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Friday at 6:06 p.m., a second somber chorus sounded onto the street below.
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Nancy Nelson, left, and Mary Smith ring the bells Friday evening at Central United Methodist Church in Winona. The bells were rung in remembrance of the victims of the Interstate 35W bridge collapse, which occurred on Aug. 1 last year. (Photo by Fred Schulze/Winona Daily News) |
A minute before, bell ringers Nancy Nelson and Mary Smith stood in silence, remembering the lives lost in the Interstate 35W bridge collapse. Then, precisely at the time the bridge fell a year ago Friday, Smith pushed the first lever, sounding the 2,960-pound E-flat.
She began to play “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.”
The Minnesota Council of Churches organized a statewide bell ringing to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the bridge collapse, which killed 13 people and injured 145.
“I was at home when I heard (about the bridge),” Smith said Friday before the bell ringing. “My son worked a few blocks away, and I got on the phone. The first thing he said before ‘hello’ was, ‘Don’t worry, I’m not on the bridge.’”
Nelson was in Bemidji, Minn., for a family reunion when she heard, and the impact of the collapse affected her husband’s family.
“Most of his relatives are from that area,” she said. “His brother had gone across hours earlier. It hit a little too close to home.”
Nelson and Smith, both area teachers, remembered the busload of more than 50 kids who were on the bridge at the time of the tragedy.
“I remember thinking, ‘Oh, no, no, not a bus, not kids,’” Smith said.
In Minneapolis on Friday, an interfaith service at the Basilica of St. Mary drew about 1,000 people, from bridge collapse victims to top state officials. People bowed their heads and shut their eyes, remembering and grieving.
About 5:30 p.m. police, firefighters and other law enforcers who responded to the bridge collapse led a procession from the park about six blocks to the Stone Arch Bridge. That’s just upriver from the freeway, where construction on the new bridge halted from mid-afternoon to mid-evening.
The memorials are the first major public observance of the bridge collapse since last August, when residents across Minneapolis marked a moment of silence six days after the span fell.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
