Lexington firefighters remember 9/11 victims with 10th annual stair climb at Kroger Field
Lexington firefighter and Fraternal Order of Firefighters President Chris MacFarlane remembers exactly where he was when the World Trade Center towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001.
A student at Morehead State University, he and his brother were getting ready for their 9 a.m. class. As he got back to his dorm room, he heard what happened.
“I didn’t understand and I wasn’t going to be a firefighter then, I didn’t think about it. I didn’t even have a fire truck as a toy when I was a kid – but I felt like something was wrong – that I wasn’t able to do something,” he said.
A few months later a friend of his, a volunteer firefighter, asked him to join. He felt compelled to do something. He joined, loved it, and has been a professional firefighter for 20 years.
Now MacFarlane is a lead organizer for a charity stair climb event which pays homage to the victims of the event which led him – and others – to their career in public safety.
Sunday evening, nearly 600 participants gathered at Kroger Field in Lexington for the Lexington Fire Department FOF 9/11 Stair Climb event. Registered participants trekked up the stadium’s aisles to the equivalent of 110 flights of stairs to honor and remember the 403 firefighters and police officers killed on Sept. 11.
Those involved wore a badge with the picture and name of a fallen first responder, and on the second lap of the trek, rang a bell in their honor, and called out their name.
He said while he and others remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when the towers fell, a lot of his generations’ kids do not, and the Sunday event doubled as a memorial and history lesson.
“We knew where we were at that point, but we are trying to explain this to our children and most of them were born 10 years after that happened,” he said. “The idea of physical fitness is on people’s mind now and this is a good cause and helps them to ask questions and understand what it is – a tragedy that we don’t forget and make sure we teach our kids what this is about.”
Jordan Barnott, the chairman of the committee for the stair climb event, agreed, and said 9/11 was not something in the history books that still was affecting so many.
“This truly is our Pearl Harbor of our generation and is the largest loss of first responders in US history at one time. What people don’t realize is we have lost just as many – if not more – since then from all the guys and girls that were down there in the dust and rubble from cancer,” he said. “So this has affected generations.”
Younger generations were present at the event, including the Lexington Catholic Middle School Football Team.
Their head coach, Ethan Cochran, said while none of those kids were alive at the time tragedy struck, the event served as a history lesson and a way to showcase team effort.
Cochran and his brother participated in the event last year and thought it would be a great team morale booster.
“The big thing we speak on as a team is attitude and effort as far as being selfless and courage – courage is the absence of self – and what a better event that shows this memorial for 9/11 and puts those words into action,” Cochran said. “It’s a team event outside of the football field. We would rather have good people than good football players and that is the approach we have.”
Aside from generational reach to include kids in memorializing 9/11, the event caught the eye and participation of Ana Ruzevic, a firefighter from Birmingham, Ala.
She participates in the Combat Challenge with other Lexington firefighters and it was her first time doing the stair climb.
“I have seen about it and heard about it – a lot of my friends do it at the fire department and I have never had the opportunity so this is our first year coming out,” she said.
At the time the towers crashed, Ruzevic was a seventh grader living in Croatia. She saw the attacks on the television. She thought it was a movie playing while she was doing her homework.
Sunday night she was wearing the name of James Gray, a member of Ladder 20 with the New York City Fire Department who was 34 at the time of his death.
Ruzevic said she planned to take the time to get to know the man behind her badge she wore, to get to know him on a personal level and honor him.
Sunday’s event was the 10th year the Lexington Fraternal Order of Firefighters has held the stair climb. It costs $25 to participate in. The proceeds fund the Lexington Police and Fire Memorial located in Phoenix Park in Lexington.
