forty-eight bills and laws were approved or signed into law as a result of the events.
Despite the tragedy and loss, Captain Griffin wants people to remember the patriotism displayed above all else.
“I think when people are faced with something bigger than them, they stop being petty about other things that they thought were important, and they come together,” he says.
The acts of kindness, the outpouring of support, and the love of country is what he chooses to remember this twentieth anniversary of the attack.
“It didn’t matter if you were old, young, male, female, black, white – you came to help and do what you could do,” he concludes. “Everyone was part of a common goal.”
Service set for 20th Anniversary of 9-11
We Remember
9-11-2011: Scouts routinely take part in the 9-11 remembrance ceremony in Newnan each year, including in 2011 when these Cub Scouts participated. Photo courtesy of Verna Funk.
For almost each of the 20 years since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Verna Funk has spearheaded a memory vigil. The first was two decades ago on the day after the tragedy.
"Our Cub Scouts were meeting at St. George Catholic Church, so we wrote "Get Well America" letters and sent them to President Bush and had a candlelight ceremony," she recalls.
Since then, Funk has led an observance almost each year since 9-11. This year's event is set for Saturday, September 11, at 7 p.m. at Veteran's Memorial Park at the corner of Jackson Street and Temple Avenue in downtown Newnan. Funk encourages guests to bring lawn chairs for the one-hour ceremony.
The theme of this year's service is based on Alan Jackson's hit song "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)," according to Funk. Past observances have included participants reading scripts of actual messages or recordings from those in the towers or on airplanes in 2001. This year's event will feature Coweta residents recalling where they were when they learned of the attack and how it impacted them, says Funk.
"It's the stories that sometimes you don't hear about, and we share stories like these every year.
We try to show the magnitude of the event," she says, recalling one such story in particular: "I remember that in Newnan after 9-11, people were stealing flags off of front porches because everybody wanted a flag to wave to show they were American."
Funk also recalls how 11 firefighters from the Coweta Fire Department rushed to New York to help with rescue and recovery efforts. (See article above.)
Along with singing the National Anthem and "God Bless America," the observance will include a rendition of Jackson's famous song, Funk adds.
NCM