Morning Journal - 9/11 10th Anniversary Edition

9/11

we remember

MORNING JOURNAL

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011

WE REMEMBER

Localmotherremembers9/11victim

By JO ANN BOBBY-GILBERT Staff Writer

LISBON — Every day, mothers lose children in a variety of ways then spend the rest of their lives mourning them, never forgetting the anniversary of their child’s death.

Local resident Eleanor Salter is no different, except on the anniversary of her daughter Catherine’s death, the entire country also mourns.

The 37-year-old Wellsville native was among the thousands who died on Sept. 11, 2011 when terrorists attacked this country, including the World Trade Center where she was working.

Her mother was working at East Liverpool City Hospital that day when someone approached her at 8:45 a.m. to tell her a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers.

“Which one?” Mrs. Salter asked bravely, knowing her daughter may well have been there.

Soon after, she was told that a second plane had struck the towers and she called her daughter Cyndi, who normally spoke to her sister Catherine daily. That day, she had not.

In one interview Salter related that the rest of the day was somewhat of a blur and it was perhaps through her son, Bud Jr. she finally learned that stark reality: Catherine was among the victims.

A vice president of risk management for the Aon Company on the 98th floor of the south tower, Catherine was working that day, and her family learned later she had been speaking on the telephone with a former boss in Cincinnati after the first tower was struck.

Asked why she had not yet evacuated, Catherine told him she was in the second tower and getting ready to do so.

Then the second plane hit, and she was not heard from again.

Valedictorian of her 1982 Wellsville High School class, Catherine had earned a degree in history from the University of Cincinnati and became a paralegal, moving to New York in 2000.

She had lettered in both basketball and track and was one of six children of Henry “Bud” and Eleanor Salter. Her father

died just before Catherine’s own death, and her mother now lives in Lisbon.

In other interviews, Mrs. Salter has normally declined to speak about her own reaction to Catherine’s death, saying, “It’s about Catherine, not about me.”

But, on this 10th anniversary of the historic tragedy, Salter was asked how it is that a mother moves on with her life when her child has been taken from her, because, at some point, it is about the survivors.

“The first thing you do – at least I did – is learn to depend upon yourself. That sounds selfish, but you have to ask, ‘What am I going to do with myself now that my life has changed so drastically?’ You discover yourself, your strengths, your weaknesses.

And you let go of your weaknesses,” she said.

None of her other children lived near her when Catherine died, so Salter found herself – as the only living parent – responsible for handling matters she never thought would fall to her.

“I always depended on other people taking care of me.

But, I realized, if my own two feet aren’t going to hold me up, nobody else is going to,” Salter said.

When Catherine died, Salter said, “There I was, with the law telling me I had to make the decisions. So I had to go to New York, and I went by myself; I had never been there before.”

On a pier, in a small cubicle, she and thousands of other victims’ families sat with attorneys and learned they needed reams of paperwork to document their loved ones’ deaths.

Catherine’s birth certificate, her mother’s birth certificate, Social Security documents, death certificates, all had to be produced while she was still reeling from her daughter’s death.

“They gave me eight or 10 of Catherine’s death certificate.

Each one had to be an original and had to have an actual seal on it to get the other paperwork,” she said, still with a note of disbelief in her voice.

Armed with the proper documentation, Salter then found herself dealing with her daughter’s landlady – an obstinate

sort – going to the bank to close out her accounts, handling Workers Compensation matters and bickering with insurance companies.

“These were the things I had to do the first year (after Catherine’s death),” she said.

In the decade since Catherine’s death, as is often the case with such a loss, family issues have arisen that have “left a lot of bad feelings” which she also must deal with.

When the 9/11 Fund was created, Salter had to start the

process all over, providing the proper paperwork and documentation “to prove I was who I said I was.”

While fighting for what was rightly hers and her family’s, Salter said, “I learned not to let people push me around. I stand up for myself and control my emotions so you know I mean what I say.”

Through it all, she grieved for her daughter, using memories to help her get through the days.

“Catherine was 37 when

she died. I had her childhood to look back on, her high school and college years. It would be really, really hard for these mothers (who lose) young children,” she said. “To say (to them) it’s going to get better is a bunch of bull. It just doesn’t hurt as much every day. It won’t get any better. It will just

“Imagine a kid with flaming red hair and freckles, looking like Howdy Doody. That was David,” said Dickey. “I still wonder if he ever got any height.”

The two became friends during the sixth grade, after Scales had performed an original composition, “Blast Off Moon,” for President Richard Nixon. The two bonded over a love of music and Dickey still remembers fondly their time as friends.

“Music just flowed from his fingers. He cast a spell on everyone,” said Dickey. “A lot of the songs I enjoy today are because of him.”

Throughout middle school the duo performed in the school choir and even snuck off for about a week to the middle school band room where they composed a song. The song, which was sung by the choir, featured original music by Scales and lyrics by Dickey.

“I’m hoping one day to get it back,” said Dickey.

The two remained close in high school, where they were both members of the Junior Reserve Office Training Corp.

Scales served as a cadet lieutenant, a precursor to a military career that would span 22 years. The Scales’ family move separated the friends for good, Dickey attempted to find Scales following graduation, but his family had relocated to Virginia.

Scales eventually enrolled in the University of Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, where he earned a degree in musical composition and theory in 1979. He also graduated with a U.S. Army Reserve commission as second lieutenant, Medical Service Corps.

He began his official military career stationed at Camp Zama on the demilitarized zone of South Korea. He returned to the U.S. one year later and was assigned to be company commander of 300 enlisted soldiers at Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colo. He was

later promoted to captain and sent to the Army Reserve Components and Administration Center in St. Louis, Mo. While in St. Louis, he attended Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, Ill., where he earned a MBA summa cum laude. Following his graduation from SIU he received the rank of major and was moved to Fort Monroe in Virginia. While at Fort Monroe he was assigned as a staff officer at the Office of the Chief of the Army Reserve in the Pentagon. He later moved to the Army Section of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel where he was promoted to lieutenant colonel.

Shortly before his death he was notified that he was in line to earn a promotion to the rank of colonel, a rank he was award posthumously.

Although a career military man, Scales continued to perform, joining “Bridges to Bliss,” a trio that performed regularly in the Washington,

D.C., area. Along with the trio, he was a member of the Songwriters Association of Washington. His original compositions are still being listened to by family members and friends alike, through home movies and recordings.

Dickey currently has three of those compositions, sent to him by Scales’ mother shortly after his death. In memory of his fallen friend, Dickey invited the public to hear the songs at the Wellsville gazebo.

“I thought his music was something everybody should enjoy,” said Dickey.

In the hopes of getting Scales music out to more people, Dickey is working with University of Akron professor Brian Ebie to transcribe the recordings into sheet music.

Scales musical accomplishments were matched only by his military achievements. His awards included the Legion of Merit, a Purple Heart, as well as multiple Meritorious Service Medals, Army Commendation

9/11 Museum Those wishing to send photos, videos, copies of speeches or other items regarding Catherine Salter to be included in the 9/11 Museum in New York can send them to Eleanor Salter, 9296 state Route 45, Lisbon, Ohio, 44432.

Wellsville native Catherine Salter died during the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Morning Journal/Patti Schaeffer

Catherine Salter’s memorial.

Eleanor Salter.

get easier. (They need to) find things about them they remember most. I remember Catherine’s grade school years a lot.”

Salter said, “I talk to her.

She has helped me get through it. She’ll say, ‘Mom, let it go.’

If people think I’m crazy, I don’t care. Catherine is my angel.”

She has gained a stronger faith in God since her daughter’s death, saying, “Now I know He’s not going to give me more than I can handle.”

This year will be especially hard since the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks is gaining much media attention.

“I won’t watch television next week. It’s too hard to watch all of that all over again,” Salter admitted. “Sometimes, it seems like it was yesterday.”

On Sept. 11 Salter will again be in New York, this time with just one bit of paperwork: a pass to a family-only ceremony to honor the victims.

She had asked the mayor of New York if she could read Catherine’s name, but that honor is meted out by lottery.

“I wasn’t chosen,” Salter said with no bitterness, saying everyone in the mayor’s office has been “very nice, very compassionate” to her.

“I feel like I’m out in left field down here in Ohio when most of the (families) are in New York. They listen to me as well as they do the ones in New York.”

She plans on walking through the memorial to see how memorabilia of Catherine is displayed and has been encouraging people to send her items to include.

Although bittersweet, Salter said, “It’s really going to be nice, I think.”

Former East Liverpool student lost in Pentagon attack

By RENEE COLEMAN Staff writer

EAST LIVERPOOL — Among the fallen heroes interred at Arlington Cemetery is former East Liverpool High School student Lt. Col. David Scales. Scales was among the 189 people killed when American Airlines Flight 77 bound for Los Angeles crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11.

According to reports, Scales was working in his office in ‘E’ Ring, the outermost ring of the Pentagon, when the Boeing 757 crashed, striking the building.

He was born in Cleveland on Sept. 27, 1956 to Dorothy Scales and the late Capt. John Scales. Eventually the military family moved to East Liverpool and lived there until the end of Scales’ junior year.

Although he didn’t graduate from ELHS, Scales did leave a lasting mark on some students, such as former Wellsville Councilman Ken Dickey.

jgilbert@mojonews.com

Medal and Army Achievement Medals. Other awards include the National Defense Service Medal, Overseas Service Ribbon, Army Service Ribbon, Parachute Badge and Expert Pistol Marksman Badge.

At the time of his death, Scales and his wife Trisha, had a 12-year-old son, Ashton.

Trisha and Ashton, who suffered from severe asthma, were residing apart from Scales in Arizona. The separation was due to Ashton’s condition which fared better in the drier climates. Other survivors included his parents, a brother, Robert; two sisters, Nancy and Lisa, and 10 and nephews.

As mourners travel to the Sept. 11 memorial in New York City or one of the numerous memorial services scheduled across the country, Dickey will be working, but not without taking time to remembering his friend.

“I may take his music to work with me and see if they’ll let me play it,” said Dickey.

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firefighters Areamananswerscalltohelp Salem’s recall where they were MORNING JOURNAL

By DEANNE JOHNSON Staff Writer

EAST LIVERPOOL — The fallen World Trade Center buildings were still smoldering when Dan Ibbs of the Dawson Funeral Home in East Liverpool made his way to Ground Zero.

A member of the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team for region five, which includes Ohio, Ibbs and many others were called into service shortly following the disaster.

“I’d never been to New York at that point,” Ibbs said, adding besides not knowing where to go, the situation in the city was stressful. “Are they going to hit again?”

Each day he went right past the United Nation’s building to obtain the list of the names of bodies which had been identified from the coroner’s office. At that time, the U.N. building was circled by airplanes protecting it, airplanes which were refilled in mid-air.

The photos and video footage from Ground Zero were unable to show exactly how horrible the area actually was. Police, firefighters and others continued to perform “search and recovery” operations for days, still hoping to find people in pockets beneath the rubble.

“I called home and told my wife, ‘All those images you see on television, as horrific as they look, they don’t show it all. It’s like walking into hell,’” Ibbs said.

Besides spending time at ground zero, Ibbs assisted at the morgue. He also helped at the chief medical examiner’s office. He was at the Emergency Management offices set up shortly after the events at Pier 92 and at the Family

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011

WE REMEMBER

Assistance Center set up at Pier 94. He helped at the fresh kills landfill on Long Island, one of a few manmade places so large it can be seen from space.

Debris from ground zero was taken to the landfill as the pieces were slowly removed piece by piece. Ibbs said at the landfill he saw huge ladder firetrucks, “bent like taffy” and flattened by the debris, which fell from the buildings.

“It was just unbelievable to see.”

People would come to the Family Assistance Center, hoping to learn that a loved one had been found safe.

Those who were looking for lost loved ones left momentos throughout the city — photographs, names, flowers and candles. At the Family Assistance Center people could obtain many types of assistance, including a hot meal and a chance to speak to others about the tragedy they had witnessed or were dealing with.

Commissioner Rosemarie O’Keefe of Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s Community Assistance Unit was there and introduced Ibbs to Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg. Ibbs also met Jeb Bush, the president’s brother who was then serving as governor of Florida. Both came to the Pier 94 center to talk to the families there, as did many others, including sports celebrities both local and those who would come to town to play against a New York team.

“You never knew who was going to come through,” Ibbs said. “It gave those individuals a chance to do something to help.”

No matter how stressful the situation in New York was, Ibbs said he felt it was a

A member of the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team for region five, the Dawson Funeral Home’s Dan Ibbs was called into service shortly following the Sept. 11, disaster.

“I called home and told my wife, ‘All those images you see on television, as horrific as they look, they don’t show it all. It’s like walking into hell.’”

DAN IBBS

“privilege and an honor” to be able to help people.

Despite all they had just been through, the people of New York welcomed those who came to help. Ibbs said he met and worked with some wonderful police officers he still remains friends with today. A place he had never

been before 9/11, New York is now a place he visits regularly.

Besides local heroes, Ibbs also met others who came to New York to help. One man, Col. Curt Dailey, a forensic dental specialist, had gone to college with the team dentist for several professional New York sports teams including the Yankees. Dailey was able to get two tickets for Ibbs and himself to attend the first World Series game at the stadium in the Bronx after 9/11.

The third game of the series, Ibbs remembers how tight security was because President George W. Bush was there to throw out the first pitch.

“It was scary,” he said.

“Security was beefed up. The president was there. It was an emotional time.”

A trained Bald Eagle at one point flew through the stadium. Mostly, Ibbs said he remembers feeling a great sense of being filled with patriotism from that game.

“There was almost an exuberance when he threw that pitch,” Ibbs said.

Although a decade has gone by, not a day goes by that Ibbs does not remember his time in New York in 2001. Ibbs said he has been deployed to other places before and since Sept. 11. He assisted in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city, providing urban recovery services. He assisted in 1994 when all 132 passengers died in a Boeing 737 when it crashed on approach to the Pittsburgh International Airport.

Ibbs said he keeps his all his deployment tags in his closet, but it is the one from 9/11 which is the first one he looks at every day.

By MARY ANN GREIER Staff Writer

SALEM — Salem City Firefighter Dustin Lucas said he was sitting in chemistry class at Carrollton High School when tragedy struck on 9/11, but coming from a family of firefighters, he was old enough to know what could happen.

Reflecting back on that day, he said 9/11 “brought to light what we do...put ourselves out there for people we don’t know or never met.”

Lucas wasn’t a firefighter then, but was old enough to know what his family members were getting into as firefighters. He remembered the teacher coming into the classroom and saying,“We were under attack.”

They didn’t know what was happening, but once they saw the television coverage, they figured it out.

“We stayed in the same class all day and watched everything unfold,” he said.

He became a firefighter at age 18 and said the events of 9/11 influenced his decision a little bit, but not as much as the fact that his family was all firefighters. He remembered at the time how every house had a flag, and now that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Fellow Salem City Firefighter Kevin Bryan, who also serves as Perry Township Fire Chief, echoed those sentiments, noting how people were going to church more and joining fire departments and that seems to have fallen off a decade later.

He said the events of that day brought everybody together and it’s “up to us to remember the sacrifice people made.”

In his mind, he’s tried to put himself in the shoes of those New York City firefighters, approaching the towers in their trucks and seeing what was happening. He was a firefighter for Franklin Township at the time.

He was digging trees on a tree farm in Kensington when the boss came flying through the field in his pickup and told them to stop digging and turn on the radio. One of the other bosses got a portable TV and they watched in disbelief at what they were seeing.

They heard that all commercial flights had been grounded, but then they heard a plane fly over. About 20 minutes to a half hour later, a plane crashed in Shanksville, Pa. and he said they assumed that was the plane that flew over the area.

Salem Fire Inspector Derek Day, who’s also assistant chief at the Damascus Fire Department, was a volunteer at the time for Damascus and working for a nursery doing hardscaping. He was building a retaining wall at Stark State College when he heard what happened. He saw planes landing at the AkronCanton airport and heard about the grounding of all air traffic.

He said the firefighters who responded to the World Trade Center did what they were supposed to do.

Between the actions of the firefighters and the police, he said “they rescued a lot of people that day.”

Day said their actions saved many, many lives and they and their families paid the ultimate sacrifice doing what they were trained to do.

Columbiana County more prepared following Sept. 11, 2001

By TOM GIAMBRONI Staff Writer

LISBON — On Sept. 11, 2001, Darren Dodson was a flight chief assigned to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, D.C., which serves as the home base for Air Force One. “I had worked the night shift and was home sleeping when the phone rang, and they told me I was on standby,” he said.

Like the rest of the nation, Dodson was stunned and transfixed by what he saw on television. “I think everyone recognized it was going to change not only our lives but the way we do business,” he said.

In 2005, following his retirement from the Air Force, Dodson was hired as the new Columbiana County Emergency Management Agency director, the person in charge of maintaining a plan to address any conceivable emergency, including a terrorist attack.

How does the county measure up, six years later?

“Are we better prepared?

That’s really more of a personal opinion. The short answer is yes. The changes have brought valuable resources to the county which enhances our responders’

“Are we better prepared? That’s really more of a personal opinion.

The short answer is yes.”

DARREN DODSON, COUNTY EMA DIRECTOR

efforts,” he said. First responders are the emergency personnel who are the first to respond to any situation, such as the police, firefighters and EMTs. Dodson was referring to the $1.8 million in combined annual federal Homeland Security grant money received since 2001, which the EMA has allocated using an advisory committee consisting of representatives from police and fire departments, communities, local hospitals, public health care agencies, etc.

The money has been used to acquire new radios for police and fire departments, pagers, portable breathing packs, hazardous material response equipment, generators, air compressors, thermal imaging cameras, gas detection monitors and flashlights.

Over the years, communi-

ties also received funding to purchase back-up generators and surveillance systems for water treatment plants, while money was also used to purchase decontamination masks for local hospital personnel and special vests hospital staff can wear underneath decontamination suits to keep them from overheating. An amateur radio club used by the EMA received money to upgrade its radio system.

Approximately $30,000 a year has been used to hire and retain Marcus Prendes to compile a comprehensive inventory/database of every possible resource in the county that could be called upon for use in an emergency by any community.

The EMA has used its share of the money to acquire: an emergency response vehicle to serve as an on-site command post; a trailer to haul equipment; a portable decontamination shelter; training and reference materials; hazardous material testing and protective suits; and 10 cots and blankets.

“It gives our first responders access to equipment they might not otherwise have,” Dodson said of the Homeland Security money. “It all has a point, and it’s there when it is needed, when it is called upon for use.”

djohnson@mojonews.com

Hired as the Columbiana County Emergency Management Agency director in 2005, Darren Dodson was a flight chief assigned to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11, 2001.

Dodson said the county was ahead of most other counties on Sept. 11 because it had a long-standing plan in place for responding to an emergency at the nuclear power plant in nearby Shippingport, Pa. That plan, developed by Dodson’s predecessor, Jay Carter Jr., already addressed what to do in case of an attack at the plant, and the EMA is required to test that plan during mock drills held every two years.

“We had an advantage since we have the power plant drill, and we’re more accustomed to tapping into those resources,” he said.

The nuclear plant response

plan serves as the basic framework for responding to any emergency, such as the protocol to be followed, what resources are available and should be used, what agencies and personnel need mobilized, etc.

“The practice doesn’t change. It’s the same steps you want to take, regardless of the emergency,” he said.

Dodson said the plan is constantly being updated to address the latest possible national disaster or emergency.

“It’s always changing.

You look at the lessons learned from Huricane Katrina. There were things that

mgreier@salemnews.net

came out of it that we used to make changes here,” he said.

“The next great disaster always shapes planning.”

After the funding, the biggest change to come from Sept. 11 was the rise of terrorism-specific training for emergency personnel and increased emphasis improving coordination of those efforts at all levels.

“All of the training we’ve gone through is a direct result of what happened 10 years ago,” Dodson said.

Under Dodson’s watch, the EMA started the Medical Reserve Corps, which consists of a group of volunteer medical professionals who would help respond to emergencies requiring medical assistance. He said the local corps is run through the Mahoning County EMA and not much has been going on with the group since it was formed in 2008.

The EMA also formed the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), an organization of volunteers who would be trained to assist local police and fire departments in an emergency. Dodson said CERT has largely been dormant due to lack of money for training and related materials. tgiambroni@mojonews.com

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MORNING JOURNAL

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011

WE REMEMBER

MorningJournalreadersthinkbacktoSept.11,2001 Like many of the national tragedies that preceded 9/11, we will never forget where we were on September 11th.

I will also never forget the conversation I had with Cathy Salter on that day and can’t help but consider what her life would have been like if our paths never crossed.

