TOPSFIELD - A Masconomet student who captured the attention of national media last year by placing 3,000 flags outside her school to honor 9/11 victims is attempting the feat once more. Masconomet senior Olivia O’Malley keeps a 3-inch-thick binder at her Topsfield home full of letters from those who were touched by her 9/11 memorial last year. Prompted when Masconomet skipped mention of the occasion two years ago, O’Malley said the overwhelming support she received last year moved her to tears and codified her continuation of the memorial. “I just want to set the bar high,” said O’Malley. “I definitely have a bigger goal this year.” While she has more ambitious goals this year, Olivia O’Malley’s mission has always been the same; to ensure that people do not forget when terrorists hijacked four planes and killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001. “I want people to really, really remember,” said O’Malley. O’Malley plans to, again, place 3,000 flags on the front lawn at Masconomet High School on Sept. 11 to represent the nearly 3,000 that were killed in the attacks in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. But, this year, she is trying to emphasize that there are names behind all of those flags. “They have a name…they have a home town,” said O’Malley. The Masconomet student is making available lists of the people that were killed from the 9/11 attacks in Massachusetts and overall. The list includes a range of victims from the elderly, to young adults, to infants, with some names even containing pictures. “I just wanted to bring a new perspective,” O’Malley said. “It’s really powerful.”
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