F R I D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 0 , 2 0 2 1 November ballot. The deadline for submitting signatures was Sept. 17. And after the 67th Lewiston Roundup completed another successful year on Sunday, Roundup Queen Cathy Jo Pottenger — now Cathy Jo Witters — was looking forward to Tuesday night’s appreciation dinner. “We did an afternoon performance on Sunday, and everyone was exhausted,” Witters recalled. “But I was really looking forward to the appreciation dinner. Then Tuesday morning, the world changed and the dinner was canceled.” Witters was a senior in high school at the time. Her teachers wheeled TVs into the classrooms, and students spent the day watching events unfold. “I wasn’t sure what life was going to be like from that point forward,” she said. Witters had been named Roundup queen the previous October. She and her court attended various regional events over the winter, marketing the Roundup. After the Asotin County Fair in April, they had events scheduled pretty much every weekend. “I’m sure we ended up attending 50 or 60 events,” Witters said. Her reign was supposed to end a week after the Lewiston Roundup, at the Pendleton Round-Up. After the attacks, there was talk about canceling the rodeo, but organizers ultimately chose to go forward. Witters subsequently wrote about the decision, saying she’d “never been more proud to be a member of the Lewiston Roundup queen and court, an ambassador of the great sport of rodeo and an American than I was that Friday. Our directors, our court and our stagecoach loaded up and headed to the Pendleton Round-Up.” Before 9/11, she’d only been thinking about Pendleton as the end of her time as queen. After 9/11, it became a symbol of something much grander. “I remember being in the stands, listening to the national anthem. We were all crying. It was powerful,” Witters said. “I recognized that what I was experiencing was so much bigger than anything I could ever have imagined. There were still a lot of unknowns, so much we didn’t know. But we were united. We felt it.”
The return to normalcy In the aftermath of the attacks, prayer services took place all across the region. Wednesday evening, thousands of people attended candlelight vigils in Moscow and Pullman. Moscow Mayor Marshall Comstock and Pullman Mayor Mitch Chandler both urged the crowds to come together as Americans. “We stand as a community and a country made of many diverse groups and religions,” said Comstock, according to a Sept. 13 Lewiston Tribune story. “Now we need to stand together in the face of these attacks.” “We have all been moved in deep sorrow and immense anger,” Chandler said. “These events won’t be
FOREVER REMEMBER: 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11
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On Sunday, Sept. 23, 2001, Dallas Cowboys safety George Teague, (31), carries an American flag onto the playing field at Texas Stadium in Irving, Texas, before kickoff of an NFL game with the San Diego Chargers. “I remember that being part of the conversation in the NFL, about whether we would play the next weekend,” Farris said. “We didn’t want terrorists to think they’d stopped our way of life. We weren’t going to let Osama (bin Laden) feel like he’d won.” But there was time for mourning CATHY JO WITTERS and reflection as well. Hardin’s crew took up a collection and sent him to New York City to easy to put behind us, but we can use “After that, it seemed like once represent the Asotin Fire District this demonstration of our solidarity a week we’d practice exiting during a memorial service for all the to embrace our best qualities.” Congress,” Otter said. “We all had fallen firefighters and police officers. The decision to ground commercial different places we were supposed to “They had a procession through flights nationwide led to a unique go, so we’d march out of the Capitol downtown New York, with situation in Grangeville, which and head off in different directions.” firefighters and police officers according to a Sept. 14 Tribune story He was assigned to a group of about from all around the world,” Hardin unofficially became the busiest 3,000 members, staff and employees said. “I remember that morning nonmilitary airport in America. who were assigned a secure location it was pouring rain, and we were A mobile air traffic control tower by the Capitol Power Plant. walking down the streets past had been set up at the Grangeville “We’d walk down the street all these people. New Yorkers airport on Monday, to help manage towards the plant, and we did lined the streets, sobbing. It was retardant bomber flights on the that every time,” Otter said. “You definitely a moving experience.” 1,300-acre Earthquake Fire. They could have parked a Volkswagen For Hardin and other firstwere allowed to continue, despite bus there with a bomb and taken responders who were alive at the the airspace restrictions. out the whole lot of us. It was the time, Sept. 11 became their Pearl With 16 flights on Tuesday stupidest thing I’d ever seen.” Harbor, a day that will forever live and another 56 on Wednesday, For Farris, who would go on to play in infamy, never to be forgotten. the story said, Grangeville was six seasons in the NFL, life returned “What happened that day was certainly the busiest airport to normal fairly quickly. Games were an attack on America, and the in the Pacific Northwest, and canceled the weekend after 9/11, but police and firefighters were the likely in the entire country. resumed the following weekend. first line of defense,” Hardin said. “Each takeoff required two phone “When we came back (on Sept. 23), “Does it have the same impact calls to the FAA in Boise,” noted the there was a big pregame presentation today as it did then? It does for me, (but) I have firefighters who story. “Each pilot had to submit a and moment of silence,” he recalled. weren’t even born when it took detailed flight plan, and was tracked “After that, the attacks were still place. I hope it doesn’t become just by the FAA and the North American fresh in our minds, but it was back another page in a history book.” Aerospace Defense Command.” to business. We had games to win.” Back in D.C., Congress returned And for many Americans, that Spence may be contacted at bspence@ to work on Sept. 12, authorizing a return to normalcy brought a lmtribune.com or (208) 791-9168. national day of unity and mourning. sense of relief, as well as pride.
“I remember being in the stands, listening to the national anthem. We were all crying. It was powerful.”