My professional relationship with Cathy began when she was hired by me into the Aon organization. On some days, I imagine how differently her life would have been if I did not make her an offer to join Aon or if she would have declined my offer. She would undoubtedly still be here with her friends and family. I would have been diminished for not knowing her, but her life and spirit would still be present.

The greater good would have been served by her presence.

It seems we never know where our journey in this life will take us or when, or in this case, where it will end.

On September 11, 2001, a colleague of mine came into my office in Cincinnati and said the World Trade Center was on fire. I immediately called Cathy Salter and reached her at her desk.

The atmosphere was one of confusion as apparently she could see the fire in the adjacent building but was not quite sure what happened or how a plane could strike such a large building. She advised she was given the order to evacuate. I told her to go quickly and that she needed to do everything possible to get some place safe.

I asked her to call me when she was safe. She promised she would call. I then walked out of my office and saw the news account; and it was just moments after I spoke to Cathy I heard the news the second tower was struck. I never did receive that call from Cathy. I really wish I had.

I was given a tape from Cathy’s memorial service that still sits in my desk to this day. I have yet to summon the emotional courage to watch it. You see, while our relationship started out as a business relationship those who knew Cathy will tell you that she would become your friend for life. I imagine sitting down in heaven someday next to my friend Cathy and telling her how thankful I am that our lives crossed and apologizing at the same time.

Dan Kunkel Cincinnati ∫∫∫

I was sitting in my family room watching TV and was surprised to see the first plane go into the tower and later the second one. I called my son-in-law and asked him if he had his TV on. He said yes and then he told me my daughter, Karen, was in New York and was just a few blocks from the tower. I guess I went into shock. I hung up on him without saying goodbye. Later that day Karen called me and said she was OK. She told me she saw the second plane go into the tower.

Mildred Eells East Liverpool ∫∫∫

“I immediately called Cathy Salter and reached her at her desk. The atmosphere was one of confusion as apparently she could see the fire in the adjacent building but was not quite sure what happened or how a plane could strike such a large building.”

DAN KUNKEL

I do remember all these stories. I was 36 years old when President Kennedy was shot and killed. That day was awful. I had three boys and one daughter at that time. My husband and I worked in East Liverpool at Riverview Florist. I was working in the orchid department when they announced that Kennedy was shot. It was so sad for everyone. Mr. C. Bosco fell to his knees. I think he cried for a week over that, he just couldn’t get over it.

When the shuttle went down we were watching it on TV. I think I cried for weeks over that, too. That was 24 years ago. My husband was in the hospital having surgery that year. My granddaughter, Tiffany, was born that September on the 18th. Her dad was in the Navy on his ship in San Diego, Calif.

When the hijacked planes hit the Twin Towers, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania I had worked that day and thought I’d sleep in. My girlfriend called and told me to get up and turn on the TV. Oh my Lord, that was so terrible. I was glued to the TV for hours that day and days to come. It’s been 10 years ago, but it’s still terrible when I see it shown on TV. I was so glad when the Navy Seals got bin Laden.

They should have taken him and his people out years ago.

Now if we can get our country out of debt so we can get our lives back to healing again and have more love for one another. I’ll be 82 this year and there’s not many years left for me. But, think of all these young people, just starting out with no work available for anyone. Our country needs a healing of love and peace in these time.

Out Lord is coming back soon and young and old alike better get ready.

People wake up before it’s too late.

Margaret Leggett Lisbon ∫∫∫

The news of the events happening on September 11th first came from a coworker returning from lunch.

I found the news confusing as I left the office for my lunch. Watching the news unfold was surreal. How could this happen and why would this happen? The sights and sounds were horrific and a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach began to creep in. Our country under attack? How could that be?

It was difficult to watch what was happening and to think anyone would be so evil as to cause such carnage.

A small TV was brought in to work to keep us updated on the events. It was not easy to concentrate and even more difficult to hold back the tears watching the destruction and agony in the eyes of those in the midst of the chaos and those reporting it. Innocent lives lost. Heroes attempting to rescue all they could After work, my neighbor called to see if I wanted to attend a prayer service at her church. We prayed for the victims, families of the victims and our country. At least we could offer prayer.

The service brought a bit of relief to the feeling of helplessness.

Spending your whole life in a “Norman Rockwell” town like Columbiana doesn’t prepare you for the evil that is out in the world.

Today as I contemplated how to put into words the impact of that day, the sounds of a band playing in Firestone Park could be heard as I filled bird feeders in my garden. The carnival like sounds of “It’s a Grand Old Flag” came floating through the air from Doc Pritchard’s calliope, as he played for a “family fun day” across the street. Today also brought the disturbing news of the deaths of the Navy Seals shot down in Afghanistan. Tears filled my eyes again as I thought about the approaching anniversary of that terrible day of September 11th and the poignant contrast of life in my town.

My great-uncle died fighting for freedoms in WWII and is buried in Germany. My husband, brother, brother-in-law and uncle all served to protect our freedom and a great-nephew is currently serving with the Marines. We must never forget what a privilege it is to live in our great country and what our service men and women do for us. We must also never forget there is evil in the world, but our God is in control.

Please pray for our country, our leaders and our service men and women. Please pray for peace for all the families who suffer every day because of the evil acts inflicted upon our great land.

We can offer prayer. May God Bless America.

Joyce Allcorn Columbiana ∫∫∫

Associated Press/Mary Altaffer

The spot where the World Trade Center once stood is visible in this aerial view looking northeast Aug. 13, 2003. Two years after the towers were destroyed, ground zero was still a place teeming with emotions - sometimes conflicting, always powerful. Watch for just one day, sunrise to sunset, and the sorrow and hope of the place unfold.

After seeing your invitation to contribute to your 9/11 commemoration, I felt compelled to do something I have never done. I will share my personal experience from September 11 in hopes that it helps others to understand the importance of that event in terms of our national security.

I have over 31 years in law enforcement and public safety services and never have I experienced a more terrifying sequence of events than those of September 11, 2001. At the time, I was director of Trumbull County 911, and we had primary call taking and dispatch responsibilities for area police, fire and EMS departments. It was a beautiful late summer day, with cobaltblue skies, but my life was forever changed when I began to receive calls from state and federal officials regarding the events which were unfolding that morning.

The first call was to inform me that there were possibly as many as five commercial jet airliners that had been hijacked. The Youngstown Airport is in Vienna Township, and their police are dispatched by Trumbull County 911. I was told that all airspace in the country was being shut down and to prepare for as many as four emergency landings at the airport.

Vienna police Chief Dave Ovesney was coordinating the incident on-scene, and we remained in close contact throughout the morning.

While being briefed via phone, I watched on television as the morning news channels replayed video footage of the first aircraft striking the World Trade Center. My first reaction was that this was some kind of bizarre accident, but that feeling quickly gave way to the awful truth as I received information that United flight 93 was over our airspace and was confirmed to have been hijacked. We were preparing for possible crash scenarios here as I watched the second jetliner crash into the other tower of the World Trade Center in New York.

There was no more doubt in my mind – America was under attack and we must focus on our response.

Through almost over-

whelming feelings of shock and disbelief, I began implementing our disaster plan and coordinating crisis response to prepare for emergency landings and possible mass casualty incidents. The problem was that no one had ever considered that airliners would be used as weapons and America’s air space had never been shut down before. There were no training scenarios or protocols for this.

The training and competence of my staff and the first responders in our county became evident as we put all contingencies into play to deal with the incidents as best as we were able. We adapted the emergency protocols for other disasters to mitigate our current challenges. This was seat-of-thepants incident command in real time with unimaginable consequences if we screwed something up. Calls from terrified citizens flooded the 911 lines and emergency responders rose up to help in droves.

As I was being briefed on the second plane crash, the twin towers began to collapse. We soon received word that United 93 had also crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after just clearing our airspace. An emergency response of unprecedented magnitude was under way and chaos is the only way I can describe it. It was so difficult to grasp that we were under attack – on American soil! My thoughts went to the certainty that fellow emergency services workers and everyday citizens were dying as I struggled to help. Frustration and intermittent feelings of helplessness were common – there is so much more we needed to know and wanted to do, but communications were spotty and often contradictory.

On a personal level, my mission demanded that I forcefully push thoughts of my own family’s safety from my mind with a fervent prayer that my own kids would survive. At that point, my thoughts were that this was not going to stop – that “this was it” – we were at war. None of us was sure what we would be called upon to do, but all of us were ready to do it. In this short space, it is impossible to

relate everything that happened during those first few hours.

We got the aircraft in our airspace safely on the ground and secured. We determined that none of them had bombs or hijackers aboard. We were grateful for the food and water provided by the Red Cross, the Emergency Management Agency and other relief agencies. And we did our jobs.

As we shut down our air space and worked the command post at the airport, the national response to the attack settled into the determined cadence that so exemplifies the resolve and spirit of the American people. We would survive this – we would respond and we would prevail. Stories of the amazing courage of so many Americans began to trickle in, giving us hope and steeling our resolve to do whatever was necessary to defend our nation. These events changed all of us, and I am proud to have played a small part. The words “Homeland Security” are now a part of everyday speech, and all of us now have at least a basic understanding of security screening and terrorism prevention strategies.

I continue to contribute of the defense or our homeland by serving as a terrorism liaison officer for Columbiana County and by staying trained and informed about the latest threats. While I mourn the loss of the innocence and security prevalent in the post-Vietnam era, I celebrate the renewed sense of patriotism and pride that many of us feel after that 11th day of September.

Regardless of what the future brings, I and many like me stand ready to defend America and our freedom, here or anywhere. The sight of our flag during a parade, the sound of Taps at a veteran’s funeral or scenes of the joyous return of our fighting men and women can easily move me to tears now. In that sense, I am grateful to have been reminded that the price of freedom is vigilance and strength. Let us never forget…..

Chief Tim Gladis Columbiana Police Department ∫∫∫

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MORNING JOURNAL

It was a typical September morning. A little chill in the air, but Morgan, my then 4-year-old granddaughter and I didn’t care. We were headed to sunny Florida for three weeks. This would be our fifth time in the air since April. She was becoming a seasoned flyer.

This flight started out a little different because the night before I found our seats had not been assigned, which was unusual. So I made a call and our seats were assigned right away. It was easier to do this especially with a 4-year-old. This was before the enhanced security so we arrived 45 minutes early and went straight to the gate.

By 8:15 a.m. we were boarding the plane. Because Morgan was a small child, I boarded fairly early and saw that there weren’t many people on the plane. I thought nothing of it only because of boarding early. But as the minutes went by I realized the number of people on that flight was low. Basically the plane was empty. This was unusual for a trip to Florida.

In all my years of traveling there I had never gotten on a plane that was so empty you could sit wherever you wanted. In our row there was a businessman and he asked if I would be offended if he moved to one of the empty seats so that we could have more room and he could work. I told him I would not be offended. After looking around at all the empty seats I then understood why we didn’t have a problem with getting ours so quickly the night before.

After the take off (the part I hate the most) and the plane leveled out I looked out the window. Morgan and I were talking about the clouds. I told her “this is an absolutely beautiful day to fly” The day was gorgeous — sun shining, reflecting off the clouds. Just a great day.

Or so I thought. After awhile the pilot got on the air and told us we were cruising at 32,000 feet.

Sometime after 9:15 a.m., the flight attendants served our food. Because so few people were on our flight they finished in no time. I remember them making one trip down the aisle collecting items from all of us. Then they went back to their places.

All of a sudden a stewardess came back down the aisle moving brisker than I had seen in the past. I looked up and saw a face I will remember the rest of my life, with a look you can’t forget.

Mind you none of us at that time knew what was going on. Her face had a look of great concern, maybe a little fear. I processed this for a minute and I wondered what is going on, but Morgan distracted me.

Our flight continued for a while and then the captain came on the radio and informed us the flight was being diverted to Greensboro, he wanted to assure us there was nothing wrong with the plane, but the plane had been ordered out of the air. He said he requested for us to land in Charlotte but they were too busy, therefore we would be landing in Greensboro, N.C. Still not knowing what was going on I figured that something had

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011

WE REMEMBER

Associated Press/Amy Sancetta, File

The south tower of the World Trade Center begins to collapse following a terrorist attack on the New York landmark in this Sept. 11, 2001 file photo.

happened at Tampa International. I explained to Morgan, who was not at all happy about this, what was going on.

I did notice the steward go to the cabin door, put his hand in his pocket, do something at the lock then went into the cabin and when he came out he repeated the process in reverse. I didn’t realize what he was doing until afterward when we heard that all pilots cabins went into lockdown. Still we knew nothing.

Everything happened so quickly including our descent. Oh my, what a descent it was. I don’t ever want to go through another one like that. I have explained to people that if you take a piece of flexible steel in your hands hold it straight out in front of you and shake the metal fast and hard, this is exactly what we heard. The sounds inside the plane put your nerves on edge. I have to tell you I have flown in all kinds of weather — storms, lightning, rough, bumpy, but this was the first time I was really afraid. I don’t ever want to hear those sounds again.

A pilot who overheard my conversation one day told me it was G-force on the metal as the plane came down in a fast descent. Gforce or not, I pray no one ever has to hear that.

During the landing, we literally had to brace ourselves. But even planting our feet firmly on the ground and bracing ourselves with our hands on the seat in front of us didn’t keep us from flying forward.

After the pilot got us onto the tarmac safely, and we started to taxi toward the terminal he told us that “two planes had crashed into the World Trade Towers,” but didn’t tell us that two more planes had also crashed.

I immediately called my family and told them where we were, but my stepfather had already left to pick us up.

Mom told me what was going on and that the news had reported the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania had just taken off from Pittsburgh International. Not only did my family have great con-

“The sounds inside the plane put your nerves on edge. I have to tell you I have flown in all kinds of weather — storms, lightning, rough, bumpy, but this was the first time I was really afraid.”

CINDY VENESS

cern as we were someplace in the air when all four planes went down but the reports coming across about the Pennsylvania plane had them really beside themselves.

Because we were still on the plane, waiting to get into the terminal, and because of the confusion, having worked in law enforcement I made a quick call back to Ohio and asked for verification of what my family told me I was told it was true, and it was very serious. Government buildings were being put in lockdown We were told to leave our luggage/belongings on the plane. But for years, I have shipped everything by UPS so Morgan and I just had our backpacks.

Upon getting off the plane an airline official told us to stay at the gate, as we would be leaving in 15-20 minutes.

Everyone migrated to TVs in many restaurants near our gate to watch the news coverage. Like everyone across the country we were all in shock and disbelief. There was such a mix of emotions going on. I think because we were flying it made it hit home more.

After about five minutes they told us we would be leaving in about 30 minutes.

I started talking to a woman who lived in Tampa, and had been going home to see her mom. She told me our flight originated in Newark, N.J. Ten minutes into our wait the airline personnel

came to the gate and said that all flights across the U.S. had been officially grounded. We were told to go to the ticket gate and that the airlines would cover any expenses for stay, etc. as long as we were deferred. Thus started the demise of the airlines.

Many passengers who were strangers only minutes before became fast friends, teaming up renting cars, vans or anything with wheels to drive to their destination. All the cars were gone so we proceeded to the ticket gate to get our voucher for our stay in Greensboro. While standing in line, they kept announcing, “Please do not leave your bags unattended.”

Someone did, I have seen police officers move, but I don’t think I have ever seen them move as fast or as many on two suitcases as I did that day.

They kept asking, “Who belongs to these suitcases?”

When the man came and acknowledged they were his, he was told to not leave his luggage again or his luggage would be gone. After a little time officers headed toward the terminal doors, and then an announcement was made over the loudspeaker to calmly evacuate the terminal Calm it wasn’t. As we got almost to the door, they said to cancel the evacuation.

We got back in line, and they gave us our hotel vouchers.

Because so many planes were grounded the hotels were all full so they transported us to the Hampton in downtown Greensboro to stay.

We had been told to keep in contact with the airlines.

We kept booking flights, first Thursday morning, then it was canceled. Then Thursday afternoon, and Thursday night— both canceled. Then Friday morning, canceled again. Then late Friday night.

The day was full of confusion, and uncertainty. For us, but especially for the airlines.

They tried their best to help us and were so gracious to all of us who were deferred to someplace other than our destination.

In between booking flights and getting canceled I kept calling Hertz. Around noon Thursday I called and was told that someone had just brought in a car. I told them to hold it, and I would be right over. I found the woman I had been talking to earlier, and we headed to Tampa by vehicle.

What started out to be a beautiful day, turned into a sad one. I have flown since, but this day is never far away from my mind when I get on the plane.

As the anniversary of that day draws near I want it to slip by quietly. It could have been our plane. It could have been us. There is sadness for the ones who lost their lives on the planes, in the buildings, on the ground, and for the ones who went into the buildings as they were trained to do.

My day will start by going to church to give me a sense of peace and to pray for the lives lost that day and for their family members left behind.

Cindy Veness Morning Journal advertising sales representative ∫∫∫

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Associated Press/Marty Lederhandler, File

In this Sept. 11, 2001 file photo, the twin towers of the World Trade Center burn behind the Empire State Building in New York.

On September 11th, my husband, our two friends and myself left Leetonia around 4:30 a.m. excited about going to Punta Cana on vacation. We arrived at Cleveland Airport around 6 a.m., and took off at 8 a.m. for a straight-through flight.

Around 9:15 the captain came on and said that we would be landing in Cincinnati to pick up passengers.

As soon as we landed the captain told us that we needed to leave the airplane, which surprised us.

As we debarked the plane we noticed there was no one in the airport, no televisions, no monitors and no lights.

We were then told that we were grounded due to the Twin Towers bombing. The phones were overloaded, and we could not get any phones to work. When someone was able get through on their cell phone they would tell us what they had been told by their families.

We had to get our luggage and go outside the terminal to wait for buses to come to take us back to Cleveland, this was approximately 11 a.m. The buses had to come from Columbus and picked us up at 3:30 p.m. We got back to Cleveland around 8:30 that night and it was around 11 p.m. when we got back home to Leetonia.

It was a long day. We were finally able to go on our vacation in March of 2002.

We will never forget where we were on 9/11.

Susan and John Frenger Columbiana ∫∫∫

Where I was on 9/11/01?

My mom and I were shopping at the Ames store in Salem. We went to the service desk to ask a question, and they had a TV on showing the first tower had been hit. I was off work due to an injury. We went home and watched it on TV the rest of the day. “The day the world stopped and stood still.” It was hard to believe that it was happening here in the USA and at times it’s still hard to believe that it happened. We can only pray that something likes this never happens again.

Lucy B. Works Salem ∫∫∫

While most of my friends were in school on Sept. 11, I was taking over the couch at my grandmother’s house as I nursed the ankle I twisted while falling off the bleachers at the previous Friday’s football game. That morning I was doing what any typical 15-year-old would have been doing at the time, watching Total Request Live on MTV, back when it still played music.

As I waited to see music videos by the Backstreet Boys or Limp Bizkit, my grandmother was receiving her regular delivery of dialysis supplies. The delivery guy just happened to have his radio on in the truck when he heard that a plane had struck one of the Twin Towers. He calmly came into the house and asked if I could turn on a local news network. What the driver at first believed to be a hoax proved true once I changed channels. The three of us sat in silence as we watched the second plane strike the other tower.

We couldn’t believe it, what just happened. “No way that’s real,” I said.

“MTV’s in New York City, and they had nothing on.”

No sooner had I said that then MTV cut into its programming to report that the World Trade Center had been hit by two airplanes.

Soon after, while watching more and more coverage we heard and saw the horrors unfolding at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania.

Afraid that another terrorist attack would hit at any moment, my grandmother and I sat glued to TV watching all the coverage we could. While we sat in the house, horrified and needing to know everything we could, my grandfather was stuck in the power plant at Shippingport. The plant was put on lock down and he, other truck drivers, as well as plant employees, were not allowed to leave. Eventually my grandfather was allowed to drive home.

Those images from that day will stay with me, just as the Challenger explosion stayed with my parents, and Kennedy’s death stayed with my grandparents.

Renee Coleman Staff Writer

D E M L E H Families still mourning W R E OV IETY? YB ANX MORNING JOURNAL

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SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011

9/11 casualties came from all parts of the world

BY KRISTEN GELINEAU The Associated Press

In a Lithuanian cemetery, a world away from ground zero, the twin towers still stand. Vladimir Gavriushin lays white roses near the 6foot granite replicas of the World Trade Center’s skyscrapers, a memorial he built to honor his daughter Yelena, one of the nearly 3,000 people killed on Sept.

11.

Gavriushin has buried rocks from ground zero under these tombstone towers, far from the place Yelena died — a place he can no longer afford to visit.

And so, as the 10-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks approaches, he mourns for Yelena here, at his own ground zero.

