COLUMBUS, Ohio — Veterans of a Columbus-based Marine reserve unit that lost nine members in a roadside bombing in Iraq in 2005 marked the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks at a ballpark in Columbus in one of many public commemorations Sunday throughout Ohio.
About a dozen members of the Marines' Lima Company participated in a memorial event at Huntington Park, where flags were placed in seats on the third-base side to represent the 2,977 people who died in the attacks.
The Marines, some in crisp blue dress uniforms with white caps and others wearing civilian clothes, included Gunnery Sgt. Shawn Delgado, who led the company from 2004 through 2008. He said the attacks helped shape the men he led in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Those guys were in high school, junior high, elementary school when 9/11 happened," he said. "They had it in their heart. They took it on themselves to join the Marine Corps knowing full well they were going to war."
Lima Company was hit hard in Iraq and came to national attention in 2005 after 22 Marines and a Navy Corpsman were killed that year, including nine in one bombing. Fifteen of the 23 were from Ohio. A memorial on display at the ballpark depicted all 23, with empty boots and a candle in front of each portrait.
Those who attended the event included Laura Carlson of Columbus, who took along her 6-year-old son, Gunnar.
"It's something he needed to see," said Carlson, 43.
Members of the military, emergency responders and victims of the attacks were honored at interfaith prayer gatherings and religious services around the state. Several hundred people, including more than two dozen police officers, firefighters and medical personnel, packed a Catholic church in Steubenville in far eastern Ohio for a mass.
"It's an extremely emotional time," said Steubenville police Officer Eric Hart, who spoke at the service. "I mean it's 10 years ago today that the world changed forever. And we were all a part of it, in one way or another."
In the Columbus suburb of Hilliard, visitors to one of the largest 9/11 memorials outside New York laid flowers at the site and snapped photos on their cell phones.
Local resident Tracy Stephens, 35, visited with her 6-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter.
"I tell them as much their little minds can handle," she said. "They ask what terrorists are and I say 'very bad people who want to hurt America.' They ask why, and that's kind of a hard question to answer."
The memorial includes pieces of steel from the World Trade Center, as do two memorials dedicated Sunday.
One is in Beavercreek, outside Dayton. The other is in the Cleveland suburb of Lakewood, where a crowd outside a fire station listened to "Amazing Grace" played by bagpipers as officials unveiled the memorial honoring firefighters.
Officials in Warren County in southwest Ohio also planned to break ground for a memorial there and honor 46-year-old Wendy Faulkner of Mason, who was killed at the twin towers.
Firefighters in Dublin, a Columbus suburb, marked the moments when the four planes crashed by ringing a bell with the sequence sounded when a firefighter doesn't return home from a call. The city also raised 3,000 American flags atop 8-foot poles in perfect rows at a high school soccer field, and the victims' names played over loudspeakers.
Gov. John Kasich spent part of the day in Marion at a send-off for more than 100 deploying soldiers, spokesman Rob Nichols said. It's the first of six ceremonies this week for roughly 800 Ohio National Guard soldiers headed to Afghanistan to help support and train its security forces.