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Volunteers mark 9/11 anniversary, beautify grounds at Portland’s national cemetery

September 11, 2025

Oregon Live

By: Tatum Todd

PORTLAND, Ore. (Oregon Live) – Bearing rakes, pressure hoses and brushes, about 50 volunteers converged on Portland’s Willamette National Cemetery under a cloudy sky on Thursday.

They came on the 24th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks to beautify the grounds where more than 180,000 servicemembers are interred.

The effort — organized by Carry the Load, a nonprofit veterans and first-responder support group — isn’t limited to the Portland area. Thousands of volunteers are expected to attend similar events at almost 70 national cemeteries across the country.

Carry the Load said in a statement that the organization has been organizing cemetery cleanups on 9/11 since 2019, as a remembrance for the first responders who died in the 2001 terror attacks, as well as for the armed servicemembers who died in the conflicts that followed.

The event at Willamette National ran from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., with volunteers cleaning memorials, pressure-washing benches and raking leaves around some of the expansive cemetery’s mausoleums.

After the group gathered for instructions and opening remarks at the cemetery’s Korean War Memorial, the volunteers split into groups to care for different parts of the grounds.

“I have a lot of family members that have served, and I just enjoy being able to [pay] my respects and keep their memories alive,” said Lisa Schilling, who has participated in Carry the Load events for several years. “For me, it’s important to just stop and think about those that have given their all and the innocent people whose lives were taken too short.”

For Schilling, the anniversary of 9/11 always feels personal: one of her high school classmates was killed in Iraq in 2003 after the U.S. invaded the country during the “War on Terror” in the aftermath of the deadly terrorist attacks.

“It’s always been a difficult time of year,” Schilling said as she leaned on a rake Thursday morning. “Just to kind of think about how much our world has changed.”

Not far from where Schilling was picking up leaves, Fatima Cherif, a U.S. Navy veteran, was cleaning up the cemetery grounds.

“Today is to give back to the people that gave their all,” the former logistics specialist told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “It’s important because we remember, although [we] can’t see the people that are gone, for the family members that will come and visit it’s important to come and see that the cemetery is taken care of.”

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