He remembers frantically calling his daughter that day amid the terrified crowds in Brooklyn, where he was at the time: “She never answered.”

Sept. 11 sent waves of grief far beyond America, as people from London to New Zealand learned their loved ones were among the dead. But though the pain transcended borders, foreign families have battled to cope with their loss from afar.

For some, it was impossible to make healing pilgrimages to the site of the tragedy, or to grieve alongside a community that understood their pain. For others, the larger struggle lies within the symbolism of Sept. 11 itself — a day that, for Americans, is inextricably tied to national identity, politics and patriotism.

Most foreigners who lost loved ones that day had little urge to wave a flag. And many questioned the politics and wars that followed.

Where, then, did they fit?

“Mum was not ‘a hero of freedom’ as I heard someone describe it once,” says Simon Kennedy, an Australian whose mother died on Sept. 11 when terrorists crashed her plane into the Pentagon. “She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Yvonne Kennedy had handed the itinerary for her North American vacation to her son with trademark black humor. “This is just in case the terrorists get me,” the 62-year-old said — as she always did — before she set out on her adventure, a retirement gift she’d given herself after a nearly 30-year career with the Red Cross.

One year after the attacks, Kennedy traveled from his home in Sydney to Washington, D.C., to attend a memorial service in honor of those killed on American Airlines Flight 77. At the ceremony, Kennedy listened with growing unease to thenPresident George W. Bush’s speech.

“Trying to wade my way through the fog of American patriotism in order to identify my own grief was very difficult,” says Kennedy, a 36-year-old comedian. “So being back here in Australia, it’s better — because I can just grieve it for what it was.” ∫∫∫ Grief is so personal, so complex, that it is of course too simplistic to say that

The Associated Press

Raquel, 44, a teacher who did not want to give her surname, waits to be interviewed in Ecatepec, Mexico. Raquel’s brother, Leobardo Lopez, a cook at the Windows on the World restaurant on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center, was killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. those who mourned abroad tried war — and terrorism had it harder, or easier, has not ended.”

In the Philippines, jourthan their American counterparts.

Psychologist nalist Cookie Micaller is Richard Bryant, who frustrated by the resources worked with Sept. 11 vic- the U.S. has spent fighting tims in the U.S. and terrorism over the past Australia, has seen the decade, instead of combating disease, improving edustruggle from both sides.

Some victims living in cation and providing food Australia temporarily felt and water to those in need.

“Personally, even if they isolated in their grief and longed for home. In other wage a war, it won’t bring cases, being separated from back my sister,” Micaller the constant reminders of says.

Micaller had been workthe tragedy was helpful.

“At least in Australia, ing late that day at a newsthey felt that they could talk paper in Manila when her about it and they could get editor told her to turn on away from it,” says Bryant, the TV. A plane had crashed director of the University of into the World Trade New South Wales Center — where her sister, Traumatic Stress Clinic. Cynthia Wilson, worked.

“When they went back and She raced to lay out the new lived in Manhattan, they front page story.

“I quietly feared that I found that it was everywhere. ... And they actually may be laying down the felt that they were less in story of my sister’s end,” she remembers. control of how The horrible they were proconfirmation cessing it.”

“Mum was came the next For some, day. though, the not ‘a hero of Shortly yearning to freedom’ as I after, she travgrieve where eled to New their loved heard someone York with her ones died describe it sister and sisr e m a i n s once. She was ter’s husband, intense. her first trip to In a small in the wrong the U.S. mainmountain vilplace at the land. She was lage in overwhelmed.

M e x i c o , wrong time.”

At ground Raquel Lopez zero, a giant Simon Kennedy and her famiof Australia, pile of steel ly cannot whose mother pylons were afford visas died in the attacks twisted like an from Mexico accordion. An to the United acrid, burning States. So this stench filled Sept. 11, they will gather for the air. Rescuers, cleaners a morning Mass and place and investigators tipped flowers on the tomb of her their hard hats as a sign of brother, Leobardo Lopez. grief and commiseration.

They will share memories Wilson’s body was never of the 42-year-old cook, who found. The family buried an was killed at the Windows urn filled with ashes from on the World restaurant on ground zero in a suburban the top of the World Trade New York City cemetery.

Center’s north tower. And Yambem Laba, an Indian they will watch the anniver- whose brother, Jupiter sary events on TV. Yambem, was killed in the “Where we all want to be attacks, believes the U.S. that day, though, is ground had no choice but to wage zero,” says Lopez, her eyes war and hunt for Osama bin watering. “We want to be Laden. where he died, with people “The WTC attack was the who are going through the spark and the flame was the same pain we are going war,” he says. through, and who underEach anniversary, up to stand that void we were all 150 family members and left with.” friends honor Yambem’s Like many families of for- memory with a Hindu eign victims, Lopez was dis- lunch, prayer ceremony and turbed by the wars that fol- floral offerings to his porlowed 9/11. This year, the trait. With bin Laden’s family will wear white as a recent death, this year’s symbol of their wish for gathering will be special, peace.

Laba says.

“Maybe what the United “The aftereffect of 9/11 is States needs to do is sit that the war on terrorism down and have a dialogue took a different turn,” Laba with those people,” she says. “Earlier you could say says. “Because they have one man’s terrorist is anoth-

er man’s freedom fighter, but that no longer held true.” ∫∫∫ As the post-Sept. 11 decade ends, some foreign families of the victims are eager to move past the tragedy.

In Israel, Daniel Lewin’s family honors his memory with a traditional Jewish yahrzeit, an annual memorial observance of a loved one’s death. They talk about his life and study the Torah, the Hebrew Bible, in his name.

Over the years, Daniel’s brother, Michael Lewin, has visited ground zero several times on business trips to New York. But he does not consider the site the best memorial for his brother.

“I’m glad to see that America is rebuilding ground zero,” he says. “But the point of memory is not to be sad, but to use the loss of 9/11 to make the world better. Wallowing in our loss is not productive.”

Iryna Ushakova, a Ukrainian whose father died in the World Trade Center, is looking for closure.

“Life goes on,” she says.

“Ten years is a good time to say goodbye to all that we’ve been through, a good time to turn the page to a new era.”

Ushakova moved to the U.K. after receiving a scholarship from the British Council to dependents of Sept. 11 victims. She set up a folk band, which released a song to mark the 10th anniversary called “The Journey to Ground Zero.”

The music has helped her heal.

This year, she and her family will travel to New York to attend the memorial ceremony.

“When he was killed, you realize you can’t control everything in your life,” she says. “I always wanted to do music. ... And I thought, ‘I have to do it now. There may not be a tomorrow.’”

Nine years after struggling through that first anniversary ceremony in Washington, Simon Kennedy is ready to return.

He and his brother will attend a memorial service and visit Arlington National Cemetery, where some of their mother’s remains are buried.

This time, he feels prepared for what the day will bring.

“Here in Australia, it’s like, ‘It happened, and it’s awful — now let’s move on,’” he says. “It certainly has changed us as people, but it doesn’t in any way identify who we are.”

Remnants of many victims offer little closure

BY CRISTIAN SALAZAR The Associated Press

NEW YORK — His family has his spare firefighter uniform, but not the one he wore on 9/11 — or any other trace of him.

Killed at the World Trade Center, 32-year-old Scott Kopytko’s remains were never recovered — a painful legacy of grief for families looking for answers, closure or final confirmation that their loved one was actually a 9/11 victim.

“Very painful and very hurt” is how Russell Mercer, Kopytko’s stepfather, describes it. “And mistrusting of everybody.”

Numbers tell the story in the decade of search and recovery of the remains of Sept. 11 victims — one of the largest forensic investigations ever, marked by a Supreme Court appeal of families who wanted a more thorough search, and discoveries years after the attacks of even more remains in manholes and on rooftops around ground zero. ∫ Tens of millions have been spent, including on the painstaking extraction of DNA from tiny bone fragments, using technology refined from a decade ago. ∫ Of 21,000 remains that

have been recovered, nearly 9,000 are unidentified, because of the degraded condition they were found in.

More than 1,100 victims have no identifiable remains. ∫ And the pace of the process is telling — in five years, only 25 new identifications.

“I can’t give a time frame of when an identification is going to be made, if at all,” said Mark Desire, who heads the World Trade Center identification unit for the city medical examiner’s office. “But we are working nonstop.”

Five scientists work seven

days a week trying to make new identifications at a lab in an ultra-modern building on the east side of Manhattan. The unidentified remains are stored in climate-controlled conditions under a white tent blocks from the medical examiner’s office. About 400 bone fragments are looked at and analyzed every month.

When an identification is made, the remains are returned to the family.

Sometimes, nothing survives the DNA testing.

Relatives might only receive the packaging where the remains had been stored.

MORNING JOURNAL

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011

WE REMEMBER

Traveling by air forever changed Increased security takes more time, but makes some more comfortable

BY SCOTT MAYEROWITZ The Associated Press

Five-year-old Frank Allocco is 37,000 feet above America, face pressed against the window.

“Cool,” he says to his 6year-old sister. “Francesca, look.”

It’s their first flight. They ignore a Harry Potter DVD and video games. Instead, there are rivers, mountains and tiny cars below.

Francesca chimes in: “Wow, Frank, look at that cloud.”

For Frank and Francesca, soaring high above the country is magical. The kids from Park Ridge, Ill., are treated like stars. A flight attendant gives them wing pins. Mom and dad snap photos.

For most of us, though, the romance of flight is long gone — lost to Sept. 11, 2001, and hard-set memories of jets crashing into buildings.

We remember what it was like before. Keeping all our clothes on at security.

Getting hot meals for free — even if we complained about the taste. Leg room.

Today, we feel beaten down even before reaching our seats. Shoes must be removed and all but the tiniest amounts of liquids surrendered at security checkpoints. Loved ones can no longer kiss passengers goodbye at the gate. And airlines, which have struggled ever since the day terrorists used airplanes as missiles, are adding fees, squeezing in passengers and cutting amenities to survive.

In interviews conducted during a week flying around the country — nine flights totaling 8,414 miles — many passengers expressed anger with air travel, which they said left them feeling like sec-

ond-class citizens. Generally, the terrorism fears that prompted most of the changes were a distant afterthought.

“Anytime I walk into an airport, I feel like a victim,” said Lexa Shafer, of Norman, Okla. “I’m sorry that we have to live this way because of bad guys.”

Despite the aggravations, America’s skies are busier than ever. Airlines carried 720 million passengers last year, up from 666 million in the year before the attacks.

There was little concern about terrorism even on a flight that was almost identical — same route, airline, plane type and departure time — to United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in a Pennsylvania field on Sept.

11 after passengers fought the terrorists for control.

Instead, passengers were jockeying for position at the gate as if they were waiting for the doors to open on a day-after-Thanksgiving sale.

They glanced at each other’s tickets and mumbled complaints when somebody boarded before they were supposed to.

“Passengers have lost civility,” said Karen McNeilly, of Gold Hill, Ore. And it’s not just the boarding process that would make Emily Post cringe.

On a flight to Houston, an oversized man stole a window seat. Why? Because in his assigned seat he would have spilled into the aisle. The rightful occupant couldn’t really object since the seatstealer was already firmly planted, tray table down, Burger King cup out.

It’s easier now for passengers to get annoyed with each other. We’re simply getting packed in more tightly by airlines that are reining in costs more than they ever did before the terror attacks.

A decade ago, an average of 72 percent of seats per flight were occupied. Today, 82 percent are. Passengers once had a shot at an empty mid-

The Associated Press

Airline passengers go through security Aug. 3, 2011, at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

“[Flying] used to be the part of the trip you looked forward to. As an industry, we’ve found a way to beat that joy of flying out of people.”

Virgin America CEO David Cush dle seat. Now that rarely happens. Airlines have added rows, meaning less leg room.

Smaller, regional planes now carry a quarter of all passengers, twice that of a decade ago.

“It is a dismal experience that you simply put up with because you have to get from point A to point B. It used to be the part of the trip you looked forward to,” said Virgin America CEO David Cush. “As an industry, we’ve found a way to beat that joy of flying out of people.”

In another effort to balance their books, airlines have added fees for once-free serv-

ices. Last year, $8.1 billion in fees were collected, more than three times the $2.5 billion collected before the attacks, adjusted for inflation.

Checked-luggage fees accounted for $3.4 billion of the 2010 total. Without them, major airlines would have lost money last year rather than reporting a combined $2.6 billion in profits.

It’s no wonder that for shorter trips, Americans now avoid flying. New intercity buses have popped up and Amtrak now carries 37 percent more riders than a decade ago. Buses and trains don’t have the security checkpoints that make it necessary for air passengers to arrive at the airport about an hour before domestic flights and two hours in advance for trips out of the U.S. The days of arriving minutes before a flight are a distant memory, and lines are inconsistent. While one Transportation Security Administration checkpoint took four minutes to clear, another involved a 27-minute wait.

Frequent fliers know the ever-changing set of security rules. Most others don’t.

Some people worry about radiation-emitting, modestyeroding full-body scanners, although their use is still sporadic.

At Newark Liberty International Airport, the machines were shut down during the Monday morning rush. In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., two lanes were open.

One had a full-body scanner.

One didn’t. Passengers could pick.

“I’m not really convinced that any of this security is doing anything other than making people feel safe,” said Matthew Von Kluge, of Chicago. He was wearing a shirt created by his former boss, fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, saying: “I am not a terrorist. Please don’t arrest me.”

But Diane Dragg, of Norman, Okla., said: “I’d rather do it than be blown up.”

Not everything has been bad for fliers. Many planes now have individual TVs and Wi-Fi. Kiosks and websites make checking in easier. And with travelers arriving earlier and earlier at the airport, there are better shops and restaurants.

It’s been harder for airlines to find a silver lining.

They’re out $54.5 billion in the U.S. over the last decade, having lost money in seven of the past 10 years.

At least 33 airlines have filed for bankruptcy protection, including Delta, Northwest, United and US Airways. Some, including ATA and Aloha, stopped flying.

It’s not just Sept. 11 that hurt airlines, which were hit hard by spikes in oil prices and a drop in travel during the recession. But after the terror attacks, just getting passengers to fly again was a challenge.

In the first year, traffic fell nearly 8 percent. It took three years to return.

“People were just scared to fly,” said F. Robert van der Linden, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum.

To keep planes in the sky, airlines burned through their cash reserves and borrowed heavily, said Jim Corridore, an airline analyst with Standard & Poor’s.

Fares were dropped to unprofitable levels to lure back passengers.

It worked, but vacationers now expect rock-bottom prices. Airfares today are 20 percent lower than they were on 9/11, when adjusted for inflation.

Airlines now operate on razor-thin margins, with fewer employees.

More than a quarter of the industry’s 620,000 full-time jobs pre-9/11 were eliminated. Those that remain are less lucrative: The average pay for a pilot with 10 years of experience is now $145,000, down 13 percent when adjusted for inflation.

For passengers, the real legacy of the attacks might not just be more invasive security checks, new fees or other things we never had to worry about before — like whether the name on our ticket precisely matches the name on our driver’s license. It might just be losing our ability to relax in the skies.

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MORNING JOURNAL SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011

MORNING JOURNAL

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011

WE REMEMBER

Teachers find lessons in tragedy

BY DORIE TURNER The Associated Press

ATLANTA — It was about three years ago, the first time Jerry Swiatek got to the 9/11 portion of his social studies class and had some freshmen say they’d never seen footage of planes flying into the World Trade Center.

Each year since, more students among the current crop of 15-year-olds tell him the same thing, leaving him still amazed that they’ve never experienced the horror of watching the twin towers collapse.

It’s etched forever in the minds of their teachers, but for the majority of school children, Sept. 11, 2001, is a day of infamy they don’t remember.

This year’s high school seniors were in second grade a decade ago. Their memories of the day of the attacks are fuzzy at best — a teacher crying while hugging a colleague or being shepherded into the auditorium away from televisions filled with scenes of horror. For younger kids, it’s an even more distant event.

“They’ve heard about it, they are aware of changes that have taken place in our country, but their parents have never let them see the footage,” said Swiatek, who teaches mostly high school freshmen in rural Citrus County, Fla., and shows news clips of the burning towers to shocked students each year around Sept. 11.

“Students who had never seen it couldn’t believe what they were seeing. I was a little concerned.”

So how do teachers handle the daunting task of trying to explain the significance of 9/11 to students who don’t remember when anyone could walk right up to the gate at the airport or when Osama bin Laden wasn’t a household name?

The answer isn’t simple, and it has changed over time as the country’s rhetoric about the attacks has evolved.

Students across the coun-

The Associated Press

Ivory Prep sixth-graders Simin Savani (left) and Hannah Baker watch a reel of the 9/11 terrorist attacks May 4, 2011, in Norcross, Ga. try will gather for assemblies, hold moments of silence and spend history and social studies classes focusing on Sept. 11 this year.

They’ll hear stories from teachers and talk to survivors or family members of victims.

They’ll read front-page headlines screaming “UNTHINKABLE” or “ACT OF WAR” in giant letters.

Though it’s been a decade, just a few states and school districts have a set curriculum for teaching Sept. 11.

Unlike Pearl Harbor or the assassinations of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and President John F. Kennedy, the story of 9/11 is still being written as the country continues to grapple with its impact.

New Jersey unveiled its new curriculum this year in honor of the 10th anniversary of the attacks, a lesson plan created by families of Sept. 11 victims and the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education. It provides 56 lessons — which start simple and grow in complexity and maturity with each grade level — emphasizing the good that

“[Students have] heard about it, they are aware of changes that have taken place in our country, but their parents have never let them see the footage.”

Jerry Swiatek, social studies teacher came out of the tragedy for younger students and examining the history of terrorism and other complicated lessons for older students.

The lessons recommend some kind of action, such as creating art about tolerance or service projects to honor or remember victims.

“We really wanted something broader in scope, that Sept. 11 would have a context to it,” said Donna Gaffney, a co-founder of the 4 Action Initiative, which put the

materials together.

In 2009, New York City schools piloted what was believed to be the first comprehensive educational plan focusing on the attacks.

Created by the New Jerseybased Sept. 11 Education Trust, the curriculum has also been tested in schools in California, Alabama, Indiana, Illinois and Kansas.

It uses videos and interviews about the attacks, as well as interactive exercises like having students map global terrorist activity with Google Earth software.

A few nonprofit groups — like the Sept. 11 Education Trust founded by Anthony Gardner, whose 30-year-old brother, Harvey, died in the World Trade Center — have come out with lesson plans but those programs have not become widely adopted.

Even the U.S. State Department has developed materials for educators.

“It’s a long process to get the program out there in the hands of teachers and making teachers feel equipped to handle it with students,” said Gardner, who said his curriculum is used at least in part in about 2,000 schools

across the globe. “Maybe by the 25th anniversary there will be programs in place that meet the need.”

For the most part, states and school districts leave it up to the teacher, which can mean some students don’t hear about it at all. Some teachers may avoid the subject altogether, either because they are concerned about how younger students will take it or because they simply are too emotional to talk about it themselves, said Louisville, Ky., fifth-grade teacher Carla Kolodey. Other teachers said history classes often have difficulty getting to 1980, much less 2001, by the end of the school year.

Kolodey starts her lessons with a description of life before Sept. 11 and then warns her students that the content could be tough to sit through. She tells them they can leave the classroom if necessary, then shows them TV footage and newspaper clips of the attacks. She brings in speakers who lost a family member in the World Trade Center or who have other personal connections to the day.

“I’ve had kids in tears who have to step out and collect themselves,” said Kolodey, 31, whose social studies textbook dedicates just one page to Sept. 11. “I’ve gotten emotional in the middle of it and said, ‘You need to understand that I might need a moment to collect my thoughts.’”

Macon, Ga., high school world history teacher Jason Williams said he tries to focus his lessons on religious tolerance. He said he starts the lesson asking students to talk about biggest news events they remember — like the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia — and tells them that Sept. 11 is that day for him and many other adults.

“They’re very serious about it, but as the years go by, they’re a little more dull to it because they didn’t experience it firsthand,”

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Though the topic is covered by nearly every history and social studies textbook on the market, researchers have found that the mentions are scant. Teachers can use online resources from newspapers or foundations to help supplement, but it’s up to them to find that material.

The material in textbooks has changed over time, too, from stories about heroes to examinations of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, researchers at the University of Wisconsin found. The story of 9/11 and its effects is evolving, making it difficult to use the same lesson each year.

“The first few years things were a little bit more coordinated and there was a great deal of sensitivity. I think in the last five years we’ve gone through a period where it was a little bit more left to the individual teacher,” said Eric Sundberg, who focuses on social studies curriculum for the Jericho School District outside New York City. “I expect on the anniversary coming up we’re going to speak at length again as departments and as schools on how we want to address the issue.”

