Winnetka Honors 9/11 Victims With Flag Memorial

As late afternoon shadows lengthened over the Village Green in Winnetka, volunteers gathered last week to remember the victims of 9/11 by planting 3,000 American flags in the ground.

The flags remained in the ground until after sunset on Sept. 11. The annual memorial, planted in front of the monument that recognizes Winnetkans who have died while serving in the armed forces, is a village tradition that was started three years ago by Genevieve Nielsen, then a student at New Trier Township High School.

Nielsen began her freshman year this fall at Davidson College in North Carolina, but before she left, she passed the torch to Taylor Tucker, a New Trier sophomore. Tucker appeared before the Winnetka Village Board this summer for permission to erect the memorial again.

"I helped out last year and I remember looking at this visual of the numbers of people who died," Tucker said. "A lot of people were moved by it and after Genevieve left, I didn't want this to die off."

Tucker, the daughter of Village President Jessica Tucker, knelt in the grass surrounded by her family, Winnetka fire and police personnel, village trustees and staff, and volunteers. White string provided a guide for the rows as volunteers drilled holes in the soil to place the flags.

Also in the crowd was Chris Nielsen, Genevieve's father, who started the tradition.

"It was a big thing in her life," he said.

During the summer before her junior year in high school, Genevieve attended a conference in Washington, D.C., where two other girls her age talked about a similar tradition they started in their hometown.

"It just seemed like a really good idea and I wanted to do it in Winnetka," she said. "I remember hearing about 9/11 as a kid and I felt like it's kind of turned into a normal day and so it would be a good idea to do this here."

That summer, she and her father attended a Winnetka village board meeting where she asked permission from the trustees to construct the memorial.

"I told her, 'I'm not too sure, but I assume you'll be approved,'" Chris said. "It was unknowable how people would respond, but the response was so incredible."

In her pitch, Genevieve told the board she would raise $500 to buy the flags from local businesses, which she did. In fact, after she received unanimous approval from the board and sat down, she was passed her first donation from Phil Hoza, owner of Bratschi Plumbing in Winnetka, who was sitting at the meeting.

Hoza attended this year's memorial and brought a box of drills for the volunteers to use. Genevieve said volunteers started using the drills last year because it had not rained in the days before the event and the soil was too hard to insert the flags. It was also the first year she used string as a guide for the rows of flags.

"The first year didn't go quite so smoothly," she said. "I made a diagram of how I wanted to do it but we couldn't keep them in straight lines. After the volunteers left, I was there late into the night straightening the rows."

The memorial was assembled in about two hours, with only a slight wobble to the rows. With the work done, volunteers lingered to admire the memorial as the light faded.

"Knowing that I created a Winnetka tradition is very exciting for me," Genevieve said. "My parents offered to take over when I left, but I like the idea of a younger person getting involved."

Taylor plans to continue the tradition until she graduates from New Trier.

"When I can't do it, maybe my brothers will do it," she said. "We'll need someone younger."