As thousands thronged to the Organ Pavilion for San Diego's 9/11 observance in Balboa Park, hundreds of others attended memorials in parks, on main streets and in places of worship around the county yesterday.
A La Mesa woman who lost her son in one of the hijacked airliners and a Chula Vista firefighter who participated in the search at ground zero took part in remembrances in East and South County.
Susie Ward Baker, whose son, Tim Ward, 39, was killed in the crash of a United jetliner into the second tower of the World Trade Center, unveiled a memorial to the victims, a knee-high rock with a bronze plaque, in a ceremony in front of a La Mesa fire station.
Swarmed by well-wishers after the ceremony, Baker said, "I just want to make sure no one ever forgets."
After the crowd thinned, La Mesa firefighter Scott Springett pressed into Baker's hands an object he had found at ground zero, where he worked for 10 days with the San Diego County search and rescue team. It was a New York theater magnet with the masks of comedy and tragedy.
"I've had it for a year," Springett said. "And now it is yours."
In a midday ceremony at Chula Vista's Memorial Park, firefighter David Albright, another member of the county search and rescue team that worked in New York, told of a young girl who approached him at Yankee Stadium, where the Chula Vista firefighters were thanked. She asked him to sign a baseball.
The girl had lost her mother in the collapse of the first tower, where Albright and his mates had searched. She explained that she had been unable to reach ground zero and wanted to connect with someone who had. Many in the audience had tears in their eyes when Albright finished his story.
"I think we all needed this as a community," said Ellen Hosley, who sat at the Chula Vista ceremony beneath an umbrella printed with the American flag. "It helps with closure."
In Alpine, more than 300 grade-school students cheered "U-S-A" as 25 racing pigeons took flight at the community center. The "thoroughbreds of the sky" circled the baseball field and flew off into the sun. They symbolized good will, peace, loyalty and love, said Tom Blood of the Coronado Racing Pigeon Club.
In Fallbrook, 200 people assembled on Main Street's Village Square beneath a huge flag fluttering from a fully extended ladder of a firetruck.
In Oceanside, a parade of emergency vehicles along The Strand with lights flashing began the observances, followed by a quiet flag-raising at the city's beach-front amphitheater.