Atlanta parent Leslie Grant, who has a daughter in seventh grade and son in third grade, didn’t want to simply leave it up to her children’s school to teach about such an important event. She sat them both down at the computer last year and showed them footage of the attacks, and found that she had trouble looking at the images as she explained what happened to her stunned children.

“I don’t mind if they handle it straight-on,” said Grant, who lived in New York City during the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. “We watched a video of when the planes hit, but I was unable to continue watching. We shut it down and talked about it.”

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Shanksville feels obligation to honor dead Small Pa. town was redefined by Flight 93 crash

BY KEVIN BEGOS The Associated Press

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. — Off a tiny country road with old wooden farmhouses that could fit in a Norman Rockwell painting is the site of the Flight 93 National Memorial. It’s shielded by trees, but much of the park is open.

A decade ago, on Sept. 11, the former strip mine was a much more devastating sight, strewn with wreckage from the crash. For early responders like Rick King, the assistant fire chief in Shanksville, some memories are haunting.

“I remember walking through the woods, walking through the hemlocks, and I remember seeing tennis shoes lying on the ground ... empty,” King said, his voice cracking. “I couldn’t imagine what it was like there.”

United Flight 93 was traveling from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco on Sept. 11, 2001, when it was hijacked.

The four terrorists likely wanted to crash the Boeing 757-222 into the White House or Capitol building but downed the jet in Pennsylvania as passengers fought back, just 20 minutes away from Washington, the 9/11 Commission found.

The high heat and speed of the crash — the plane was traveling 580 mph at impact — caused 92 percent of the human remains to vaporize, Coroner Wallace Miller said, leaving little to work with.

“The devastation was really incredible,” he said.

“Obviously something I’d never seen before, or since.”

Shanksville wasn’t a target of the 9/11 hijackers, but fate and the fighting tenacity of the passengers aboard Flight 93 left the small town irrevocably part of the fabric of the calamity. The town has embraced its status as a sudden American

landmark, and it takes seriously the responsibility to honor the dead.

King and other townspeople developed connections with responders from the Pentagon and World Trade Center crash sites. In 2008 members of the New York City Fire Department brought a piece of steel from the World Trade Center to Shanksville, and it was placed next to the volunteer fire department.

“It’s in honor of all the victims of 9/11. It’s just a special honor to have this in our town,” King said.

Many rose to the occasion, in part by keeping smalltown traditions: getting to know victims’ families, and respecting people’s privacy.

“I see them about every year and reflect on their loved ones’ lives,” King said. “Hopefully we’ve helped them grieve as they’ve helped us get through this also.”

For Miller, the experience reinforced his basic beliefs on how to treat a victim’s family, which he learned running his business — a funeral home. That is to remember that all bodies are someone’s favorite loved one, no matter what the situation, said Miller, who worked closely with family members and medical specialists from federal agencies to use DNA testing to identify all 40 victims, plus four sets of remains from the terrorists.

“I know the importance of people being able to have some type of a service, with something palpable there that they can inter in whatever manner they see fit,” Miller said.

Flight 93 always occupied a unique part of 9/11. It hit no monumental target, and those aboard the plane are seen as heroes who may have saved one. Amid the stories of sorrow and heroism from the day, said Brent Glass, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, is the more uplifting tale connected to Flight

The Associated Press

Rick King, who was assistant fire chief in Shanksville on Sept. 11, 2001, stands near a cross made from steel from the World Trade Center on July 14, 2011, outside the fire station in Shanksville.

“I remember walking through the woods, walking through the hemlocks, and I remember seeing tennis shoes lying on the ground ... empty.

I couldn’t imagine what it was like there.”

Rick King, former Shanksville assistant fire chief 93: Faced with an extremely distressful situation, the passengers decided to take a vote on what to do and chose to revolt against the hijackers.

“That has really impressed me, about the cultural tradition they came out of,” Glass said.

“They really created a

meeting house in the sky. In 15 or 20 minutes, they created a small government.”

That decision to take a vote “transcends religion, and politics” and many of the other flashpoints around 9/11, Glass said.

Their decision “tells you a lot about humanity,” Glass said, as does the response to the crash by the people of Shanksville. The tiny town is more representative of large parts of America than Washington, D.C., or New York City, Glass said. For example, Shanksville has farms, mining operations, hunting — all traditional occupations.

“It’s not a political or military target, but it stands for a big chapter of American history and American life. Even though it’s a remote site, it’s a very accessible story,” he said.

Flight 93 was a magnet for the frustration felt that day.

By the time it was aloft, the World Trade Center had been struck. After it was hijacked, at least 10 passengers, including Edward Felt, and 2 crew had called family, friends and colleagues on the ground using

cellphones and GTE air phones before the plane crashed.

Relatives of the victims were deeply grateful for how local people responded to their loss, said Patrick White, vice president of Families of Flight 93.

“The rural character of Shanksville and the people ... are the taproot of American values. They are the heart of our traditions,” White said.

For a time, victims’ relatives worried about the lack of progress on a Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville, which is far from big business and established tourist attractions.

“We would have loved to have seen this memorial built in five years. But I think the reality has set in,” said Gordon Felt, whose brother, Edward, died in the crash.

About $50 million in public and private money has been raised for the project, the Families of Flight 93 say. The dedication of the first phase is scheduled for Sept. 10, a day before the 10th anniversary of the crash.

More private funding is still needed to finish the remaining elements of the memorial, including a grove of trees, a visitor center and an entry portal with high walls framing the plane’s flight path.

Before the crash, no one could have envisioned a national memorial rising in the woods and fields of western Pennsylvania. Felt, who is also president of Families of Flight 93, praised the partnership for the memorial among local people, family members and the National Park Service.

“We’ve been able to overcome hurdles,” he told The Associated Press.

And the numbers of people who’ve sought out the site show the public desire to remember the victims.

About 150,000 people annually have visited Shanksville in recent years, said Glass, who called the total “impressive.”

“It’s become one of those destinations that people want to experience firsthand,” he said.

Residents expect even more visitors, said Ron Aldom, director of the Somerset County Chamber of Commerce. Later this month, more signs are to be added along the Pennsylvania Turnpike directing travelers to the site, about a 20-minute drive off the highway.

And visitors are discovering a rich variety of historical and natural sites nearby, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural masterpiece Fallingwater, state and national parks, and attractions such as the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, about 70 miles away.

In the end, perhaps it is fitting that part of the 9/11 story ended up in Shanksville, said Glass, of the Smithsonian.

“Every chapter of American history has a few pages written in Pennsylvania,” he said.

“Flight 93 will be part of American history.”

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SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011

The world watched Audiences crowded around television for updates on terrorist attacks

BY DAVID BAUDER The Associated Press

NEW YORK — The first indication of the horrors to come was a single camera shot that suddenly appeared on television sets throughout the world: a skyscraper bathed in the morning sun, smoke pouring from a ragged hole in its side. The images grew even worse, as the entire world witnessed the death and destruction of Sept. 11, 2001.

Whether in a bar in Tahiti or office building in New York, television was the central gathering place for people to experience 9/11.

The Associated Press spoke to some viewers who watched it all unfold on TV, and to some people who were part of conveying the event and its aftermath to the world. ∫∫∫ Tom Brokaw was relieved to be in New York Sept. 11 and not out of town on assignment when the biggest story of his career broke. NBC News’ chief anchor found out later just how huge a relief it was to be.

Ten years later, that day still seems surreal.

“For those of us on the air, we were out there without a net of any kind,” he said.

“We had no idea what was going to happen next. No one else did either.”

At one point as the twin towers burned, Brokaw remarked on camera that they would have to be demolished when the fires went out. He wondered whether he had gone too far.

Minutes later the first tower collapsed on its own.

“It took everything I knew as a journalist and as a father, a husband and a citizen to get through that day,” Brokaw said. “And I was very grateful for the fact that I was 61 years old when it happened, to be given the responsibility that I had, because it took everything I had ever learned to get through that day. If I’d been 40, who knows?”

Most Americans learned what happened on Sept. 11 and the ensuing days through three men: Brokaw of NBC News, Peter Jennings of ABC News and Dan Rather of CBS News.

All three anchors were veteran reporters with two decades of anchoring experience and uniquely suited for the roles they had to perform. Brokaw is now semiretired, making documentaries and occasionally offering onscreen wisdom during big news events.

Rather left CBS unpleasantly following a bungled story about George W. Bush’s military service and now has his own news show on HDNet. Jennings died of cancer in 2005.

On the rainy night of Sept.

10, 2001, Brokaw attended a reception for a blind mountain climber. Later, the event’s organizer told him that it had been rescheduled because Brokaw was unable to make the original date.

That was to have been Tuesday morning, Sept. 11 — at the Windows on the World restaurant on top of the World Trade Center. ∫∫∫ Nicole Rittenmeyer remembers screaming at Brokaw on Sept. 11.

Not him personally. Seven months pregnant and with a toddler under foot, she was watching the coverage in Chicago and saw the first tower crumbling into a cloud of dust and a tangled mass of steel and concrete.

Brokaw didn’t see it as quickly, and perhaps Rittenmeyer figured yelling at the TV set might get his attention.

She’s seen that collapse countless times since.

Starting with the “Inside 9/11” documentary she made for National Geographic in 2005, the filmmaker estimates she has spent five years of on projects about the terrorist attacks. Her latest, a sequel to the memorable “102 Minutes That Changed America” film of 2008 that focuses on the days after Sept. 11, premieres on the

The Associated Press

Travelers at Singapore’s Changi International Airport stop to watch coverage of the attacks.

Orthodox Jewish men gather inside a Jerusalem cafe to watch news coverage of the attacks.

History network on Sept. 10. return he said, “I’m a pro Hundreds of hours of and I get paid not to let it attack footage exist. show.”

Rittenmeyer suggests it was ∫∫∫ the most filmed news event Growing up in New ever, and there’s probably Jersey, Nathaniel Katz much more hidden away in could see the World Trade sock drawers.

Center from the windows of What does watching so his best friend’s house. much of 9/11 do to your But on Sept. 11, 2001, Katz mind? was about as far away from “There’s a process that New York as you can get: you go through that auto- studying for a semester in matically puts up a kind of the Australian capital of barrier, because you’re Canberra. It was shortly working on it,” said before 10 p.m. in Canberra, Rittenmeyer. “There are about 170 miles southwest of certain pieces of footage that Sydney, and a friend make the hair on my arms brought him to a student stand up or bring tears lounge so he could watch every time and probably “The West Wing” for the always will.” first time.

One was shot by two colThe series was interruptlege students who started ed to show what Katz filming out their window thought was a private plane without really knowing crashing into the trade cenwhat was going on, and ter. He watched as other caught the second plane images filled the screen. knifing into the World About 30 other people quietTrade Center. They freaked ly streamed into the lounge out, an experience so viscer- behind Katz, the only al “it’s like you are them and American. they are you and you’re To the others in the reliving this experience,” lounge, it seemed like a she said.

Hollywood movie. To Katz, ∫∫∫ it was home. He broke down Dan Rather had little time and cried uncontrollably. to think about it when David “I pride myself on having Letterman asked him to be a fair bit of self-control and I part of the first “Late Show” completely lost myself in since the attacks. this situation,” said Katz, The night turned out to be now a ministry fellow at one of the memorable televi- Harvard University. “I sion moments of the weeks could feel all these eyeballs after the attacks. The idea of in the back of my head. But I resuming life had become a didn’t care.” delicate issue in itself, with His friends told him he events such as the resump- might hear some ugly things tion of Major League base- in the coming days and he ball and a benefit concert at did; some folks suggested Madison Square Garden the United States deserved important milewhat happened. stones in that Katz didn’t “It took journey. return to the The tone was everything I United States particularly until December, important for a knew as a missing the New York- journalist and surge of patriotbased comedy ism that hapshow and as a father, a pened after the L e t t e r m a n husband and attacks. ∫∫∫ nailed it with a citizen to There was the raw anger of silence on the his opening get through other end of the monologue. phone line durDuring 9/11 that day.” coverage, Tom Brokaw ing a recent interview.

Rather worked A s h l e i g h hard to keep his emotions in check while on Banfield had become so the air for CBS News. It was practiced at pushing aside a grueling stretch that had memories of Sept. 11 — “it the veteran anchor, then age was a bad day” was her 69, awake for 48 hours at one stock answer, before changing the subject — that being point.

But with Letterman, asked to recall specifics Rather briefly broke down brought some tears.

She was working at in tears twice.

“The combination of being MSNBC that day, and disreoff of my own turf and the garded a suggestion that she emotional hammer to the go to the network’s New headquarters. heart that was 9/11 that hit Jersey most people while it was Instead, she headed downunfolding just suddenly town in a cab as far as it descended on me,” he would take her and then on recalled. “I was surprised, foot.

Banfield was close enough maybe even astounded, at to be enveloped in the black how it went.

“I was just engulfed, con- cloud created as the second sumed by grief,” he said. tower collapsed. A compan“I’ve never apologized for ion kicked in a nearby buildthat — didn’t then and I ing’s door and she sought don’t now. Because, one refuge with a police officer doesn’t apologize for grief.” who was also looking for a Rather, who said he hasn’t safe place to breathe. She seen a tape of the appear- emerged when the cloud ance in years, did apologize began to lift and flagged in a way at the time. During down a nearby NBC truck the second breakdown, the that could film her as she old-school newsman asked gave reports into a cell Letterman to go to commer- phone.

“For whatever reason, I cial break and upon their

thought all of the buildings were coming down,” she said. “If these two were coming down, what was next? I was so scared. So many people said you were so brave to do that reporting that day and I think just the opposite.

I was just so childishly scared.”

For the next couple of years, Banfield said she couldn’t go on an airplane without weeping.

She sought counseling to talk it through. She’s proud she was a part of covering such a defining moment, but it also taught her about some limits to endurance.

Banfield, now at ABC News, got married and had two children in the past decade. She said she would react differently today.

“I think of how much I’ve changed and how I wouldn’t do (what I did) right now with two little kids,” she said. “I took enormous risks, probably didn’t know how big the risks I was taking were. I probably wouldn’t run those 50 blocks against a sea of fleeing people. Stupid would have kicked out and pragmatic would have kicked in.” ∫∫∫ Work brought rock guitarist and singer John Hiatt to New York from his Nashville, Tenn., home on Sept. 11. He had a new album being released that day, and a round of interviews set up to support it.

A glance at the television that morning and he knew all bets were off.

“My wife called me in my hotel room,” he recalled.

“As I was watching it, she was watching it. She was terrified. We were trying to figure out how to get out of town.”

His appointments all canceled, Hiatt spent much of the day walking the New York streets. Later, he walked from his midtown hotel to Penn Station and boarded a train south.

Within the next two weeks, he wrote a song about his feelings from that day, “When New York Had Her Heart Broke,” and performed it when he appeared in the city later that fall.

Otherwise, he shelved it.

Writing the song was largely a way to work through his feelings and he figured there was enough musical material coming out in response to the attacks, some of which felt a little tawdry to him.

Now, 10 years later, he recorded the song for an album that was released this month.

“Hopefully, there’s enough distance,” he said.

“In the tradition of a tragic folk song, maybe it helps.” ∫∫∫ Knowing the location of his wife Katherine’s office and the trajectory of the first plane to hit the World Trade Center, Charles Wolf eventually became convinced she was killed instantly on Sept. 11. He never heard from her that morning.

For most people, television that day was a way to experience a terrible story that did not yet involve them. For Wolf, it was a lifeline. TV is where he got his information, learning areas that were set up for possible survivors or places to find out about victims.

“You’re looking for shreds of evidence of whether she’s alive or dead,” he said.

He watched the coverage for hours, even though deep down he knew Katherine’s fate when he saw the north tower collapse. “I stood up and said, ‘I guess I have to start my life over,’” he recalled.

What grew excruciating was when networks played key footage over and over, particularly of the second plane hitting the south tower. He called ABC News to complain about the repetition; the network later said it would curtail use of the footage, in part because children couldn’t understand they were not seeing something new.

He has no interest in watching 10th anniversary coverage, which he calls “made-for-ratings television.” Instead, he will attend a public memorial at ground zero.

Television, he said, “is for everybody else. ...

Television has given them the ability to participate in something when they can’t really be there.”

WE REMEMBER

750 South Broadway Salem, Ohio

330-337-8505 www.amvetspost45.org

Dawn

6:52 a.m.

7 - 7:50 a.m.

Washington, D.C., and New York City: Millions arriving for work at the Twin Towers and Pentagon.

Boston

Newark, N.J.

After arriving in Boston, Atta receives call from Marwan al Shehhi, a longtime colleague, who was at another terminal at Logan Airport. They speak for three minutes.

Saeed al Ghamdi, Ahmed al Nami, Ahmad al Haznawi and Ziad Jarrah check in at the United Airlines ticket counter for Flight 93 to Los Angeles. Airport officials select Haznawi for extra security and check him for explosives. He has none.

Sarasota, Fla.: President George W. Bush goes jogging.

Portland, Maine: Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al Omari arrive at airport. Atta encounters special security measures, which at the time means his checked bags are held off the plane until he boards.

The four men board the plane around 7:45.

Jarrah in 1B, Nami in 3C, Ghamdi in 3D and al Haznawi in 6B.

6:45 - 7:40 a.m.

7:23 a.m.

7:15 - 7:35 a.m.

Boston

Boston

Washington, D.C., suburbs

Atta, al Omari, Satam al Suqami, Wail al Shehri and Waleed al Shehri board American Airlines Flight 11 bound for Los Angeles.

Al Shehhi and his team board United 175.

(Fayez Banihammad 2A, Mohand al Shehri 2B, Shehhi 6C, Hamza al Ghamdi 9C and Ahmed al Ghamdi 9D.)

At Dulles International Airport, Khalid al Mihdhar, Majed Moqed, Hani Hanjour, Nawaf al Hazmi and Salem al Hazmi check in for American Airlines Flight 77 bound for Los Angeles. The Hazmi brothers are flagged for extra security check because one lacks a photo ID and an agent finds both suspicious. Nawaf al Hazmi sets off metal detectors. Video later shows an unidentified item clipped to his pocket.

7:59 a.m.

8:14 a.m.

8:19 a.m.

Boston

American 11

American 11

American 11 takes off with Atta, Omari and Suqami in business class seats 8D, 8G and 10B, respectively.

Crew acknowledges instructions from FAA, the crews’ last communication.

Flight attendant Betty Ong contacts American Airlines in North Carolina. “The cockpit is not answering, somebody’s stabbed in business class — and I think there’s Mace - that we can’t breathe — I don’t know, I think we’re getting hijacked.”

Shehhi, Banihammad, al Shehri, Ahmed al Ghamdi and Hamza al Ghamdi board United Airlines Flight 175 bound for Los Angeles. Several of them have trouble understanding security questions and require special verbal attention.

Wail al Shehri and Waleed al Shehri stab two flight attendants. The pair and Atta enter the cockpit. Al Suqami stabs a passenger. They use pepper spray, forcing passengers to rear of the plane. They say they have a bomb.

United 175 Flight departs Logan Airport in Boston.

THE HIJACKERS American Airlines Flight 11

Satam al Suqami

Waleed al Shehri

Wail al Shehri

Mohamed Atta

8:20 a.m.

8:21 a.m.

8:24 a.m.

Washington Dulles Airport

American Airlines, North Carolina

American 11

American 77 takes off en route to Los Angeles.

Receiver of Ong’s call contacts airline’s operations center in Fort Worth, Texas. Dispatcher tries unsuccessfully to contact cockpit.

Hijacker attempts to co

“We have some planes Flight controller in Bo

Seconds later he c moves, you’ll endange

Abdul Aziz al Omari

FAA in Boston learns o channel instead of the

United Airlines Flight 175

Controller reports hijac broadcast.

Marwan al Shehhi

Fayez Banihammad

Ahmed al Ghamdi

Hamza al Ghamdi

Mohand al Shehri

American Airlines Flight 77 Khalid al Mihdhar

United Airlines Flight 93

Majed Moqed

Saeed al Ghamdi

Nawaf al Hazmi

Ahmad al Haznawi

Salem al Hazmi

Ahmed al Nami

Hani Hanjour

Ziad Jarrah

9:07 a.m.

9:10 a.m.

Learning of the World Trade Center hit, airlines extend ground stop nationwide.

American Airlines Flight 11 Boston to Los Angeles

Chief of Staff Andrew Card to President Bush

sto on

M

9:05 a.m.

FAA, Boston

American Airlines

“” A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.

Yo ork k City

Sarasota, Fla.

Controllers request that Herndon Command Center “get messages to airborne aircraft to increase security for the cockpit.” Herndon never took such action.

