On September 11, 2001, the country stopped. Twenty-five years later, EV stopped again.
For a construction firm, standing still is not the natural state. Schedules move, concrete cures, and every hour on a site has a purpose. But some moments matter more than the schedule. This year, our team marked the 25th anniversary of 9/11 in two ways: one quiet, one strenuous, and both rooted in the same idea. We remember by showing up.
On Friday, September 11th, at 8:46 a.m., the exact moment the first plane struck the North Tower, work paused at our Porter Hills Village project site. Our team, trade partners, and members of Grand Rapids Township Fire & Rescue gathered together and stood in 25 seconds of silence, one second for every year since 2001, honoring the first responders and construction crews who ran toward danger that day.
On the stairwell wall of the project, the team had hung a large American flag alongside a banner commemorating the 25th anniversary. It was a fitting setting: a stairwell, under construction, draped in tribute to the people who climbed similar stairs toward smoke and flame when everyone else was running down.
On Saturday, September 12th, EV General Trades team member Aden Brink took part in the Grand Rapids 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb at LMCU Ballpark, for the third year in a row.
Participants ascend the equivalent of the World Trade Center’s 110 stories to honor the 343 firefighters, 60 police officers, and 10 EMS personnel lost on September 11, 2001. The climb is simple in concept and demanding in execution, designed to put participants in the shoes and the stairwells of the first responders who made that same ascent and never came back down.
What makes Aden’s participation especially meaningful: by day he’s part of our General Trades team, and by commitment he’s a firefighter with Grand Haven Township Fire & Rescue. He doesn’t just understand what those steps represent in the abstract. He lives that calling.
Thank you, Aden, for showing up year after year to carry their memory forward.
EV is Built Around People. That’s not just a tagline about the clients we serve or the teammates we work alongside. It’s about the communities we build in and the values we carry onto every site.
Twenty-five years is long enough that many members of our team were children on 9/11, and some weren’t yet born. Marking the day together is how we make sure the memory doesn’t fade with time.
