On September 10th at 6 P.M., the Young Conservatives of Texas chapter at The University of Texas at Austin will be planting exactly 2,994 hand-held American flags on the South Mall lawn of UT’s campus in honor of those who died on September 11th, 2001.
This year marks not only the 20th anniversary of 9/11 but the 20th iteration of YCT’s flag-planting memorial.
YCT has added 17 extra flags to their 9/11 memorial over the years. YCT added 4 flags to their memorial for those killed in Benghazi in 2012, and they will add 13 extra flags this year for the service members who were recently killed in Kabul.
When asked about YCT’s 20 year-long tradition, the Chairman of YCT at UT Austin, Alex Vargas, said:
“It is important for YCT to continue our tradition of planting flags as a memorial to those innocent lives lost on 9/11. Almost half of the undergraduate students here weren’t even alive on that fateful day. It is important for us, as Americans, to remember the nearly 3,000 lives lost, especially the heroes who rushed into the towers to try to rescue anyone that they could. This year, we will also be honoring the 13 service members killed in Kabul a few weeks ago. With these flags, we will be honoring the lives that were tragically lost that began the war in Afghanistan and the lives lost at the conclusion of that war.”
