Jose Lozano greeted the day by arriving at Alumni Park at 7 a.m— it was just him the dawning sun and almost 3000 flags sprawled across Pepperdine’s immense front lawn.
By noon the traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway had picked up and drivers were honking regularly at the sign Lozano had been holding all morning. It read “God Bless America and bore pictures from Ground Zero, taken Sept. 11, 2001.
Lozano, recently retired after 33 years of government and military service, was just one of the countless visitors who came to Alumni Park today to witness the annual Wave of Flags” display and pay their respects to the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Each flag stands for one lost life. The vast majority are American but international flags dot the landscape reminding visitors of the global impact of the attacks and the melting pot of cultures that America is.
And among those flags dozens of people wandered: groups of motorcyclists in leather clothing families with small children playing young friends taking their next Facebook profile picture a video crew from a local TV station people walking their dogs and plenty who just pulled over to absorb the experience.
Lozano told of some of the people he’d seen this morning— like a handful of people that were in New York City the day the Twin Towers fell. They came to tears when they saw the expanse of flags Lozano said.
One mother brought her daughter who was born in 2002 to Alumni Park to teach her about the attacks which she hadn’t learned about in school yet.
And Lozano a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps himself was quick to hail others who served in the Corps. One that he was able to speak with was a World War II veteran who served at Okinawa.
Lozano said it was a moving experience and seemed to enjoy that people didn’t simply want to stop and take a picture but wanted to get lost in the flags for a while.
“They don’t want to just see it he said. They want to experience it.”