White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card whispers to President Bush, “A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.”

By the time FAA officials became aware of the hijacking, American 11 had taken a dramatic turn to the south. FAA headquarters began following hijack protocol but did not contact the military.

9:15 a.m.

Sarasota, Fla.

United 1 from air ticed for troller w 175.

President Bush is briefed by staff.

President Bush in Sarasota, Fla., classroom.

9:19 a.m.

United Airlines United flight dispatcher Ed Ballinger transmits a warning to his 16 transcontinental flights: “Beware any cockpit intrusion – Two a/c [aircraft] hit World Trade Center.”

9:03:11 a.m.

9 a.m.

New York City

United 175

United Airlines Flight 175 strikes the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

Hanson calls his father again. “Passengers are throwing up and getting s ing jerky movements. I don’t think the pilot is flying the plane. I think we a they intend to go to Chicago or someplace and fly into a building. Don’t wo it’ll be very fast. My God, my God.” Lee Hanson hears a woman scream. The call cuts off.

American Airlines Orders all flights in Northeast to remain on the ground.

9:24 a.m.

FAA

United 93

Officials begin to comprehend this is a multiple hijacking attempt.

Cockpit receives Ballinger’s warning.

THE PENTAGON 9:16 - 9:26 a.m.

American 77 Barbara Olson calls her husband, Ted Olson, the U.S. solicitor general, and reports the flight is hijacked by men with knives and box cutters. Ted Olson unsuccessfully tries to contact Attorney General John Ashcroft.

At the end of a 330-degree turn, American Flight 77 descended 2,200 feet toward the Pentagon. The hijacker pilot then advanced the throttles to maximum power and dove toward the Pentagon. All on board, and many civilian and military personnel in the building, were killed.

Top view of Pentagon

9:28 a.m.

United 93 crash site.

Area of impact mp mpact

United 93 Hijackers attack cockpit. Radio transmission picks up crew yelling, “Hey, get out of here.”

9:59:52 a.m.

10:03:11 a

United 93

United 93

Jarrah pitches nose of plane up and down.

The assault continues “Pull it down! Pull it dow of the passenger ass onto its back and shouts, “Allah is th craft plows into an Shanksville, 20 minut Washington, D.C.

9:29 a.m.

American 77 The autopilot is disengaged about 38 miles west of the Pentagon.

American Flight 77

9:32 a.m.

Washington Dulles Airport Controllers observe a primary target quickly moving east.

radar

9:58:57 a.m.

United 93

United 93

Jarrah tells passengers, “We have a bomb on board,” and instructs plane’s autopilot to turn east. Passengers begin calling friends and family, learning of other hijackings.

Jarrah rolls the airplane radically to left and right and tells hijacker to block the door.

9:34 a.m.

Washington Reagan National Airport Officials advise the Secret Service of unknown aircraft heading toward the White House.

FAA Cleveland Notification of United 93 hijacking passed to FAA headquarters.

9:37 a.m.

Vice President Cheney taken to bunker beneath the White House.

9:37:46 a.m.

9:39 a.m.

9:42 a.m.

Pentagon

FAA, Cleveland

FAA Command Center at Herndon

American Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon at about 530 miles per hour.

Controllers overhear United 93 radio traffic that there is a bomb on board, likely intended for the cabin PA system but broadcast on FAA radio system.

Controllers learn from news reports that plane struck the Pentagon. Center orders all aircraft grounded to nearest airport. About 4,500 commercial aircraft begin landing.

8:37:52 a.m.

8:41 a.m.

8:42 a.m.

Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS)

American Airlines, Fort Worth, Texas

United 175

Boston controllers make first contact with military. “We have a problem here. We have a hijacked aircraft headed toward New York, and we need you guys to, we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there, help us out.”

Colleague tells office manager that the air traffic controllers declared Flight 11 a hijacking and “think he’s headed toward Kennedy [Airport in New York City].

They’re moving everybody out of the way. They seem to have him on a primary radar. They seem to think that he is descending.”

Crew completes its reports on a “suspicious transmission” overheard from another plane (American 11). This was United 175’s last communication.

NEADS orders two F-15 alert aircraft in Falmouth, Mass., 153 miles from New York.

Newark, N.J., Liberty International Airport United 93 departs from Newark bound for San Francisco, more than 25 minutes late due to heavy morning traffic.

8:29 a.m.

8:44 a.m.

American Airlines, Fort Worth, Texas

American 11

Officials contact FAA in Boston, which is aware of the problem. FAA managers start notifying FAA chain of command about American 11.

Flight attendant Sweeney says, “Something is wrong. We are in a rapid descent ... we are all over the place.” Asked to look out the window, Sweeney says, “We are flying low. We are flying very, very low. We are flying way too low.” Second later she says, “Oh my God, we are way too low.”

Box cutter retrieved at crash site.

8:28 a.m.

FAA, Boston Controllers notify FAA Command Center in Herndon, Va., about American 11 heading toward New York City.

“

We have some planes. Just stay quiet, and you’ll be OK. We are returning to the airport.

”

The phone call ends.

8:45 a.m.

United 175 Hijackers use knives, Mace and the threat of a bomb to take over the plane. They stab members of the flight crew, killing both pilots.

Hijacker talking to passengers

8:26 a.m.

American 11 Plane flies erratically and heads south. American begins getting identification of hijackers as flight attendants pass on seat numbers.

Flight attendant Madeline Sweeney says a man in first class had his throat slashed, two flight attendants were stabbed and there is a bomb in the cockpit.

ommunicate with passengers.

s. Just stay quiet, and you’ll be OK. We are returning to the airport.” oston hears but doesn’t understand.

continues, “Nobody move. Everything will be OK. If you try to make any er yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet.”

of the situation because hijacker is speaking over air traffic control cabin address system.

8:46 a.m.

Otis Air Force Base, Falmouth, Mass.

NEADS scrambles F-15 fighters but doesn’t know where to send them. Hijackers have turned off plane’s transponder, so NEADS spends next minutes searching radar.

Atta at Portland airport.

cking to his supervisor, who pulls the tape to listen to the first part of the

8:46:40 a.m.

THE CHANGED FLIGHT PATHS

New York City

United Airlines Flight 175

American Airlines Flight 77

United Airlines Flight 93

Boston to Los Angeles

Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles

Newark to San Francisco

American 11 crashes into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

wa a

n

PA

MD D

WV

8:51 a.m. n

United 175 sv

Flight deviates from its assigned altitude. New York air traffic controllers unsuccessfully try contacting the plane.

ew York City

American 77

175 turned southwest without clearance r traffic control. This change wasn’t nor several minutes because the same conwas assigned to American 11 and United

sick. The plane is makare going down. I think orry, Dad. If it happens,

a.m.

s as a hijacker says, wn!” With the sounds sault, the plane rolls one of the hijackers e greatest.” The airn empty field in tes’ flying time from

American 77 deviated from its flight plan at 8:54 a.m. Two minutes later it disappeared from radar.

The controller in Indianapolis didn’t know of the situation in New York and thought the plane had serious electrical failure.

Despite the discussions about military assistance, no one from FAA headquarters requested such assistance regarding United 93. Nor did any FAA manager pass information about the flight to the military.

Hijackers take over plane using knives.

NEADS and FAA New York Still searching radar for American 11.

8:59 a.m.

8:55 a.m.

8:54 a.m.

8:52 a.m.

United 175

Sarasota, Fla.

American 77

United 175

Brian David Sweeney leaves message at home about the situation.

He says passengers are thinking about storming the cockpit.

Before President Bush visits a classroom, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice from the White House tells him of a plane striking the North Tower. At the White House, Vice President Dick Cheney is notified.

Flight changes course.

Peter Hanson of Easton, Conn. calls his father. “I think they’ve taken over the cockpit — an attendant has been stabbed — and someone else up front may have been killed. The plane is making strange moves.”

Otis Air Force Base, Falmouth, Mass.

Military aircraft airborne.

THE ATTACK AT GROUND ZERO Hundreds of civilians were killed instantly in both towers, while hundreds more remained alive but trapped.

There were 56 minutes between the crash of United 175 into the South Tower and its collapse.

Twenty nine minutes later, the North Tower collapsed.

United 175 WTC SOUTH TOWER

Landing

WTC T T TOWER

10:07 a.m.

NEADS Receives first notification from FAA about United 93.

lo oorrs

10:15 a.m.

Washington D.C.

TC W

WTC 4

Vice President Cheney authorizes military aircraft to engage aircraft said to be approaching Washington, D.C.

6

TC

7

W

WTC 5

10:20 a.m.

ella se

n

White House President Bush and Vice President Cheney discuss situation. Bush confirms shoot-down order.

Landin

Mirror graphic by Jay Young and Tom Worthington II Sources: The 9/11 Commission Report and court documents

gine

MORNING JOURNAL

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011

WE REMEMBER

Memorial design still evolving Architect continues work to help remember Ten years of rebuilding The new World Trade Center is rising from ground zero. Two skyscrapers, a memorial, a museum and a transit hub are under construction. Three more towers and a performing victims of attacks

Hudson River

arts center are planned.

BY KAREN MATTHEWS The Associated Press

NEW YORK — Architect Michael Arad first imagined the twin reflecting pools with cascading waterfalls — he calls them voids — as two empty spaces in the Hudson River, west of the smoldering World Trade Center.

When Arad entered a competition for a trade center memorial in 2003, the voids were in the footprints of the towers themselves, and manmade waterfalls replaced the churning river.

A jury including Vietnam Veterans Memorial designer Maya Lin chose Arad’s twin waterfalls out of 5,201 entries, saying it embodied the grief and the desire for healing that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks inspired.

The 42-year-old Arad’s 9/11 moment is arriving on the 10th anniversary of the attacks, culminating a journey for the son of an Israeli diplomat and unknown city architect whose poster board sketch became a touchstone for post-Sept. 11 battles over how to mourn and how to remember the dead.

Financial, practical and political considerations forced design changes; hundreds of trees were added to Arad’s original vision. The puzzle of how to list the dead has not been solved to everyone’s satisfaction.

Arad says the core of his original plan remains.

“We’ve gone through an eightyear-long editing process of sort of parsing it down,” he said in an interview in the Manhattan offices of Handel Architects. “But I didn’t end up with a whole other unintended direction to this. Is it exactly as it was eight years ago? No. But is it the same in nature? Yes.” After terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people and toppled two 110-story skyscrapers, some New Yorkers said the entire 16-acre trade center site should be a memorial or a park.

Others said the towers should be rebuilt just as they were before.

In the end, Daniel Libeskind’s master plan set aside eight acres — half the site — for a memorial.

Arad’s design, “Reflecting Absence,” features waterfalls cascading into reflecting pools where the towers stood. The names of all those killed on Sept. 11, 2001 and in the earlier World Trade Center attack on Feb. 26, 1993, are inscribed on bronze parapets surrounding the waterfalls.

In a change from the bare design Arad submitted, the waterfalls are nestled within a grove of swamp white oak trees that will grow as tall as 60 feet.

A museum showcasing remnants of the original trade center will open next year.

Interviewed at the memorial site, Arad referred to the pools as “voids” and said they will evoke the lives lost in the terror attacks.

“These voids that you see behind me — as you approach them as a pedestrian they’re not readily visible,” he said. “And it’s really only when you’re a few feet away from them that all of a sudden the ground opens up in front of you and you see this enormous expanse, these voids which are ringed with these waterfalls and the reflecting pool below them.”

And then the visitors come to the edge and start circling the pools, “following this river of names” around the perimeter.

Members of the jury — Lin was said to be one of Arad’s strongest supporters — said the nearly completed memorial has vindicated their choice.

Paula Grant Berry, a Sept. 11 widow and the lone victims’ family member on the jury, said the falling water “will cut out the sound of the city.”

She added, “The beauty of the design is that it maintains the footprints of the buildings. It gives you a sense of how large the buildings were.”

Arad was an unknown architect working for the New York City Housing Authority when his design was chosen.

Arad grew up in Israel, the

(Formerly Freedom Tower) 1,776 feet high, 102 stories 2.6 million square feet Construction began April 2006 Scheduled to open in 2013 It will have 69 office floors, a restaurant, an enclosed observation deck and a two-level broadcast facility.

World Trade Center site

2 World Trade Center 1,349 feet high, 88 stories 3.1 million rentable square feet The foundation construction began the summer of 2010.

Brooklyn

3 World Trade Center 1,170 feet high 80 stories 2.8 million square feet Construction began summer 2010 The building will include 53 floors of office space and five retail levels.

7 World Trade Center 750 feet high, 52 stories 1.7 million square feet The rebuilt tower opened in May 2006 and is two-thirds leased.

Performing Arts Center 1,000-seat venue with focus on modern dance No construction is scheduled while site is used as an exit from commuter trains.

4 World Trade Center 977 feet high 72 stories 2.3 million square feet It includes retail and commercial office space.

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum Reflecting pools where the Trade Center towers stood Names of 2,987 victims of the 1993 and 2001 attacks will be inscribed around pools in the 8-acre plaza.

The above-ground memorial will open Sept. 11, 2011 and the museum will open in 2012.

World Trade Center Transportation Hub 800,000 square feet, comparable to Grand Central Terminal It will provide access to PATH commuter rail, subway lines and Hudson River ferries.

It is expected to be completed by 2014.

5 World Trade Center There is no construction timetable yet. It will stand on the site formerly occupied by the remains of the Deutsche Bank building.

Interna1 WTC World tional New York Taipei Financial Commerce 101 Center 1,776 Centre Taiwan Shanghai Hong Kong Incomplete 1,666* 1,614 1,588

1 World Trade Center will be among the tallest buildings in the world.

The towering Burj Khalifa was completed last year.

Petronas Towers Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 1,482

Zifeng Tower Nanjing 1,476

International 1 WTC Willis Finance Tower New York Center Chicago Guangzhou, 1,368** 1,450** China Destroyed 1,439

Burj Khalifa Dubai, UAE 2,717 feet * Top of spire ** Top of roof SOURCES: Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat; Silverstein Properties; The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey

The Associated Press

Michael Arad, an architect of the 9/11 memorial at ground zero, speaks to a reporter April 7, 2011, in front of the construction site in New York.

“We’ve gone through an eight-year-long editing process of sort of parsing it down. But I didn’t end up with a whole other unintended direction to this. Is it exactly as it was eight years ago? No. But is it the same in nature? Yes.” Architect Michael Arad, Handel Architects United States and Mexico, and served in the Israeli military. A Dartmouth graduate who got his master’s at George Institute of Technology, Arad came to New York two years before the attacks.

Arad was thinking about a Sept.

11 memorial before the competition

was announced. He built a Plexiglas model of his cavernous holes in the Hudson and brought it up to his apartment rooftop to photograph it against the skyline.

“This idea of the surface of the river being torn open and the water flowing into this hole. ... I kept sketching it and thinking, could it be realized?” he recalled. “Could you actually create that effect?

Could you cut a hole in the river?”

The answer, seemingly, was no.

But the idea morphed into Arad’s twin voids in the towers’ footprints.

Not everyone loved the design.

Arad keeps a digital New York Post front page —”IT STINKS!” — in his computer.

He appears to take criticism in stride.

“When I entered the competition it was a very private act,” he said.

“It was something that I did by myself, sketching in my study, imagining the kind of memorial that I might want to visit someday.

But when the design was selected all of a sudden it went from a constituency of one to a constituency of thousands.”

Arad said working on the memorial has been “exhausting and exhaustive” but also “a huge privilege.”

Construction of the memorial began in 2006, and it will be the first component of the rebuilt trade center site to be completed. New office towers, meanwhile, are rising rapidly to the memorial’s north and east.

According to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, the combined cost of the memorial and museum is about $700 million with an annual operations budget between $50 million and $60 million.

A memorial to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that opened in 2000 cost $29.1 million.

The Sept. 11 board has raised about $400 million from private donations and is seeking federal funds so that the memorial and the museum can be free of charge — although it also said it’s considering a voluntary fee of up Arad said every detail of the

The Associated Press

Lockheed Martin unveils its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in 2006 in Fort Worth, Texas.

Manhattan

1 World Trade Center

Among giants

Queens

AP

memorial has been carefully vetted, from the Virginia-quarried granite that lines the tower footprints to the hand-brushed patina that protects the bronze.

Placement of the nearly 3,000 victims’ names was always contentious.

An alphabetical list “would not have been the right move,” Arad said. “You had married families who shared the same last name and married families who didn’t share the same last name. And if you did an alphabetical listing it would privilege some over others.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposal to list the names randomly pleased few. Victims’ family members wanted to list the dead by their employers. Relatives of the firefighters and police officers who died trying to save others pushed for their rank and ladder company to be listed.

The solution was to group people’s names near the names of their friends, family members and coworkers, and first responders were identified. Over 1,200 requests were made, and granted to list the names.

Families who died on the airplanes will be listed together, as will office colleagues who shared lunch every day.

Donald James McIntyre, a Port Authority police officer who died as he tried to make his way to the 84th floor of the south tower, will be listed next to his cousin John Anthony Sherry, who worked there.

Edie Lutnick, who heads a relief fund at Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial services firm that lost 658 people including her brother on Sept.

11, said age and affiliation “could so easily be added.”

“You would be able to know that a 2¢-year-old died on the plane,” Lutnick said. “You would learn a story from the memorial and not from a telephone or a kiosk.”

Arad said every choice had consequences. If a victim didn’t work for a company at the trade center, they would have been listed as unaffiliated, which is why no company name will appear anywhere.

“Again,” he says, “everything you did had issues of equity.”

Golden defense decade at an end Contractors have capitalized on big defense budgets The Associated Press

NEW YORK — The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down, Osama bin Laden is dead, and the federal government is deeply in debt. This spells the end of what was a golden decade for the defense industry.

In the decade since the Sept. 11 attacks, the annual defense budget has more than doubled to $700 billion and annual defense industry profits have nearly quadrupled, approaching $25 billion last year.

Now defense spending is poised to retreat, and so are industry profits. “We’re about to go into the downhill side of the roller coaster here,” said David Berteau, a defense industry analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Congress agreed last month to cut military spending by $350 billion over the next 10 years. The defense budget will automatically be cut by another $500 billion over that period if lawmakers fail to reach a deficit-cutting deal by November.

Defense industry stocks have already begun to suffer; they are lagging the S&P 500 in recent months.

During the last defense spending downturn, which lasted from 1985 to 1997, defense stocks underperformed the broader market by 33 percent, according to an analysis by RBC Capital Markets.

The Sept. 11 attacks forced the world’s biggest and bestfunded military to quickly retool itself. It needed to develop technologies, weapons and strategies to find and fight an elusive network of terrorists that seemed more sophisticated and dangerous than ever imagined.

The U.S. spent $1.3 trillion in the ten years following the attacks chasing al-Qaida and fighting two wars. That was on top of baseline military spending in excess of $4 trillion.

“After 9/11 the floodgates opened,” says Eric Hugel, a defense industry analyst at Stephens Inc. The defense budget grew from $316 billion in 2001 to $708 billion in 2011. Federal spending on homeland security, which includes everything from airport security to border control, also rose dramatically. Last year dozens of federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, spent $70 billion on such programs, according to the Office of Management and Budget. That’s up from $37 billion in 2003, the first year after DHS was formed.

Our flag represents the timeless and noble ideals on which this great nation was founded.

We encourage all Americans in our community to show patriotic pride by flying their flags.

16280 Dresden Ave. • Calcutta, Ohio 330-386-4002 2875 East State St. • Salem, Ohio 330-337-8313

MORNING JOURNAL

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011

WE REMEMBER

Conspiracy theorists follow JFK example Groups challenge accepted truths about the attack

BY TAMARA LUSH The Associated Press

DALLAS — In Dealey Plaza, with the white “X’’ painted on the spot where President Kennedy was assassinated, ask anyone about the grassy knoll and the second gunman.

Conspiracy theories come with the territory here. And at Barbec’s Restaurant on the other side of this sprawling city, six men sit on a covered porch and convene a meeting of the North Texans for 9/11 Truth group and talk about the government’s lies about 9/11.

The group has 50 active members; 200 on the mailing list. And they number among many thousands who, after years of investigations, don’t believe the official version of how the World Trade Center collapsed, who was responsible or what the government knew and when.

Politics doesn’t have anything to do with it; two were once staunch, Bush-voting conservatives; two are progressives and two weren’t even interested in current events until after the 2001 attacks.

“Before 9/11, I was a working class person, going through life, pretty much accepting everything given and told to me,” said Bryan Black, a 50-year-old carpenter from Commerce, Texas, “I’m starting to see things.

I’m more open to skeptical conversation.”

