Staying in touch with history

TRACY AREA ELEMENTARY STUDENTS Allie Duscher, Harlow Kline and Harper Landuyt touch a beam from the original World Trade Center; the beam is located in Memorial Park in downtown Marshall. Students took a field trip to the park last Wednesday to learn about the beam and the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Photo / Per Peterson

To many students in Lucas Novosad’s history class at Tracy Area Elementary School, the rusted piece of metal reaching skyward in the middle of Marshall’s Memorial Park was nothing more than that — before last Wednesday that is.

It was then when they learned about its symbolism and its place in history. Then they placed their hands on it. And for their teachers and the speakers at the field day, the hope is this educational opportunity will, in some small way, hit home, despite the fact that the terrorist attacks that took place on a Tuesday morning on Sept. 11, 2001 — a terrifying and tragic day in which nearly 3,000 people were killed and another 6,000-plus injured — occurred more than a decade before they were even born.

See more in this week’s paper!