Running in Remembrance

The sun had not yet cleared the mountains surrounding Northfield when cadets began forming up outside Kreitzberg Arena for what has become one of the most solemn mornings on the Corps of Cadets' physical training calendar: a stair run held in memory of the nearly 3,000 lives lost on Sept.11, 2001.

The format traces its roots to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation's memorial stair climbs, in which participants nationwide retrace — symbolically, flight by flight — the stairwells first responders ascended inside the World Trade Center on 9/11. At Kreitzberg, that meant cadets working their way up and down the arena's stairs, past sheets of plexiglass bearing the names of those who died that day. For an institution built on the idea that leadership is inseparable from sacrifice, the symbolism needed no embellishment. Each step was a small act of memory. Each labored breath, a reminder that the people being honored didn't get to choose theirs.

"People all around campus usually do their own version of the 110 flights of stairs — 2,200 steps — using either the Bicentennial or Centennial Stairs or the Stairmasters offered in the gyms," says Cadet Rae Lawing '28. "Since this is the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we decided to create a full event open to all students and encourage people to participate."

Unlike most Corps PT, which is closed to the general student body, this morning's run was opened to every student on campus, cadet and civilian alike. It's a small structural choice that says something larger about what the day is meant to be — not a Corps exercise, but a Norwich one.

"I believe it helps bridge the two lifestyles together; everyone who shows up will understand why everyone else is there. PT for the Corps helps bring people together, so by reaching a hand out to the civilian lifestyle students, it shows how we are still connected and still here for the same thing," says Lawing. "It doesn’t matter who wears a uniform, it matters who you are on the inside."

For a school whose motto, "I Will Try," has been tested by generations of graduates who went on to serve in uniform, Sept.11 is not distant history. It is personal, close, and — for many current students who weren't yet born when the towers fell — inherited. It lives in the values Norwich asks its cadets to embody: honor, duty, and respect for those who came before.

"My nana was in Pittsburgh in the then called USX Tower (now Steel Tower) and was forced to evacuate down the tower via stairs while having a broken foot," says Lawing. "She was trampled and scared but fought until she reached the ground floor. When I hear her tell her story, she talks about how it felt like she was seeing her life from outside her body."

Donations were welcomed, though never required — a detail organizers were careful to preserve. No student was asked to give more than the run itself demanded. The point was never the dollar amount, but showing up.

My main goal is to bring people together. At Norwich we emphasize the family dynamics, and I believe things like this prove it better than any words can," says Lawing. "Some companies and specialty units are making this event mandatory, not to make people suffer, but to build each other up. Everyone is there for a good cause, and everyone is doing it together."

By the time the sun was fully up, students had scattered back to their morning routines of breakfast and class. But before the day formally began, students had climbed stairs past names of people they never met, carrying forward a promise Norwich has made every year since 2001: that this University does not let victims go unremembered, and it does not let the living forget why that matters.