The skeptics — they prefer the term “9/11 truth activists” instead of “truthers” — have persisted, even thrived in the decade since 2001, with proponents from former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel to comedian Rosie O’Donnell. And unlike the years that Kennedy assassination conspiracies took to develop, they have mobilized with lightninglike speed on the Internet, with YouTube videos of the

The Associated Press

Hank Black holds a sign while talking to Michael Cangemi after a meeting of the North Texans for 9/11 Truth group July 19, 2011, in Dallas. trade center collapsing again and again.

“There’s really a foundation of reality here,” said Ted Walter, who has worked unsuccessfully to prod New York City officials into reopening an investigation of how 7 World Trade Center collapsed on the afternoon of Sept 11. “We believe that if all of the American public saw footage of building 7 on the nightly news, it would lead to widespread skepticism of 9/11.”

For many, conspiracy theories aren’t terrifying; they’re more comforting than the idea that an event as terrifying as Sept. 11 could be so — random.

Conspiracies can be a “security blanket” for explaining away the horrific, asserts Patrick Leman, a University of London professor who researches 9/11 theories. “It stops us from having to confront the unpredictability of life.”

Jonathan Kay, a columnist with the Canadian newspaper The National Post and the author of a book about conspiracy theories, said it’s normal for people to seek out complicated and detailed explanations of big events.

“There is something in the

911truth.org

human mind that rebels against the idea of random forces or individuals being able to bring down powerful people or powerful icons,” said Kay. There’s no real estimate of the numbers of people in the 9/11 “truth” movements — there’s no one leader of the skeptics. A group called Remember Building 7 presented New York’s City Council with a petition in 2009 signed by 80,000 people calling for an independent probe into the attacks. Other groups include Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Scholars for 9/11 Truth and the 9/11 Commission Campaign, founded by Gravel.

The “truthers” generally have about a dozen beliefs surrounding what happened on that day, although there are some variations on who was responsible for the attacks and why: ∫ Explosives brought down the World Trade Center, not hijacked jetliners. ∫ There were warnings of

the impending attacks from 11 different countries, and fighter jets could have intercepted at least one of the four planes that day. ∫ Criminal conspiracies within the government caused the attacks.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology conducted a probe that took six years to complete of the tower collapses; the last report found that fire caused the collapse of 7 World Trade Center, a skyscraper north of the twin towers. In the collapses of the twin towers, the agency found that extreme heat from the jetliner crashes caused some steel beams to lose strength, causing further failures in the building until the entire structure succumbed.

The investigation “was the most comprehensive examination of a structural failure ever conducted,” said Shyam Sunder, lead investigator of the collapse investigation and led to 40 building code changes to make safer, terror-proof skyscrapers. NIST maintains a website with its reports and computer-based animations that reconstruct its findings to reach out to the public.

Sunder acknowledges it hasn’t reached everyone.

“We really can’t explain why some people question our findings about the WTC collapses when we have done our best to present those findings and how they were derived as clearly as possible,” Sunder wrote in an e-mail.

It begs the question: why is there such a distrust of government when it comes to 9/11? Is it due to feeling alienated from our fractured political system, a bad economy, or something else?

For Bob McIlvaine’s son, it was the injuries found on his son Bobby’s head, arm and skin that made him think the hijacked jetliner and building collapse couldn’t have done it. He believes that explosives were detonated in the towers’ basement before the planes hit the towers.

McIlvaine has not been able to determine where his son was when he died, but from the injuries — which include skin that was burned post-mortem — he assumes that his son was in or near the tower’s lobby.

McIlvaine questions the government’s explanation that a fireball came down through the elevator shafts and burned those in the lobby.

Tom Theimer watched the World Trade Center crumble while drinking coffee and watching television in his suburban Dallas home.

Shaken, he bought flags for his porch and bumper stickers for his car reading “We will never forget.”

A few years later, a friend of Theimer’s wife casually mentioned that 9/11 “was an inside job.” Theimer was livid and turned to the Internet, to prove the friend wrong.

The websites, the books and the documentaries he saw online persuaded him.

He was wrong, and so was the system.

“I was duped,” Theimer said. “It really hurt. I cried. I couldn’t sleep for months.”

Theimer said that he and others in Dallas are planning to show a new 9/11 documentary on the 10th

anniversary.

Remember Building 7 is trying to raise $1 million by Sept. 11 to support a new investigation into the collapses.

A conference on alternate 9/11 theories is being held in Toronto on Sept. 11.

The conference is headed by the International Center for 9/11 Studies, which was founded by James Gourley, a 31-year-old Dallas-area attorney who began to question the events of Sept. 11 during law school, while watching an activist make his argument on C-Span.

Gourley is aware of the theories about how skeptics are simply trying to justify and explain a random, horrific event.

“It’s basically a backwards way of saying we’re psychologically deranged,” he said. “It’s questioning the psychology of the people instead of questioning the facts.”

Even in the heart of the conspiracy theory world, some find the alternate theories hard to believe.

At Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Scott Dew hawked commemorative Kennedy assassination newspapers to tourists, standing under an oak tree, just steps from a white “X’’ painted on the asphalt that marks where President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.

Dew’s newspapers — which cost $5 each and come encased in a plastic sleeve — devote several pages and diagrams to the varying theories of bullet projectiles and second shooters on the grassy knoll.

Kennedy’s assassination was “a conspiracy by the government,” Dew says.

“Back then, in ‘63, this was a money and power deal.”

But Sept. 11? A conspiracy? He shakes his head.

“I believe bin Laden was the attacker. I don’t believe the other theories that President Bush or the government had anything to do with it. That would just be a little too sinful,” he said.

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WE REMEMBER

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011

MORNING JOURNAL

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011

WE REMEMBER

Teachers find lessons in tragedy

BY DORIE TURNER The Associated Press

ATLANTA — It was about three years ago, the first time Jerry Swiatek got to the 9/11 portion of his social studies class and had some freshmen say they’d never seen footage of planes flying into the World Trade Center.

Each year since, more students among the current crop of 15-year-olds tell him the same thing, leaving him still amazed that they’ve never experienced the horror of watching the twin towers collapse.

It’s etched forever in the minds of their teachers, but for the majority of school children, Sept. 11, 2001, is a day of infamy they don’t remember.

This year’s high school seniors were in second grade a decade ago. Their memories of the day of the attacks are fuzzy at best — a teacher crying while hugging a colleague or being shepherded into the auditorium away from televisions filled with scenes of horror. For younger kids, it’s an even more distant event.

“They’ve heard about it, they are aware of changes that have taken place in our country, but their parents have never let them see the footage,” said Swiatek, who teaches mostly high school freshmen in rural Citrus County, Fla., and shows news clips of the burning towers to shocked students each year around Sept. 11.

“Students who had never seen it couldn’t believe what they were seeing. I was a little concerned.”

So how do teachers handle the daunting task of trying to explain the significance of 9/11 to students who don’t remember when anyone could walk right up to the gate at the airport or when Osama bin Laden wasn’t a household name?

The answer isn’t simple, and it has changed over time as the country’s rhetoric about the attacks has evolved.

Students across the coun-

The Associated Press

Ivory Prep sixth-graders Simin Savani (left) and Hannah Baker watch a reel of the 9/11 terrorist attacks May 4, 2011, in Norcross, Ga. try will gather for assemblies, hold moments of silence and spend history and social studies classes focusing on Sept. 11 this year.

They’ll hear stories from teachers and talk to survivors or family members of victims.

They’ll read front-page headlines screaming “UNTHINKABLE” or “ACT OF WAR” in giant letters.

Though it’s been a decade, just a few states and school districts have a set curriculum for teaching Sept. 11.

Unlike Pearl Harbor or the assassinations of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and President John F. Kennedy, the story of 9/11 is still being written as the country continues to grapple with its impact.

New Jersey unveiled its new curriculum this year in honor of the 10th anniversary of the attacks, a lesson plan created by families of Sept. 11 victims and the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education. It provides 56 lessons — which start simple and grow in complexity and maturity with each grade level — emphasizing the good that

“[Students have] heard about it, they are aware of changes that have taken place in our country, but their parents have never let them see the footage.”

Jerry Swiatek, social studies teacher came out of the tragedy for younger students and examining the history of terrorism and other complicated lessons for older students.

The lessons recommend some kind of action, such as creating art about tolerance or service projects to honor or remember victims.

“We really wanted something broader in scope, that Sept. 11 would have a context to it,” said Donna Gaffney, a co-founder of the 4 Action Initiative, which put the

materials together.

In 2009, New York City schools piloted what was believed to be the first comprehensive educational plan focusing on the attacks.

Created by the New Jerseybased Sept. 11 Education Trust, the curriculum has also been tested in schools in California, Alabama, Indiana, Illinois and Kansas.

It uses videos and interviews about the attacks, as well as interactive exercises like having students map global terrorist activity with Google Earth software.

A few nonprofit groups — like the Sept. 11 Education Trust founded by Anthony Gardner, whose 30-year-old brother, Harvey, died in the World Trade Center — have come out with lesson plans but those programs have not become widely adopted.

Even the U.S. State Department has developed materials for educators.

“It’s a long process to get the program out there in the hands of teachers and making teachers feel equipped to handle it with students,” said Gardner, who said his curriculum is used at least in part in about 2,000 schools

across the globe. “Maybe by the 25th anniversary there will be programs in place that meet the need.”

For the most part, states and school districts leave it up to the teacher, which can mean some students don’t hear about it at all. Some teachers may avoid the subject altogether, either because they are concerned about how younger students will take it or because they simply are too emotional to talk about it themselves, said Louisville, Ky., fifth-grade teacher Carla Kolodey. Other teachers said history classes often have difficulty getting to 1980, much less 2001, by the end of the school year.

Kolodey starts her lessons with a description of life before Sept. 11 and then warns her students that the content could be tough to sit through. She tells them they can leave the classroom if necessary, then shows them TV footage and newspaper clips of the attacks. She brings in speakers who lost a family member in the World Trade Center or who have other personal connections to the day.

“I’ve had kids in tears who have to step out and collect themselves,” said Kolodey, 31, whose social studies textbook dedicates just one page to Sept. 11. “I’ve gotten emotional in the middle of it and said, ‘You need to understand that I might need a moment to collect my thoughts.’”

Macon, Ga., high school world history teacher Jason Williams said he tries to focus his lessons on religious tolerance. He said he starts the lesson asking students to talk about biggest news events they remember — like the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia — and tells them that Sept. 11 is that day for him and many other adults.

“They’re very serious about it, but as the years go by, they’re a little more dull to it because they didn’t experience it firsthand,”

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Though the topic is covered by nearly every history and social studies textbook on the market, researchers have found that the mentions are scant. Teachers can use online resources from newspapers or foundations to help supplement, but it’s up to them to find that material.

The material in textbooks has changed over time, too, from stories about heroes to examinations of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, researchers at the University of Wisconsin found. The story of 9/11 and its effects is evolving, making it difficult to use the same lesson each year.

“The first few years things were a little bit more coordinated and there was a great deal of sensitivity. I think in the last five years we’ve gone through a period where it was a little bit more left to the individual teacher,” said Eric Sundberg, who focuses on social studies curriculum for the Jericho School District outside New York City. “I expect on the anniversary coming up we’re going to speak at length again as departments and as schools on how we want to address the issue.”

Atlanta parent Leslie Grant, who has a daughter in seventh grade and son in third grade, didn’t want to simply leave it up to her children’s school to teach about such an important event. She sat them both down at the computer last year and showed them footage of the attacks, and found that she had trouble looking at the images as she explained what happened to her stunned children.

“I don’t mind if they handle it straight-on,” said Grant, who lived in New York City during the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. “We watched a video of when the planes hit, but I was unable to continue watching. We shut it down and talked about it.”

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Shanksville feels obligation to honor dead Small Pa. town was redefined by Flight 93 crash

BY KEVIN BEGOS The Associated Press

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. — Off a tiny country road with old wooden farmhouses that could fit in a Norman Rockwell painting is the site of the Flight 93 National Memorial. It’s shielded by trees, but much of the park is open.

A decade ago, on Sept. 11, the former strip mine was a much more devastating sight, strewn with wreckage from the crash. For early responders like Rick King, the assistant fire chief in Shanksville, some memories are haunting.

“I remember walking through the woods, walking through the hemlocks, and I remember seeing tennis shoes lying on the ground ... empty,” King said, his voice cracking. “I couldn’t imagine what it was like there.”

United Flight 93 was traveling from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco on Sept. 11, 2001, when it was hijacked.

The four terrorists likely wanted to crash the Boeing 757-222 into the White House or Capitol building but downed the jet in Pennsylvania as passengers fought back, just 20 minutes away from Washington, the 9/11 Commission found.

The high heat and speed of the crash — the plane was traveling 580 mph at impact — caused 92 percent of the human remains to vaporize, Coroner Wallace Miller said, leaving little to work with.

“The devastation was really incredible,” he said.

“Obviously something I’d never seen before, or since.”

Shanksville wasn’t a target of the 9/11 hijackers, but fate and the fighting tenacity of the passengers aboard Flight 93 left the small town irrevocably part of the fabric of the calamity. The town has embraced its status as a sudden American

landmark, and it takes seriously the responsibility to honor the dead.

King and other townspeople developed connections with responders from the Pentagon and World Trade Center crash sites. In 2008 members of the New York City Fire Department brought a piece of steel from the World Trade Center to Shanksville, and it was placed next to the volunteer fire department.

“It’s in honor of all the victims of 9/11. It’s just a special honor to have this in our town,” King said.

Many rose to the occasion, in part by keeping smalltown traditions: getting to know victims’ families, and respecting people’s privacy.

“I see them about every year and reflect on their loved ones’ lives,” King said. “Hopefully we’ve helped them grieve as they’ve helped us get through this also.”

For Miller, the experience reinforced his basic beliefs on how to treat a victim’s family, which he learned running his business — a funeral home. That is to remember that all bodies are someone’s favorite loved one, no matter what the situation, said Miller, who worked closely with family members and medical specialists from federal agencies to use DNA testing to identify all 40 victims, plus four sets of remains from the terrorists.

“I know the importance of people being able to have some type of a service, with something palpable there that they can inter in whatever manner they see fit,” Miller said.

Flight 93 always occupied a unique part of 9/11. It hit no monumental target, and those aboard the plane are seen as heroes who may have saved one. Amid the stories of sorrow and heroism from the day, said Brent Glass, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, is the more uplifting tale connected to Flight

The Associated Press

Rick King, who was assistant fire chief in Shanksville on Sept. 11, 2001, stands near a cross made from steel from the World Trade Center on July 14, 2011, outside the fire station in Shanksville.

“I remember walking through the woods, walking through the hemlocks, and I remember seeing tennis shoes lying on the ground ... empty.

I couldn’t imagine what it was like there.”

Rick King, former Shanksville assistant fire chief 93: Faced with an extremely distressful situation, the passengers decided to take a vote on what to do and chose to revolt against the hijackers.

“That has really impressed me, about the cultural tradition they came out of,” Glass said.

“They really created a

meeting house in the sky. In 15 or 20 minutes, they created a small government.”

That decision to take a vote “transcends religion, and politics” and many of the other flashpoints around 9/11, Glass said.

Their decision “tells you a lot about humanity,” Glass said, as does the response to the crash by the people of Shanksville. The tiny town is more representative of large parts of America than Washington, D.C., or New York City, Glass said. For example, Shanksville has farms, mining operations, hunting — all traditional occupations.

“It’s not a political or military target, but it stands for a big chapter of American history and American life. Even though it’s a remote site, it’s a very accessible story,” he said.

Flight 93 was a magnet for the frustration felt that day.

By the time it was aloft, the World Trade Center had been struck. After it was hijacked, at least 10 passengers, including Edward Felt, and 2 crew had called family, friends and colleagues on the ground using

cellphones and GTE air phones before the plane crashed.

Relatives of the victims were deeply grateful for how local people responded to their loss, said Patrick White, vice president of Families of Flight 93.

“The rural character of Shanksville and the people ... are the taproot of American values. They are the heart of our traditions,” White said.

For a time, victims’ relatives worried about the lack of progress on a Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville, which is far from big business and established tourist attractions.

“We would have loved to have seen this memorial built in five years. But I think the reality has set in,” said Gordon Felt, whose brother, Edward, died in the crash.

About $50 million in public and private money has been raised for the project, the Families of Flight 93 say. The dedication of the first phase is scheduled for Sept. 10, a day before the 10th anniversary of the crash.

More private funding is still needed to finish the remaining elements of the memorial, including a grove of trees, a visitor center and an entry portal with high walls framing the plane’s flight path.

Before the crash, no one could have envisioned a national memorial rising in the woods and fields of western Pennsylvania. Felt, who is also president of Families of Flight 93, praised the partnership for the memorial among local people, family members and the National Park Service.

“We’ve been able to overcome hurdles,” he told The Associated Press.

And the numbers of people who’ve sought out the site show the public desire to remember the victims.

About 150,000 people annually have visited Shanksville in recent years, said Glass, who called the total “impressive.”

“It’s become one of those destinations that people want to experience firsthand,” he said.

Residents expect even more visitors, said Ron Aldom, director of the Somerset County Chamber of Commerce. Later this month, more signs are to be added along the Pennsylvania Turnpike directing travelers to the site, about a 20-minute drive off the highway.

And visitors are discovering a rich variety of historical and natural sites nearby, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural masterpiece Fallingwater, state and national parks, and attractions such as the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, about 70 miles away.

In the end, perhaps it is fitting that part of the 9/11 story ended up in Shanksville, said Glass, of the Smithsonian.

“Every chapter of American history has a few pages written in Pennsylvania,” he said.

“Flight 93 will be part of American history.”

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WE REMEMBER

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011

The world watched Audiences crowded around television for updates on terrorist attacks

BY DAVID BAUDER The Associated Press

NEW YORK — The first indication of the horrors to come was a single camera shot that suddenly appeared on television sets throughout the world: a skyscraper bathed in the morning sun, smoke pouring from a ragged hole in its side. The images grew even worse, as the entire world witnessed the death and destruction of Sept. 11, 2001.

Whether in a bar in Tahiti or office building in New York, television was the central gathering place for people to experience 9/11.

The Associated Press spoke to some viewers who watched it all unfold on TV, and to some people who were part of conveying the event and its aftermath to the world. ∫∫∫ Tom Brokaw was relieved to be in New York Sept. 11 and not out of town on assignment when the biggest story of his career broke. NBC News’ chief anchor found out later just how huge a relief it was to be.

Ten years later, that day still seems surreal.

“For those of us on the air, we were out there without a net of any kind,” he said.

“We had no idea what was going to happen next. No one else did either.”

At one point as the twin towers burned, Brokaw remarked on camera that they would have to be demolished when the fires went out. He wondered whether he had gone too far.

Minutes later the first tower collapsed on its own.

“It took everything I knew as a journalist and as a father, a husband and a citizen to get through that day,” Brokaw said. “And I was very grateful for the fact that I was 61 years old when it happened, to be given the responsibility that I had, because it took everything I had ever learned to get through that day. If I’d been 40, who knows?”

Most Americans learned what happened on Sept. 11 and the ensuing days through three men: Brokaw of NBC News, Peter Jennings of ABC News and Dan Rather of CBS News.

All three anchors were veteran reporters with two decades of anchoring experience and uniquely suited for the roles they had to perform. Brokaw is now semiretired, making documentaries and occasionally offering onscreen wisdom during big news events.

Rather left CBS unpleasantly following a bungled story about George W. Bush’s military service and now has his own news show on HDNet. Jennings died of cancer in 2005.

On the rainy night of Sept.

10, 2001, Brokaw attended a reception for a blind mountain climber. Later, the event’s organizer told him that it had been rescheduled because Brokaw was unable to make the original date.

That was to have been Tuesday morning, Sept. 11 — at the Windows on the World restaurant on top of the World Trade Center. ∫∫∫ Nicole Rittenmeyer remembers screaming at Brokaw on Sept. 11.

Not him personally. Seven months pregnant and with a toddler under foot, she was watching the coverage in Chicago and saw the first tower crumbling into a cloud of dust and a tangled mass of steel and concrete.

Brokaw didn’t see it as quickly, and perhaps Rittenmeyer figured yelling at the TV set might get his attention.

She’s seen that collapse countless times since.

Starting with the “Inside 9/11” documentary she made for National Geographic in 2005, the filmmaker estimates she has spent five years of on projects about the terrorist attacks. Her latest, a sequel to the memorable “102 Minutes That Changed America” film of 2008 that focuses on the days after Sept. 11, premieres on the

The Associated Press

Travelers at Singapore’s Changi International Airport stop to watch coverage of the attacks.

