Carlton Thornhill made it his mission to make sure the lives of 16 military servicemen killed in July are not forgetten.
The founder of the Hearts of Hope organization in Mississippi and one of the national ambassadors for the Stars of Hope organization out of New York, was in Moorhead on Monday for the Day of Hope ceremony to commemorate the 9/11 remembrance and to honor the 16 military servicemen who died in the July 10 fiery plane crash in a soybean field just east of town.
Thornhill, working in conjunction with the Moorhead Garden Club, said he sought to develop an event that would do something on a state level to draw attention to the tragedy, so it would not be forgotten. Thornhill said that he visited Moorhead after the plane crash and conducted an assessment to find a suitable place for a memorial.
They decided on the intersection where the Southern crosses the Yellow Dog in downtown Moorhead and on Monday, hand-painted stars emblazoned with words of hope, that were painted by children from all over the country, were hung in the trees there.
The organization mainly utilizes children and some others to design stars that memorialize catastrophic incidents that have occurred all over the country and then place them at the sites, from the shootings at Columbine and the nightclub in Orlando, to the San Bernardino fires and the KC-130 that went down just outside of the Sunflower County line.
“While their little hands are painting these, they know about these 16 servicemen,” Thornhill said.
The idea behind Stars of Hope is to teach children empathy, the power of words and designs when expressing compassion and the importance of giving.
Thornhill said originally the star paintings were to be done by children in the Columbia area, where he’s from, but stars started coming in from all over the country to honor the 16 fallen soldiers.
“And it’s never happened before,” he said, “This was something that meant something to a lot of other people elsewhere.”
Thornhill said he purposely chose 9/11 for this commemoration.
“We had adopted Moorhead for this,” Thornhill said.
Although his day officially began in Columbia where the group handed out stars of hope to the first responders, it wasn’t complete until he had also placed a star in the hands of Moorhead Mayor George Holland.
He said the Moorhead ceremony was recorded, streamed live to one of the mother’s of one of the victims and broadcast live to the foundation in New York where a group of children were simultaneously designing stars that were to be given out to family members of the persons on the plane. Thornhill said the aircraft originally took off from a base there before picking up the other passengers along the way.
In Moorhead, citizens placed memorial bricks for each of the 16 military servicemen at the downtown site, engraved with the name, rank and branch of service for each. One citizen remarked at the correlation between this being the 16th-year remembrance and 16 soldiers being lost.
In addition to their work with the stars, Thornhill said his organization also sends much needed supplies to many areas that have suffered devastation.
“Everything that is given to us, we give,” he said.
