Twenty-five years after the devastating attacks that shocked the nation and the world, the Stetson community came together on Friday, Sept. 11, to remember 9/11 and the lives taken in the terrorist attacks by placing 2,977 small American flags representing the victims near the Stetson flagpole.

About two dozen people, ranging from Stetson students, faculty and staff to DeLand community members, gathered in front of the CUB, where the Student Veterans Organization distributed mini American flags for participants to stick into the patch of grass next to the Stetson flagpole flying the U.S. flag at half-staff.

With members of the Stetson community working together, the area soon filled with the red and blue of American flags honoring the lives lost on that tragic day and in its aftermath.

“Growing up, everyone hears the story of 9/11 from their parents. I was only four at the time, so I couldn’t really recognize the significance of the event that happened,” said Ethan Saylor, a sophomore business administration major and the president of the SVO, which has been organizing the flag-placing ceremony since 2012. “With this event, we like that it shows how many people lost their lives on 9/11 — 2,977 people. That’s why we counted out all these flags — so you can see how many people lost their lives on 9/11.”

Saylor’s wife, Morgan Saylor, and their 2-year-old daughter, Eleanor Saylor, also joined the commemoration, the toddler helping her mother place the mini American flags with waddling steps. The couple met while serving in the Navy and came to Stetson together, with Morgan Saylor graduating ahead of her husband in 2024.

On why they decided to bring their daughter to the event, Morgan Saylor said, “Right now she might not understand what she’s doing, but I want her to grow up knowing what 9/11 was and what it means.”

The Saylors weren’t the only family in attendance at the ceremony. Jaime Pantoja, a first-year cybersecurity major, was accompanied by his wife, Yarelys Pantoja, who is also in her first year at Stetson as a computer science major. Jaime Patoja served in the Marine Corps infantry from 2020 to 2024, while Yarelys Pantoja serves as the SVO’s secretary.

“I think it’s really beautiful how we came together as a community and did something special for the victims of 9/11. It’s something we need as a society nowadays — just more people coming together,” Yarelys Pantoja said.

Ernest Baker, a senior cybersecurity major and the vice president of the SVO who served in the Army from 2010 to 2013, remembers watching the 9/11 attacks coverage on TV. “I was in a classroom in elementary school. I think it was fourth or fifth grade, and my teacher turned it on. There was already smoke from the first tower, and then we watched the second plane hit,” he described.

Director of Veterans Services Chris Griffin has a more personal connection to 9/11, as he not only witnessed the attacks unfold on TV as a teenager but also was deployed in Iraq from 2009 to 2010, having served as a line medic in the Army from 2007 to 2011. 

“I was in seventh grade. I was in a language arts class at the end of the day. Basically, my teacher came in the room and just read a letter to us, telling us two towers had been hit and had fallen. The Pentagon had been hit. I didn’t really understand — I was still pretty young, the same age as my kids now,” he recounted. “And then I got home and my grandmother sat me down, showed me and my cousins the news, and explained to us, ‘Hey, this is a big deal. This is going to impact your lives. You need to remember this.’”

But for most Stetson undergraduate students, the 9/11 attacks happened years before they were even born — making the SVO’s annual flag-placing ceremony an important event that helps younger members of the Stetson community be part of the collective commemoration effort.

Griffin added, “We used to do it where we would not have anyone participate. The veterans would come on campus, lay out [the flags] the night before, and just let them be there as a memorial and a reminder. Now we’ve kind of brought in the community more because you’ve got those younger individuals where this is a way for them to understand and be a part of understanding that day. They may not have been alive that day, but they participate.”

–Siyon Kim