Orthodox Jewish men gather inside a Jerusalem cafe to watch news coverage of the attacks.

History network on Sept. 10. return he said, “I’m a pro Hundreds of hours of and I get paid not to let it attack footage exist. show.”

Rittenmeyer suggests it was ∫∫∫ the most filmed news event Growing up in New ever, and there’s probably Jersey, Nathaniel Katz much more hidden away in could see the World Trade sock drawers.

Center from the windows of What does watching so his best friend’s house. much of 9/11 do to your But on Sept. 11, 2001, Katz mind? was about as far away from “There’s a process that New York as you can get: you go through that auto- studying for a semester in matically puts up a kind of the Australian capital of barrier, because you’re Canberra. It was shortly working on it,” said before 10 p.m. in Canberra, Rittenmeyer. “There are about 170 miles southwest of certain pieces of footage that Sydney, and a friend make the hair on my arms brought him to a student stand up or bring tears lounge so he could watch every time and probably “The West Wing” for the always will.” first time.

One was shot by two colThe series was interruptlege students who started ed to show what Katz filming out their window thought was a private plane without really knowing crashing into the trade cenwhat was going on, and ter. He watched as other caught the second plane images filled the screen. knifing into the World About 30 other people quietTrade Center. They freaked ly streamed into the lounge out, an experience so viscer- behind Katz, the only al “it’s like you are them and American. they are you and you’re To the others in the reliving this experience,” lounge, it seemed like a she said.

Hollywood movie. To Katz, ∫∫∫ it was home. He broke down Dan Rather had little time and cried uncontrollably. to think about it when David “I pride myself on having Letterman asked him to be a fair bit of self-control and I part of the first “Late Show” completely lost myself in since the attacks. this situation,” said Katz, The night turned out to be now a ministry fellow at one of the memorable televi- Harvard University. “I sion moments of the weeks could feel all these eyeballs after the attacks. The idea of in the back of my head. But I resuming life had become a didn’t care.” delicate issue in itself, with His friends told him he events such as the resump- might hear some ugly things tion of Major League base- in the coming days and he ball and a benefit concert at did; some folks suggested Madison Square Garden the United States deserved important milewhat happened. stones in that Katz didn’t “It took journey. return to the The tone was everything I United States particularly until December, important for a knew as a missing the New York- journalist and surge of patriotbased comedy ism that hapshow and as a father, a pened after the L e t t e r m a n husband and attacks. ∫∫∫ nailed it with a citizen to There was the raw anger of silence on the his opening get through other end of the monologue. phone line durDuring 9/11 that day.” coverage, Tom Brokaw ing a recent interview.

Rather worked A s h l e i g h hard to keep his emotions in check while on Banfield had become so the air for CBS News. It was practiced at pushing aside a grueling stretch that had memories of Sept. 11 — “it the veteran anchor, then age was a bad day” was her 69, awake for 48 hours at one stock answer, before changing the subject — that being point.

But with Letterman, asked to recall specifics Rather briefly broke down brought some tears.

She was working at in tears twice.

“The combination of being MSNBC that day, and disreoff of my own turf and the garded a suggestion that she emotional hammer to the go to the network’s New headquarters. heart that was 9/11 that hit Jersey most people while it was Instead, she headed downunfolding just suddenly town in a cab as far as it descended on me,” he would take her and then on recalled. “I was surprised, foot.

Banfield was close enough maybe even astounded, at to be enveloped in the black how it went.

“I was just engulfed, con- cloud created as the second sumed by grief,” he said. tower collapsed. A compan“I’ve never apologized for ion kicked in a nearby buildthat — didn’t then and I ing’s door and she sought don’t now. Because, one refuge with a police officer doesn’t apologize for grief.” who was also looking for a Rather, who said he hasn’t safe place to breathe. She seen a tape of the appear- emerged when the cloud ance in years, did apologize began to lift and flagged in a way at the time. During down a nearby NBC truck the second breakdown, the that could film her as she old-school newsman asked gave reports into a cell Letterman to go to commer- phone.

“For whatever reason, I cial break and upon their

thought all of the buildings were coming down,” she said. “If these two were coming down, what was next? I was so scared. So many people said you were so brave to do that reporting that day and I think just the opposite.

I was just so childishly scared.”

For the next couple of years, Banfield said she couldn’t go on an airplane without weeping.

She sought counseling to talk it through. She’s proud she was a part of covering such a defining moment, but it also taught her about some limits to endurance.

Banfield, now at ABC News, got married and had two children in the past decade. She said she would react differently today.

“I think of how much I’ve changed and how I wouldn’t do (what I did) right now with two little kids,” she said. “I took enormous risks, probably didn’t know how big the risks I was taking were. I probably wouldn’t run those 50 blocks against a sea of fleeing people. Stupid would have kicked out and pragmatic would have kicked in.” ∫∫∫ Work brought rock guitarist and singer John Hiatt to New York from his Nashville, Tenn., home on Sept. 11. He had a new album being released that day, and a round of interviews set up to support it.

A glance at the television that morning and he knew all bets were off.

“My wife called me in my hotel room,” he recalled.

“As I was watching it, she was watching it. She was terrified. We were trying to figure out how to get out of town.”

His appointments all canceled, Hiatt spent much of the day walking the New York streets. Later, he walked from his midtown hotel to Penn Station and boarded a train south.

Within the next two weeks, he wrote a song about his feelings from that day, “When New York Had Her Heart Broke,” and performed it when he appeared in the city later that fall.

Otherwise, he shelved it.

Writing the song was largely a way to work through his feelings and he figured there was enough musical material coming out in response to the attacks, some of which felt a little tawdry to him.

Now, 10 years later, he recorded the song for an album that was released this month.

“Hopefully, there’s enough distance,” he said.

“In the tradition of a tragic folk song, maybe it helps.” ∫∫∫ Knowing the location of his wife Katherine’s office and the trajectory of the first plane to hit the World Trade Center, Charles Wolf eventually became convinced she was killed instantly on Sept. 11. He never heard from her that morning.

For most people, television that day was a way to experience a terrible story that did not yet involve them. For Wolf, it was a lifeline. TV is where he got his information, learning areas that were set up for possible survivors or places to find out about victims.

“You’re looking for shreds of evidence of whether she’s alive or dead,” he said.

He watched the coverage for hours, even though deep down he knew Katherine’s fate when he saw the north tower collapse. “I stood up and said, ‘I guess I have to start my life over,’” he recalled.

What grew excruciating was when networks played key footage over and over, particularly of the second plane hitting the south tower. He called ABC News to complain about the repetition; the network later said it would curtail use of the footage, in part because children couldn’t understand they were not seeing something new.

He has no interest in watching 10th anniversary coverage, which he calls “made-for-ratings television.” Instead, he will attend a public memorial at ground zero.

Television, he said, “is for everybody else. ...

Television has given them the ability to participate in something when they can’t really be there.”

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Washington, D.C., and New York City: Millions arriving for work at the Twin Towers and Pentagon.

Boston

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Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS)

American Airlines, Fort Worth, Texas

United 175

After arriving in Boston, Atta receives call from Mar wan al Shehhi, a longtime colleague, who was at another terminal at Logan Airpor t. They speak for three minutes.

Saeed al Ghamdi, Ahmed al Nami, Ahmad al Haznawi and Ziad Jarrah check in at the United Airlines ticket counter for Flight 93 to Los Angeles. Airpor t officials select Haznawi for extra security and check him for explosives. He has none.

Boston controllers make first contact with militar y. “We have a problem here. We have a hijacked aircraft headed toward New York, and we need you guys to, we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there, help us out.”

Crew completes its reports on a “suspicious transmission” overheard from another plane (American 11). This was United 175’s last communication.

The four men board the plane around 7:45.

Jarrah in 1B, Nami in 3C, Ghamdi in 3D and al Haznawi in 6B.

NEADS orders two F-15 aler t aircraft in Falmouth, Mass., 153 miles from New York.

Colleague tells office manager that the air traffic controllers declared Flight 11 a hijacking and “think he’s headed toward Kennedy [Airpor t in New York City].

They’re moving ever ybody out of the way. They seem to have him on a primar y radar. They seem to think that he is descending.”

Sarasota, Fla.: President George W. Bush goes jogging.

Portland, Maine: Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al Omari arrive at airpor t. Atta encounters special security measures, which at the time means his checked bags are held off the plane until he boards.

Newark, N.J., Liberty International Airport United 93 depar ts from Newark bound for San Francisco, more than 25 minutes late due to heavy morning traffic.

6:45 - 7:40 a.m.

7:23 a.m.

7:15 - 7:35 a.m.

8:29 a.m.

8:44 a.m.

Boston

Boston

Washington, D.C., suburbs

American Airlines, Fort Worth, Texas

American 11

Atta, al Omari, Satam al Suqami, Wail al Shehri and Waleed al Shehri board American Airlines Flight 11 bound for Los Angeles.

Al Shehhi and his team board United 175.

(Fayez Banihammad 2A, Mohand al Shehri 2B, Shehhi 6C, Hamza al Ghamdi 9C and Ahmed al Ghamdi 9D.)

At Dulles International Airpor t, Khalid al Mihdhar, Majed Moqed, Hani Hanjour, Nawaf al Hazmi and Salem al Hazmi check in for American Airlines Flight 77 bound for Los Angeles. The Hazmi brothers are flagged for extra security check because one lacks a photo ID and an agent finds both suspicious. Nawaf al Hazmi sets off metal detectors. Video later shows an unidentified item clipped to his pocket.

Officials contact FAA in Boston, which is aware of the problem. FAA managers star t notifying FAA chain of command about American 11.

Flight attendant Sweeney says, “Something is wrong. We are in a rapid descent ... we are all over the place.” Asked to look out the window, Sweeney says, “We are flying low. We are flying very, very low. We are flying way too low.” Second later she says, “Oh my God, we are way too low.”

Shehhi, Banihammad, al Shehri, Ahmed al Ghamdi and Hamza al Ghamdi board United Airlines Flight 175 bound for Los Angeles. Several of them have trouble understanding security questions and require special verbal attention.

Box cutter retrieved at crash site.

7:59 a.m.

8:14 a.m.

8:19 a.m.

8:28 a.m.

Boston

American 11

American 11

FAA, Boston

American 11 takes off with Atta, Omari and Suqami in business class seats 8D, 8G and 10B, respectively.

Crew acknowledges instructions from FAA, the crews’ last communication.

Flight attendant Betty Ong contacts American Airlines in North Carolina. “The cockpit is not answering, somebody’s stabbed in business class — and I think there’s Mace - that we can’t breathe — I don’t know, I think we’re getting hijacked.”

Controllers notify FAA Command Center in Herndon, Va., about American 11 heading toward New York City.

Wail al Shehri and Waleed al Shehri stab two flight attendants. The pair and Atta enter the cockpit. Al Suqami stabs a passenger. They use pepper spray, forcing passengers to rear of the plane. They say they have a bomb.

“

We have some planes. Just stay quiet, and you’ll be OK. We are returning to the airport.

”

Flight depar ts Logan Airpor t in Boston.

American Airlines Flight 11

Satam al Suqami

Waleed al Shehri

Wail al Shehri

Mohamed Atta

8:20 a.m.

8:21 a.m.

8:24 a.m.

8:26 a.m.

Washington Dulles Airport

American Airlines, North Carolina

American 11

American 11

American 77 takes off en route to Los Angeles.

Receiver of Ong’s call contacts airline’s operations center in For t Wor th, Texas. Dispatcher tries unsuccessfully to contact cockpit.

Hijacker attempts to communicate with passengers.

Plane flies erratically and heads south. American begins getting identification of hijackers as flight attendants pass on seat numbers.

Flight attendant Madeline Sweeney says a man in first class had his throat slashed, two flight attendants were stabbed and there is a bomb in the cockpit.

“We have some planes. Just stay quiet, and you’ll be OK. We are returning to the airpor t.”

Flight controller in Boston hears but doesn’t understand.

Seconds later he continues, “Nobody move. Ever ything will be OK. If you tr y to make any moves, you’ll endanger yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet.”

Abdul Aziz al Omari

FAA in Boston learns of the situation because hijacker is speaking over air traffic control channel instead of the cabin address system.

United Airlines Flight 175

8:45 a.m.

United 175 Hijackers use knives, Mace and the threat of a bomb to take over the plane. They stab members of the flight crew, killing both pilots.

Hijacker talking to passengers

United 175

THE HIJACKERS

The phone call ends.

8:46 a.m.

Otis Air Force Base, Falmouth, Mass.

NEADS scrambles F-15 fighters but doesn’t know where to send them. Hijackers have turned off plane’s transponder, so NEADS spends next minutes searching radar.

Atta at Portland airport.

Controller repor ts hijacking to his super visor, who pulls the tape to listen to the first par t of the broadcast.

Marwan al Shehhi

Fayez Banihammad

Ahmed al Ghamdi

Hamza al Ghamdi

Mohand al Shehri

Khalid al Mihdhar

United Airlines Flight 93

Majed Moqed

Saeed al Ghamdi

Nawaf al Hazmi

Ahmad al Haznawi

Salem al Hazmi

“ ”

Ahmed al Nami

Hani Hanjour

9:07 a.m.

9:10 a.m.

Learning of the World Trade Center hit, airlines extend ground stop nationwide.

United Airlines Flight 175

American Airlines Flight 77

United Airlines Flight 93

Boston to Los Angeles

Boston to Los Angeles

Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles

Newark to San Francisco

American 11 crashes into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

wa a

n

PA

sto to on

M

9:05 a.m.

FAA, Boston

American Airlines

New York City

American Airlines Flight 11

Chief of Staff Andrew Card to President Bush

Ziad Jarrah

8:46:40 a.m.

THE CHANGED FLIGHT PATHS

A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.

American Airlines Flight 77

MD D

WV

8:51 a.m.

Yo ork k City n

Sarasota, Fla.

Controllers request that Herndon Command Center “get messages to airborne aircraft to increase security for the cockpit.” Herndon never took such action.

United 175 ksv s

White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card whispers to President Bush, “A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.”

American 77 By the time FAA officials became aware of the hijacking, American 11 had taken a dramatic turn to the south. FAA headquar ters began following hijack protocol but did not contact the militar y.

9:15 a.m.

Sarasota, Fla.

Flight deviates from its assigned altitude. New York air traffic controllers unsuccessfully tr y contacting the plane.

ew York City

United 175 turned southwest without clearance from air traffic control. This change wasn’t noticed for several minutes because the same controller was assigned to American 11 and United 175.

American 77 deviated from its flight plan at 8:54 a.m. Two minutes later it disappeared from radar.

The controller in Indianapolis didn’t know of the situation in New York and thought the plane had serious electrical failure.

Despite the discussions about militar y assistance, no one from FAA headquar ters requested such assistance regarding United 93. Nor did any FAA manager pass information about the flight to the militar y.

Hijackers take over plane using knives.

NEADS and FAA New York Still searching radar for American 11.

President Bush is briefed by staff.

President Bush in Sarasota, Fla., classroom.

9:19 a.m.

United Airlines United flight dispatcher Ed Ballinger transmits a warning to his 16 transcontinental flights: “Beware any cockpit intrusion – Two a/c [aircraft] hit World Trade Center.”

9:03:11 a.m.

9 a.m.

8:59 a.m.

8:55 a.m.

8:54 a.m.

8:52 a.m.

New York City

United 175

United 175

Sarasota, Fla.

American 77

United 175

United Airlines Flight 175 strikes the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

Hanson calls his father again. “Passengers are throwing up and getting sick. The plane is making jerky movements. I don’t think the pilot is flying the plane. I think we are going down. I think they intend to go to Chicago or someplace and fly into a building. Don’t worry, Dad. If it happens, it’ll be ver y fast. My God, my God.”

Brian David Sweeney leaves message at home about the situation.

He says passengers are thinking about storming the cockpit.

Before President Bush visits a classroom, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice from the White House tells him of a plane striking the Nor th Tower. At the White House, Vice President Dick Cheney is notified.

Flight changes course.

Peter Hanson of Easton, Conn. calls his father. “I think they’ve taken over the cockpit — an attendant has been stabbed — and someone else up front may have been killed. The plane is making strange moves.”

Lee Hanson hears a woman scream. The call cuts off.

Otis Air Force Base, Falmouth, Mass.

Militar y aircraft airborne.

American Airlines Orders all flights in Nor theast to remain on the ground.

9:24 a.m.

FAA

United 93

Officials begin to comprehend this is a multiple hijacking attempt.

Cockpit receives Ballinger’s warning.

THE ATTACK AT GROUND ZERO

THE PENTAGON 9:16 - 9:26 a.m.

American 77 Barbara Olson calls her husband, Ted Olson, the U.S. solicitor general, and repor ts the flight is hijacked by men with knives and box cutters. Ted Olson unsuccessfully tries to contact Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Hundreds of civilians were killed instantly in both towers, while hundreds more remained alive but trapped.

There were 56 minutes between the crash of United 175 into the South Tower and its collapse.

Twenty nine minutes later, the Nor th Tower collapsed.

At the end of a 330-degree turn, American Flight 77 descended 2,200 feet toward the Pentagon. The hijacker pilot then advanced the throttles to maximum power and dove toward the Pentagon. All on board, and many civilian and militar y personnel in the building, were killed.

United 175 Top view of Pentagon

9:28 a.m.

United 93 crash site.

WTC SOUTH TOWER

Landing

T WTC T TOWER

Area of impact mp mpact

United 93 Hijackers attack cockpit. Radio transmission picks up crew yelling, “Hey, get out of here.”

9:59:52 a.m.

10:03:11 a.m.

10:07 a.m.

United 93

United 93

NEADS

Jarrah pitches nose of plane up and down.

The assault continues as a hijacker says, “Pull it down! Pull it down!” With the sounds of the passenger assault, the plane rolls onto its back and one of the hijackers shouts, “Allah is the greatest.” The aircraft plows into an empty field in Shanksville, 20 minutes’ flying time from Washington, D.C.

Receives first notification from FAA about United 93.

9:29 a.m.

American 77 The autopilot is disengaged about 38 miles west of the Pentagon.

lo oorrs

American Flight 77

9:32 a.m.

Washington Dulles Airport Controllers obser ve a primar y target quickly moving east.

radar

9:58:57 a.m.

10:15 a.m.

United 93

United 93

Washington D.C.

Jarrah tells passengers, “We have a bomb on board,” and instructs plane’s autopilot to turn east. Passengers begin calling friends and family, learning of other hijackings.

Jarrah rolls the airplane radically to left and right and tells hijacker to block the door.

Vice President Cheney authorizes military aircraft to engage aircraft said to be approaching Washington, D.C.

C WT

WTC 4

6

C

7

WT

WTC 5

9:34 a.m.

Washington Reagan National Airport Officials advise the Secret Ser vice of unknown aircraft heading toward the White House.

FAA Cleveland Notification of United 93 hijacking passed to FAA headquar ters.

9:37 a.m.

9:37:46 a.m.

9:39 a.m.

9:42 a.m.

10:20 a.m.

Pentagon

FAA, Cleveland

FAA Command Center at Herndon

White House

American Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon at about 530 miles per hour.

Controllers overhear United 93 radio traffic that there is a bomb on board, likely intended for the cabin PA system but broadcast on FAA radio system.

Controllers learn from news repor ts that plane struck the Pentagon. Center orders all aircraft grounded to nearest airpor t. About 4,500 commercial aircraft begin landing.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney discuss situation. Bush confirms shoot-down order.

ella se

n

Landin

Vice President Cheney taken to bunker beneath the White House.

Mirror graphic by Jay Young and Tom Wor thington II

gine

Sources: The 9/11 Commission Repor t and cour t documents

Columbiana County

Democratic Party

“What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly.”

Paid for by Columbiana County Democratic Committee - Dennis Johnson, Chairman • Diana Mahouski, Treasurer. 124 East Lincoln Way, Lisbon, Ohio 44432

We will never forget.

God Bless the U.S.A. W W W . A A A . C O M

8:37:52 a.m.

8:41 a.m.

8:42 a.m.

Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS)

American Airlines, Fort Worth, Texas

United 175

Boston controllers make first contact with military. “We have a problem here. We have a hijacked aircraft headed toward New York, and we need you guys to, we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there, help us out.”

Colleague tells office manager that the air traffic controllers declared Flight 11 a hijacking and “think he’s headed toward Kennedy [Airport in New York City].

They’re moving everybody out of the way. They seem to have him on a primary radar. They seem to think that he is descending.”

Crew completes its reports on a “suspicious transmission” overheard from another plane (American 11). This was United 175’s last communication.

NEADS orders two F-15 alert aircraft in Falmouth, Mass., 153 miles from New York.

