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VIAM Manufacturing continued its longtime support of local first responders with its annual fundraising campaign and Patriots Day event at the facility located at 87 Park Tower Drive in the Manchester Industrial Park.

Company CEO Keith Hayes said it all began following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“All of our people the next year wanted to raise $911 in pennies, so we put out little 9/11 patriotic cups in all our work cells for people to throw their pennies in and we were going to donate it to the first responders,” he said. “It ended up we raised about $1,800 and it kind of caught on and so the next year we broke up into teams and people started having competitions.”

VIAM employees were joined by area first responders for the event, which also featured State Sen. Janice Bowling, Coffee County Mayor Dennis Hunt and Coffee County Sheriff Chad Partin as guest speakers.

Hayes said this year $33,000 was raised and will be donated to the Coffee County Sheriff’s Office, Coffee County Rescue Squad and Manchester Fire Department.

“There is no company money in this, it is all employees,” he said.

To date, VIAM Manufacturing employees have raised more than $570,000 for local first responders since that first fundraising effort 22 years ago.

Hayes said it is not unusual for the first responders to find some way to benefit the Coffee County Community through the funds.

“We try to not tell them what to do with the money, but they will turn around and do Angel Tree or something,” he said. “We tell the chiefs to spend it on your people, we don’t care if you give it all to one or divide it up or if you have steak dinners for them, but don’t give it back to the community because we want your people to have it.”

Bowling said anyone who was alive on 9/11 remembers where they were when they first heard of the attacks.

“My husband Temple was director of contracts at AEDC, one of the free world’s largest ground test facilities and he called me that morning just barely 9 a.m. and said, Janice, turn on the television, our county is under attack,” she said. ….To look up at that sky and think of what was going on in New Work at that moment and then within minutes of turning on the TV, the second plane hit the second tower…”

Hunt said he thinks it is also important for Americans to remember where they were not on Sept. 11, 2001.

“You were not comfortably seated in one of those airplanes on your way to your untimely demise, you were not inside the buildings sitting at your desk at a small cubicle typing on a computer not knowing what was about to happen and you were definitely not dressed out in full tactical gear running up the stairs of those two towers,” he said. “Those are the individuals we really need to remember, and I want to thank everyone of our first responders in Coffee County and Manchester for the job they do.”