On Sept. 11, the University of Southern Maine’s (USM) Military-Affiliated Student Hub (MASH), in partnership with USM’s Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), hosted the USM 9/11 Memorial Ruck, drawing students, faculty, staff, and service members for a walk around Portland’s Back Cove. This year’s event fell on the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
USM comes together for a morning of remembrance
Participants and community members gathered on Friday morning at 49 Exeter Street, MASH’s home base on USM’s Portland campus, before setting off together for a walk around the Back Cove. ROTC cadets rucked the loop with weighted packs on their backs, while faculty, staff, and students walked alongside them. The morning closed with an obstacle course, cadets guiding participants through each challenge.
The crowd reached well beyond USM’s military-affiliated community, pulling in students, faculty, and staff from across campuses and departments. Lorrie Spaulding, MASH director, said that range is by design.
“The USM 9/11 Memorial Ruck is not a Veterans Services project, and it is not a military event,” Spaulding said. “That is why partnering across campus was so important. Sept. 11 was not simply a military tragedy, it was an American tragedy.”
Twenty-five years later, a reason to remember
Spaulding thinks often of her son, a Marine Corps Reservist who visited Hiroshima while stationed in Japan and came away with a deeper sense of the human cost behind what he’d studied in a classroom — a reminder, she said, not to let significant events fade into the abstract.
Dillon Pruitt, cadet company commander for USM’s Army ROTC program, pointed to that distance directly.
“Twenty-five years is quite a long time, an entire generation is growing up without having personally experienced that day,” Pruitt said. “I think events like this are important because they keep those stories, sacrifices, and lessons alive.”
Andrew Pollom, vice president of student affairs, echoed that sentiment
“For many of our students, 9/11 was something they learned about in history class or that they view on the news every year,” Pollom said. “It’s important to maintain a memory and to pass along the impact that 9/11 had on so many people.”
The ruck brings that history within reach, inviting people across generations to come together for a moment of remembrance.
Carrying the weight of remembrance
USM’s ROTC cadets were easy to spot on Sept. 11, several of them stepping out carrying fully loaded rucks. For Pruitt, the weight of a ruck carries symbolic meaning.
“This ruck is about carrying a small amount of weight in remembrance of people who carried far greater burdens,” Pruitt said.
For Spaulding, the sense of community at the ruck reflects what she remembers most from the days after 9/11.
“9/11 was a horrific day. But 9/12 and the days immediately following will always stay with me as an example of who we are at our best as a people and a country,” Spaulding said. “We got knocked down, and we got back up, together.”
Pruitt and Spaulding both point to different things — the weight of the pack, the pull of community — but both come back to the same idea: keeping the memory of Sept. 11 alive.
“This event will mean something different to everyone who participates,” Spaulding said. “My hope is that, as we walk around Back Cove, people will share their experiences, reconnect with colleagues they haven’t seen in a while, or simply take a moment to remember and be together as a community.”
USM serves a wide range of students in this space: veterans, ROTC cadets and GI Bill recipients, each carrying a different relationship to military service. Each year, when they come together to host an event like this year’s 9/11 Memorial Ruck, they bring together people from across USM’s campuses who might not otherwise cross paths.