Photos: Remembering Yukla 27 crash, 20 years later

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Flowers were placed by members of the 962nd Airborne Air Control Squadron for each of the 24 crew members of Yukla 27 during a ceremony on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2015.

Twenty years is a long time. Enough time to obscure memories, but not enough to fully erase the scars left by sudden and ruinous loss. On Tuesday, more than 500 people gathered outside the 3rd Wing Headquarters on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson to both remember, and to heal.

Twenty years ago, on Sept. 22, 1995, an E-3B Sentry AWACS jet -- callsign Yukla 27-- was knocked from the Anchorage sky, not by an enemy, but by a flock of Canada Geese. All 24 aboard that day, 22 American and 2 Canadian airmen, died.

Kyle Leary, a 26-year-old who lives with his fiancee Amanda Deese in Palmer, was just 6 when his father, and Yukla 27's navigator, Lt. Col. Richard G. Leary, was killed.

As he peered into the early morning sun, Leary noted that he is getting ready to be a father himself: He and Deese are expecting their first child.

"I remember him kicking a football once," Leary said of his own father. "I remember when we were in Germany, in Ramstein Air Force Base, me and my two sisters would all sit at the end of the hallway and go running to him when he came home, but other than that, I don't remember anything about him."

For Leary, the loss of 20 years ago is perhaps the most lasting memory of his dad.

READ MORE: Families mourn, connect at 20th anniversary of fatal Alaska AWACS crash