Sixty-eight years later, Pauline Roe Hasley still recalls the shock, fear and disbelief of the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

"I was working at (Marietta) Memorial Hospital. The sun was shining and it was a little past noon when they came on with an announcement at the hospital," Hasley said. "It was bad. No one could believe it."

Today, the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, local residents and veterans groups are expected to gather at East Muskingum Park for an annual remembrance ceremony.

After a moment of silence and a few brief words, a wreath will be tossed into the Muskingum River in honor of the nearly 2,400 American men and women who perished in the attack.

Hasley, 89, of Reno, said upon learning of the surprise attack, her initial concern was for her brother, Robert Roe, who was serving in the U.S. Navy.

"We got a telegram from him," she said. "He was in Panama at the time."

But life for Hasley and the nation changed dramatically following the attacks.

Hasley left her job to work the assembly line at Remington Rand, on Greene Street in Marietta, when the full impact of the war hit the homefront.

The company manufactured giant safes in peacetime, but during the war, propellers flew off the assembly line.

"We knew we were only there as long as they needed us - until the end of the war," she said. "Then we all went on with the rest of our lives."

Calvin Thomas, 86, of Marietta, was a teenager helping out at his family's Bells Run farm, just north of Reno, when he heard of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Two years later, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and soon found himself fighting on the front lines in Europe.

"There were six of us boys in the family and we all ended up serving in the military," he said. "I went to Akron for a physical and left Akron for Fort Hayes. Boy, that's when the Army was the Army. They came in flipping bunks to get us going. Next thing I knew we were fighting at the Battle of the Bulge and getting hit head on. The whole 106th infantry was just about wiped out. For a whole month I didn't know where my outfit was and I was running around in the snow."

The annual Pearl Harbor ceremony is sponsored by AMVETS Post 1788. AMVETS officer James Rhodes said attendance at the event has dwindled in recent years, but he remains committed to the ceremony.

"If just one person is down there to watch I'll be there to toss that wreath," he said. "It is important we remember our heroes."