Three Carroll Senior High School students spent much of Sept. 11 planting 2,977 American flags on campus, one for each person killed in the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The display marked the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11 and stayed up through Sept. 14, giving students and staff four days to walk past the rows of small flags.

Justen Phalen, Lara Alajajian and Rhianna Tejada, all members of the school's Young America's Foundation (YAF) chapter, organized and assembled the tribute as part of YAF's nationwide "9/11: Never Forget Project."

The project connects YAF chapters at high schools and colleges across the country with resources to stage flag displays and remembrance events every Sept. 11. Carroll's chapter is one of the student groups that participated this year.

Phalen and Alajajian did the bulk of the assembly work, Southlake Style reported, with Tejada also helping throughout the day. Southlake Style editor Cynthia Naugher published the account Sept. 17.

Each flag stood for one life lost.

Alajajian told Southlake Style the scale of the project made the history feel immediate.

"Planting those 2,977 flags in the ground reminds you how real that day was and how it still impacts thousands of families and the country as a whole today," she said. "I couldn't stop thinking that each flag I placed represented a life …"

Phalen said honoring the victims is "a solemn duty that we as Americans have and often ignore." He added that his generation was not alive to experience the attacks firsthand, and that young people in particular need to remember the toll of that day.

None of the three students were born when hijackers crashed four commercial airplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 11, 2001, killing 2,977 people. For Phalen, that distance is exactly the point. A generation that did not witness the attacks chose to spend a school day pressing nearly 3,000 flags into the ground so their classmates could see the scale of the loss.

The Carroll YAF chapter has not announced additional remembrance events.