Students at Ohio Hi-Point Career Center honored the first responders of September 11, 2001, with a stair climb Friday.
Students in the Public Safety Academy, Criminal Justice and Fire programs set a goal of completing 110 flights of stairs, or about 2,200 steps, to reflect the journey first responders made as they climbed the Twin Towers.
The students exceeded their goal, completing roughly 150 flights of stairs while encouraging and supporting one another.
Public Safety Academy instructor Shelby Clem said the students spent time learning about and reflecting on 9/11 before the stair climb.
The day before, her students watched a documentary called I’m Coming For You, Brother, which tells the story of firefighters who were inside the North Tower when it collapsed and survived.
Clem said she also shared part of 9/11 survivor Joe Dittmar’s testimony with the students and talked about the significance of people walking down the stairs to escape while firefighters, police officers and paramedics were walking up.
Clem said the stair climb was not intended to be a race. Instead, students were encouraged to simply keep putting one foot in front of the other, just as first responders did that morning.
Bellefontaine Firefighters also surprised the students by joining the climb.
Clem said firefighters came to stand alongside the students and honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice.
One firefighter even arrived after completing a 24-hour shift, with his child in a carrier on his back, and climbed with the students.
Ohio Hi-Point’s Education Lab also came out to cheer the students on.
Clem said what makes the tribute especially meaningful is that the students were not yet born when 9/11 happened.
She said she feels a responsibility to help them understand not only what happened that day, but what it meant.
She said the students may someday be the ones running toward the chaos while others are running away — the “helper” someone is counting on to stay when everything in them is telling them to leave.
