Wichita ? It’s an unlikely place for a memorial to victims of terrorist attacks outside an International House of Pancakes.

But that’s just where Charmin White and the restaurant employees she manages planted three lilac bushes Friday.

The flowering bushes stand in remembrance of the victims of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, and the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers in New York.

White has a personal connection to the war on terrorism. Her daughter is about to sail on the destroyer USS Cole possibly into harm’s way.

On her first sea duty assignment, Capri White is a member of the crew training to return the repaired ship to service.

Seventeen sailors were killed in October 2000 when terrorists posing as refuelers detonated a bomb-laden boat alongside the Cole in a Yemen harbor. The crew won’t be surprised again, she said.

About two dozen people gathered in the morning rain Friday to pray for the victims of the Cole bombing and the other attacks and to turn the ground for the plantings.

“We bought the tallest tree for New York,” White said. “We felt it was appropriate to have the tallest one there for the twin towers.”

Wichita police officers, firefighters, FBI agents and Navy recruiters represented the victims of the attacks.

One of the Navy representatives, Lonny McCormick, was stationed in Guam when the Cole was attacked.

He didn’t think the extremists who masterminded the Cole attack would go on to launch more devastating attacks on U.S. soil and pull America into a war against terrorism.

“I didn’t imagine then that they could escalate their attacks on us that way,” he said.

Events like Friday’s service “make us feel pretty good about what we do,” added McCormick’s fellow sailor, Travis Stahly.