'That day changed all of us': 9/11 remembrance held in downtown Bloomington

The American Legion Post 635 Honor Guard in Normal hosted a remembrance Wednesday morning attended by several dozen people in downtown Bloomington to mark 23 years since the Sept. 11 attacks in New York City, Washington, D.C., and rural Pennsylvania.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the terror attacks.

“Shock, sorrow, anger, those were the three words that probably best described most of us on that and for many days after that,” the honor guard’s Jerry Vogler said as part of the invocation at the ceremony outside the McLean County Museum of History.

Vogler said those emotions would soon turn to resolve.

Speaker Diane Trosel recalled she was working at State Farm the morning she learned the U.S. was under attack.

“All of the sudden, the place just became a tomb. It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop,” recalled Trosel, adding that American life changed in the aftermath of the attacks.

“That day changed all of us. To this day it has changed all of us. We don’t travel the same way we did before that. We don’t’ trust the same way that we did before that,” she said.

Vogler noted the attacks also sparked a wave of patriotism.

“Sales of American flags soared as the Stars and Stripes were displayed in offices, vehicles, outside of homes, virtually everywhere you can see an American flag. We Americans still wear American flag lapel pins."

The ceremony included the playing of taps, a three-volley rifle salute, a performance of Amazing Grace on bagpipes and a flyover.