Community Pauses to Remember Beirut Bombing Victims

Some 26 years after a bombing in Beirut killed 241 American Marines, sailors and soldiers, one community here in the east is still picked up the pieces.

Many of the men killed when a suicide bomber attacked the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines headquarters building in Lebanon on October 23, 1983, were stationed at Camp Lejeune and lived in Jacksonville.

And as Philip Jones reports, the wound is still fresh there almost three decades later:

Prayers of praise echoed through Jacksonville’s Beirut Memorial Friday morning before giving way to salutes to our country and the men who laid down their lives for it.

“Twenty-six years ago today, a violent bombing took place at the headquarters building of the United States peacekeeping force in Beirut, Lebanon,” said emcee Abe Rosen, the chairman of the Beirut Memorial Advisory Board. “This event is something our community vowed never to forget.”

Hundreds came to the memorial remember the hundreds killed 26 years ago to honor that vow—and the memories of Marines, sailors and soldiers who lived their lives in Jacksonville before they were killed in Beirut.

“Two-hundred forty-one Americans lost their lives 26 years ago today,” said keynote speaker Major General Paul Lefebvre. “As a nation, I think sometimes that we remember these events simply by the numbers. We as Marines want to remember the names.“

All their names live on at the memorial—a memorial Margaret Pollard visits each year.

Her husband, William Pollard, died in the attack that day.

“We watched the news, we knew what was happening and you just kept praying and hoping ‘It’s not me,’” Pollard said. “That was the biggest thing.”

Most walls are used for separation, but Pollard says this one brings people together.

It’s a place where families can touch their loved ones once again.

“It’s very important,” she said. “And I think this community realized when they did this that they made something everybody was able to come back to.”

And these families and friends will keep coming back year after year because time can’t erase the lives lost 26 years ago.

While Friday marked the 26th anniversary of the Beirut bombing, it’s the 23rd time the community gathered at the memorial site in Jacksonville.

The memorial wall there was built and dedicated in 1986.