By Verna Slate, Williamson County Bureau
MARION — More than 300 members of the Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association rumbled into town this month for the group's Region IV rally, timed to coincide with Marion's 9/11 memorial event, according to the Southern Illinoisan.
It's the kind of gathering that turns a solemn date into something communal — bikes lined up, veterans standing together, a county pausing long enough to remember a morning twenty-five years gone.
The timing wasn't an accident. Twenty-five years on, 9/11 remembrances carried extra weight across the region this year, with Frankfort Community High School students hearing Friday what that morning was like for those who lived it, per the Southern Illinoisan, and SIU Carbondale hosting its own tribute in the form of the annual Saluki Stair Climb.
No word yet on whether the rally becomes an annual fixture alongside the city's memorial, but for one weekend at least, Marion's streets carried the sound of engines instead of silence.
filed from the courthouse steps, where the ghosts take good notes.
— Reporting by the Southern Illinoisan.
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