September 11th Remembered - Marsha S. Ratchford

Do you know the History of your community and the namesake of your streets?

Marsha S. Ratchford Street was named in honor of Marsha S. Ratchford by the City of Prichard. Her life of dedicated service has forever be memorialized within the City of Prichard through this act.

Lear more about Marsha's life and legacy below:  

Rodney Ratchford tried to talk about his wife in the present tense. Amid the devastation at the Pentagon, where Marsha S. Ratchford worked for the Navy as an information technician, her husband had not given up hope. It's what she would have wanted. "We still got the faith. We're still praying every day," said Rodney Ratchford, 38. "We have our up days, our down days . . . but we haven't lost faith, and we never will."

Marsha Ratchford, 34, was listed among the missing at the Pentagon after a hijacked American Airlines jet crashed into the building on September 11. She was as strong-willed as her husband, a friendly, quiet woman born in Detroit and raised in a large family in Mobile, Alabama. She joined the Navy about 15 years ago. One day, at a training school in San Diego, she happened to exchange glances in the gym with her future husband. "She had an awesome smile," remembered Rodney Ratchford, who served as a machinist's mate in the Navy.

On the morning of September 11, Marsha Ratchford called her husband to tell him about the attacks on the World Trade Center. "She told me that the two planes had just hit the towers," he said. "She told me, 'I love you,' and, 'Have a nice day,' and, 'I'll call you later.' That was the last I heard from her."

Since then, Rodney Ratchford has turned to his faith and family for support, including the close-knit community drawn even closer together at Bolling Air Force Base, where he and his family live.

Reprint from Pentagon Memorial 

Presented by: Prichard Housing Authority Supportive Services Department