Volunteers Beautify Bay Pines National Cemetery on 9/11 Anniversary

At Bay Pines National Cemetery, several volunteers cleaned veterans' headstones as part of the non-profit, "Carry the Load's" National Day of Service and Remembrance on September 11. Colonel Beverly Smith-Tillery, who served in the Army for more than two decades as an intensive care nurse and deployed to Iraq, said scrubbing the headstones had even more of a meaning on Wednesday, Sept. 11. "Everybody that was affected, I pray for them, and I say we cannot let this happen again," Smith-Tillery said. "It made me know that there were terrorists out there who really intended to destroy the United States, and we needed to stop them.

" Smith-Tillery, her husband and several others scrubbed veterans’ headstones at the cemetery on the 23rd anniversary of 9/11. "We all lost a day of our life that day, and I think it's important to be out here at this cemetery scrubbing these headstones," Ward Murphy, another volunteer, said. "These veterans that died for us, and we need to be out here today. I think it's really important.