BLOOMSBURG, Pa. -- As students walk to class at Bloomsburg University, it’s hard not to stop and look at this display. There are more than 2,000 flags set up at the quad to remember September 11, 2001.
"It’s really powerful. The moments of silence this morning were really powerful for all the students around. They would stop by. It was just a great audience this year," Paige Landrum said.
The Bloomsburg chapter of Student Veterans of America set up the flag display.
"Setting up the flags takes a few hours and we’re all working together, but as you can see the finished product looks amazing. It’s a really good way to commemorate 9/11 and keep that message alive," Jenna Lutz said.
"At the end of each aisle, there is an image of flags as well as a list of names that correspond to each of the locations," Savhanna Paul said.
Students at Bloomsburg University were either very young or not alive when the planes hit the Twin Towers. Brian Agnew was 4 years old and says the events of 9/11 led him to join the National Guard.
"Every year you would watch the videos and you would see what happened and it just really influenced me to join," Agnew said.
There are fewer flags here than in years past. That’s because many of them were damaged by rain. Students are raising money for new flags.
This year’s display has about 3,500 fewer flags than last year.
"Last year, we took a pretty hard toll when it came to rain the entire time we had the display up, so we lost a lot of flags to that, and then just normal wear and tear. This year we started a GoFundMe page to hopefully raise funds to purchase new flags," Paul said.
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