Contributed by Tom Rice
On Sept. 11, 2014, the Freedom Bell that hangs in the Veterans Tribute Tower at Beal Memorial Cemetery was dedicated and rung for the first time by Navy Veteran, Governor Rick Scott. The three-day casting process was accomplished locally at Uptown Station by the Verdin Foundry from Cincinnati, Ohio. The date chosen for the bell casting was in recognition of those who were lost on Sept. 11, 2001.
On that day, al-Qaeda terrorists, an Islamist extremist group, hijacked four commercial airplanes en route from the East Coast. In coordinated attacks, the planes were turned into weapons. Two of the planes were intentionally flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, a global business complex in New York City, causing the towers to collapse. A third plane also hit the Pentagon, headquarters for the U.S. Department of Defense, in Arlington, Va. The fourth plane was headed toward Washington, D.C. But, brave passengers and crew banded together and forced the plane to crash into a field in Shanksville, Pa.
2,977 people died in the 9/11 attacks—441 of them first responders. It was the single largest loss of life resulting from a foreign attack on American soil and the greatest loss of emergency responders on a single day in American history.
Fort Walton Beach’s Freedom Bell is a lasting tribute for us to remember…