Newark, N.J., Liberty International Airport United 93 departs from Newark bound for San Francisco, more than 25 minutes late due to heavy morning traffic.

8:29 a.m.

8:44 a.m.

American Airlines, Fort Worth, Texas

American 11

Officials contact FAA in Boston, which is aware of the problem. FAA managers start notifying FAA chain of command about American 11.

Flight attendant Sweeney says, “Something is wrong. We are in a rapid descent ... we are all over the place.” Asked to look out the window, Sweeney says, “We are flying low. We are flying very, very low. We are flying way too low.” Second later she says, “Oh my God, we are way too low.”

Box cutter retrieved at crash site.

8:28 a.m.

FAA, Boston Controllers notify FAA Command Center in Herndon, Va., about American 11 heading toward New York City.

“

We have some planes. Just stay quiet, and you’ll be OK. We are returning to the airport.

”

The phone call ends.

8:45 a.m.

United 175 Hijackers use knives, Mace and the threat of a bomb to take over the plane. They stab members of the flight crew, killing both pilots.

Hijacker talking to passengers

8:26 a.m.

American 11 Plane flies erratically and heads south. American begins getting identification of hijackers as flight attendants pass on seat numbers.

Flight attendant Madeline Sweeney says a man in first class had his throat slashed, two flight attendants were stabbed and there is a bomb in the cockpit.

ommunicate with passengers.

s. Just stay quiet, and you’ll be OK. We are returning to the airport.” oston hears but doesn’t understand.

continues, “Nobody move. Everything will be OK. If you try to make any er yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet.”

of the situation because hijacker is speaking over air traffic control cabin address system.

8:46 a.m.

Otis Air Force Base, Falmouth, Mass.

NEADS scrambles F-15 fighters but doesn’t know where to send them. Hijackers have turned off plane’s transponder, so NEADS spends next minutes searching radar.

Atta at Portland airport.

cking to his supervisor, who pulls the tape to listen to the first part of the

8:46:40 a.m.

THE CHANGED FLIGHT PATHS

New York City

United Airlines Flight 175

American Airlines Flight 77

United Airlines Flight 93

Boston to Los Angeles

Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles

Newark to San Francisco

American 11 crashes into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

wa a

n

PA

MD D

WV

8:51 a.m. n

United 175 sv

Flight deviates from its assigned altitude. New York air traffic controllers unsuccessfully try contacting the plane.

ew York City

American 77

175 turned southwest without clearance r traffic control. This change wasn’t nor several minutes because the same conwas assigned to American 11 and United

sick. The plane is makare going down. I think orry, Dad. If it happens,

a.m.

s as a hijacker says, wn!” With the sounds sault, the plane rolls one of the hijackers e greatest.” The airn empty field in tes’ flying time from

American 77 deviated from its flight plan at 8:54 a.m. Two minutes later it disappeared from radar.

The controller in Indianapolis didn’t know of the situation in New York and thought the plane had serious electrical failure.

Despite the discussions about military assistance, no one from FAA headquarters requested such assistance regarding United 93. Nor did any FAA manager pass information about the flight to the military.

Hijackers take over plane using knives.

NEADS and FAA New York Still searching radar for American 11.

8:59 a.m.

8:55 a.m.

8:54 a.m.

8:52 a.m.

United 175

Sarasota, Fla.

American 77

United 175

Brian David Sweeney leaves message at home about the situation.

He says passengers are thinking about storming the cockpit.

Before President Bush visits a classroom, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice from the White House tells him of a plane striking the North Tower. At the White House, Vice President Dick Cheney is notified.

Flight changes course.

Peter Hanson of Easton, Conn. calls his father. “I think they’ve taken over the cockpit — an attendant has been stabbed — and someone else up front may have been killed. The plane is making strange moves.”

Otis Air Force Base, Falmouth, Mass.

Military aircraft airborne.

THE ATTACK AT GROUND ZERO Hundreds of civilians were killed instantly in both towers, while hundreds more remained alive but trapped.

There were 56 minutes between the crash of United 175 into the South Tower and its collapse.

Twenty nine minutes later, the North Tower collapsed.

United 175 WTC SOUTH TOWER

Landing

WTC T T TOWER

10:07 a.m.

NEADS Receives first notification from FAA about United 93.

lo oorrs

10:15 a.m.

Washington D.C.

TC W

WTC 4

Vice President Cheney authorizes military aircraft to engage aircraft said to be approaching Washington, D.C.

6

TC

7

W

WTC 5

10:20 a.m.

ella se

n

White House President Bush and Vice President Cheney discuss situation. Bush confirms shoot-down order.

Landin

Mirror graphic by Jay Young and Tom Worthington II Sources: The 9/11 Commission Report and court documents

gine

MORNING JOURNAL

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011

WE REMEMBER

Memorial design still evolving Architect continues work to help remember Ten years of rebuilding The new World Trade Center is rising from ground zero. Two skyscrapers, a memorial, a museum and a transit hub are under construction. Three more towers and a performing victims of attacks

Hudson River

arts center are planned.

BY KAREN MATTHEWS The Associated Press

NEW YORK — Architect Michael Arad first imagined the twin reflecting pools with cascading waterfalls — he calls them voids — as two empty spaces in the Hudson River, west of the smoldering World Trade Center.

When Arad entered a competition for a trade center memorial in 2003, the voids were in the footprints of the towers themselves, and manmade waterfalls replaced the churning river.

A jury including Vietnam Veterans Memorial designer Maya Lin chose Arad’s twin waterfalls out of 5,201 entries, saying it embodied the grief and the desire for healing that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks inspired.

The 42-year-old Arad’s 9/11 moment is arriving on the 10th anniversary of the attacks, culminating a journey for the son of an Israeli diplomat and unknown city architect whose poster board sketch became a touchstone for post-Sept. 11 battles over how to mourn and how to remember the dead.

Financial, practical and political considerations forced design changes; hundreds of trees were added to Arad’s original vision. The puzzle of how to list the dead has not been solved to everyone’s satisfaction.

Arad says the core of his original plan remains.

“We’ve gone through an eightyear-long editing process of sort of parsing it down,” he said in an interview in the Manhattan offices of Handel Architects. “But I didn’t end up with a whole other unintended direction to this. Is it exactly as it was eight years ago? No. But is it the same in nature? Yes.” After terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people and toppled two 110-story skyscrapers, some New Yorkers said the entire 16-acre trade center site should be a memorial or a park.

Others said the towers should be rebuilt just as they were before.

In the end, Daniel Libeskind’s master plan set aside eight acres — half the site — for a memorial.

Arad’s design, “Reflecting Absence,” features waterfalls cascading into reflecting pools where the towers stood. The names of all those killed on Sept. 11, 2001 and in the earlier World Trade Center attack on Feb. 26, 1993, are inscribed on bronze parapets surrounding the waterfalls.

In a change from the bare design Arad submitted, the waterfalls are nestled within a grove of swamp white oak trees that will grow as tall as 60 feet.

A museum showcasing remnants of the original trade center will open next year.

Interviewed at the memorial site, Arad referred to the pools as “voids” and said they will evoke the lives lost in the terror attacks.

“These voids that you see behind me — as you approach them as a pedestrian they’re not readily visible,” he said. “And it’s really only when you’re a few feet away from them that all of a sudden the ground opens up in front of you and you see this enormous expanse, these voids which are ringed with these waterfalls and the reflecting pool below them.”

And then the visitors come to the edge and start circling the pools, “following this river of names” around the perimeter.

Members of the jury — Lin was said to be one of Arad’s strongest supporters — said the nearly completed memorial has vindicated their choice.

Paula Grant Berry, a Sept. 11 widow and the lone victims’ family member on the jury, said the falling water “will cut out the sound of the city.”

She added, “The beauty of the design is that it maintains the footprints of the buildings. It gives you a sense of how large the buildings were.”

Arad was an unknown architect working for the New York City Housing Authority when his design was chosen.

Arad grew up in Israel, the

(Formerly Freedom Tower) 1,776 feet high, 102 stories 2.6 million square feet Construction began April 2006 Scheduled to open in 2013 It will have 69 office floors, a restaurant, an enclosed observation deck and a two-level broadcast facility.

World Trade Center site

2 World Trade Center 1,349 feet high, 88 stories 3.1 million rentable square feet The foundation construction began the summer of 2010.

Brooklyn

3 World Trade Center 1,170 feet high 80 stories 2.8 million square feet Construction began summer 2010 The building will include 53 floors of office space and five retail levels.

7 World Trade Center 750 feet high, 52 stories 1.7 million square feet The rebuilt tower opened in May 2006 and is two-thirds leased.

Performing Arts Center 1,000-seat venue with focus on modern dance No construction is scheduled while site is used as an exit from commuter trains.

4 World Trade Center 977 feet high 72 stories 2.3 million square feet It includes retail and commercial office space.

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum Reflecting pools where the Trade Center towers stood Names of 2,987 victims of the 1993 and 2001 attacks will be inscribed around pools in the 8-acre plaza.

The above-ground memorial will open Sept. 11, 2011 and the museum will open in 2012.

World Trade Center Transportation Hub 800,000 square feet, comparable to Grand Central Terminal It will provide access to PATH commuter rail, subway lines and Hudson River ferries.

It is expected to be completed by 2014.

5 World Trade Center There is no construction timetable yet. It will stand on the site formerly occupied by the remains of the Deutsche Bank building.

Interna1 WTC World tional New York Taipei Financial Commerce 101 Center 1,776 Centre Taiwan Shanghai Hong Kong Incomplete 1,666* 1,614 1,588

1 World Trade Center will be among the tallest buildings in the world.

The towering Burj Khalifa was completed last year.

Petronas Towers Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 1,482

Zifeng Tower Nanjing 1,476

International 1 WTC Willis Finance Tower New York Center Chicago Guangzhou, 1,368** 1,450** China Destroyed 1,439

Burj Khalifa Dubai, UAE 2,717 feet * Top of spire ** Top of roof SOURCES: Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat; Silverstein Properties; The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey

The Associated Press

Michael Arad, an architect of the 9/11 memorial at ground zero, speaks to a reporter April 7, 2011, in front of the construction site in New York.

“We’ve gone through an eight-year-long editing process of sort of parsing it down. But I didn’t end up with a whole other unintended direction to this. Is it exactly as it was eight years ago? No. But is it the same in nature? Yes.” Architect Michael Arad, Handel Architects United States and Mexico, and served in the Israeli military. A Dartmouth graduate who got his master’s at George Institute of Technology, Arad came to New York two years before the attacks.

Arad was thinking about a Sept.

11 memorial before the competition

was announced. He built a Plexiglas model of his cavernous holes in the Hudson and brought it up to his apartment rooftop to photograph it against the skyline.

“This idea of the surface of the river being torn open and the water flowing into this hole. ... I kept sketching it and thinking, could it be realized?” he recalled. “Could you actually create that effect?

Could you cut a hole in the river?”

The answer, seemingly, was no.

But the idea morphed into Arad’s twin voids in the towers’ footprints.

Not everyone loved the design.

Arad keeps a digital New York Post front page —”IT STINKS!” — in his computer.

He appears to take criticism in stride.

“When I entered the competition it was a very private act,” he said.

“It was something that I did by myself, sketching in my study, imagining the kind of memorial that I might want to visit someday.

But when the design was selected all of a sudden it went from a constituency of one to a constituency of thousands.”

Arad said working on the memorial has been “exhausting and exhaustive” but also “a huge privilege.”

Construction of the memorial began in 2006, and it will be the first component of the rebuilt trade center site to be completed. New office towers, meanwhile, are rising rapidly to the memorial’s north and east.

According to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, the combined cost of the memorial and museum is about $700 million with an annual operations budget between $50 million and $60 million.

A memorial to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that opened in 2000 cost $29.1 million.

The Sept. 11 board has raised about $400 million from private donations and is seeking federal funds so that the memorial and the museum can be free of charge — although it also said it’s considering a voluntary fee of up Arad said every detail of the

The Associated Press

Lockheed Martin unveils its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in 2006 in Fort Worth, Texas.

Manhattan

1 World Trade Center

Among giants

Queens

AP

memorial has been carefully vetted, from the Virginia-quarried granite that lines the tower footprints to the hand-brushed patina that protects the bronze.

Placement of the nearly 3,000 victims’ names was always contentious.

An alphabetical list “would not have been the right move,” Arad said. “You had married families who shared the same last name and married families who didn’t share the same last name. And if you did an alphabetical listing it would privilege some over others.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposal to list the names randomly pleased few. Victims’ family members wanted to list the dead by their employers. Relatives of the firefighters and police officers who died trying to save others pushed for their rank and ladder company to be listed.

The solution was to group people’s names near the names of their friends, family members and coworkers, and first responders were identified. Over 1,200 requests were made, and granted to list the names.

Families who died on the airplanes will be listed together, as will office colleagues who shared lunch every day.

Donald James McIntyre, a Port Authority police officer who died as he tried to make his way to the 84th floor of the south tower, will be listed next to his cousin John Anthony Sherry, who worked there.

Edie Lutnick, who heads a relief fund at Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial services firm that lost 658 people including her brother on Sept.

11, said age and affiliation “could so easily be added.”

“You would be able to know that a 2¢-year-old died on the plane,” Lutnick said. “You would learn a story from the memorial and not from a telephone or a kiosk.”

Arad said every choice had consequences. If a victim didn’t work for a company at the trade center, they would have been listed as unaffiliated, which is why no company name will appear anywhere.

“Again,” he says, “everything you did had issues of equity.”

Golden defense decade at an end Contractors have capitalized on big defense budgets The Associated Press

NEW YORK — The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down, Osama bin Laden is dead, and the federal government is deeply in debt. This spells the end of what was a golden decade for the defense industry.

In the decade since the Sept. 11 attacks, the annual defense budget has more than doubled to $700 billion and annual defense industry profits have nearly quadrupled, approaching $25 billion last year.

Now defense spending is poised to retreat, and so are industry profits. “We’re about to go into the downhill side of the roller coaster here,” said David Berteau, a defense industry analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Congress agreed last month to cut military spending by $350 billion over the next 10 years. The defense budget will automatically be cut by another $500 billion over that period if lawmakers fail to reach a deficit-cutting deal by November.

Defense industry stocks have already begun to suffer; they are lagging the S&P 500 in recent months.

During the last defense spending downturn, which lasted from 1985 to 1997, defense stocks underperformed the broader market by 33 percent, according to an analysis by RBC Capital Markets.

The Sept. 11 attacks forced the world’s biggest and bestfunded military to quickly retool itself. It needed to develop technologies, weapons and strategies to find and fight an elusive network of terrorists that seemed more sophisticated and dangerous than ever imagined.

The U.S. spent $1.3 trillion in the ten years following the attacks chasing al-Qaida and fighting two wars. That was on top of baseline military spending in excess of $4 trillion.

“After 9/11 the floodgates opened,” says Eric Hugel, a defense industry analyst at Stephens Inc. The defense budget grew from $316 billion in 2001 to $708 billion in 2011. Federal spending on homeland security, which includes everything from airport security to border control, also rose dramatically. Last year dozens of federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, spent $70 billion on such programs, according to the Office of Management and Budget. That’s up from $37 billion in 2003, the first year after DHS was formed.

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MORNING JOURNAL

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011

WE REMEMBER

Conspiracy theorists follow JFK example Groups challenge accepted truths about the attack

BY TAMARA LUSH The Associated Press

DALLAS — In Dealey Plaza, with the white “X’’ painted on the spot where President Kennedy was assassinated, ask anyone about the grassy knoll and the second gunman.

Conspiracy theories come with the territory here. And at Barbec’s Restaurant on the other side of this sprawling city, six men sit on a covered porch and convene a meeting of the North Texans for 9/11 Truth group and talk about the government’s lies about 9/11.

The group has 50 active members; 200 on the mailing list. And they number among many thousands who, after years of investigations, don’t believe the official version of how the World Trade Center collapsed, who was responsible or what the government knew and when.

Politics doesn’t have anything to do with it; two were once staunch, Bush-voting conservatives; two are progressives and two weren’t even interested in current events until after the 2001 attacks.

“Before 9/11, I was a working class person, going through life, pretty much accepting everything given and told to me,” said Bryan Black, a 50-year-old carpenter from Commerce, Texas, “I’m starting to see things.

I’m more open to skeptical conversation.”

The skeptics — they prefer the term “9/11 truth activists” instead of “truthers” — have persisted, even thrived in the decade since 2001, with proponents from former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel to comedian Rosie O’Donnell. And unlike the years that Kennedy assassination conspiracies took to develop, they have mobilized with lightninglike speed on the Internet, with YouTube videos of the

The Associated Press

Hank Black holds a sign while talking to Michael Cangemi after a meeting of the North Texans for 9/11 Truth group July 19, 2011, in Dallas. trade center collapsing again and again.

“There’s really a foundation of reality here,” said Ted Walter, who has worked unsuccessfully to prod New York City officials into reopening an investigation of how 7 World Trade Center collapsed on the afternoon of Sept 11. “We believe that if all of the American public saw footage of building 7 on the nightly news, it would lead to widespread skepticism of 9/11.”

For many, conspiracy theories aren’t terrifying; they’re more comforting than the idea that an event as terrifying as Sept. 11 could be so — random.

Conspiracies can be a “security blanket” for explaining away the horrific, asserts Patrick Leman, a University of London professor who researches 9/11 theories. “It stops us from having to confront the unpredictability of life.”

Jonathan Kay, a columnist with the Canadian newspaper The National Post and the author of a book about conspiracy theories, said it’s normal for people to seek out complicated and detailed explanations of big events.

“There is something in the

911truth.org

human mind that rebels against the idea of random forces or individuals being able to bring down powerful people or powerful icons,” said Kay. There’s no real estimate of the numbers of people in the 9/11 “truth” movements — there’s no one leader of the skeptics. A group called Remember Building 7 presented New York’s City Council with a petition in 2009 signed by 80,000 people calling for an independent probe into the attacks. Other groups include Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Scholars for 9/11 Truth and the 9/11 Commission Campaign, founded by Gravel.

The “truthers” generally have about a dozen beliefs surrounding what happened on that day, although there are some variations on who was responsible for the attacks and why: ∫ Explosives brought down the World Trade Center, not hijacked jetliners. ∫ There were warnings of

the impending attacks from 11 different countries, and fighter jets could have intercepted at least one of the four planes that day. ∫ Criminal conspiracies within the government caused the attacks.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology conducted a probe that took six years to complete of the tower collapses; the last report found that fire caused the collapse of 7 World Trade Center, a skyscraper north of the twin towers. In the collapses of the twin towers, the agency found that extreme heat from the jetliner crashes caused some steel beams to lose strength, causing further failures in the building until the entire structure succumbed.

The investigation “was the most comprehensive examination of a structural failure ever conducted,” said Shyam Sunder, lead investigator of the collapse investigation and led to 40 building code changes to make safer, terror-proof skyscrapers. NIST maintains a website with its reports and computer-based animations that reconstruct its findings to reach out to the public.

Sunder acknowledges it hasn’t reached everyone.

“We really can’t explain why some people question our findings about the WTC collapses when we have done our best to present those findings and how they were derived as clearly as possible,” Sunder wrote in an e-mail.

It begs the question: why is there such a distrust of government when it comes to 9/11? Is it due to feeling alienated from our fractured political system, a bad economy, or something else?

For Bob McIlvaine’s son, it was the injuries found on his son Bobby’s head, arm and skin that made him think the hijacked jetliner and building collapse couldn’t have done it. He believes that explosives were detonated in the towers’ basement before the planes hit the towers.

McIlvaine has not been able to determine where his son was when he died, but from the injuries — which include skin that was burned post-mortem — he assumes that his son was in or near the tower’s lobby.

McIlvaine questions the government’s explanation that a fireball came down through the elevator shafts and burned those in the lobby.

Tom Theimer watched the World Trade Center crumble while drinking coffee and watching television in his suburban Dallas home.

Shaken, he bought flags for his porch and bumper stickers for his car reading “We will never forget.”

A few years later, a friend of Theimer’s wife casually mentioned that 9/11 “was an inside job.” Theimer was livid and turned to the Internet, to prove the friend wrong.

The websites, the books and the documentaries he saw online persuaded him.

He was wrong, and so was the system.

“I was duped,” Theimer said. “It really hurt. I cried. I couldn’t sleep for months.”

Theimer said that he and others in Dallas are planning to show a new 9/11 documentary on the 10th

anniversary.

Remember Building 7 is trying to raise $1 million by Sept. 11 to support a new investigation into the collapses.

A conference on alternate 9/11 theories is being held in Toronto on Sept. 11.

The conference is headed by the International Center for 9/11 Studies, which was founded by James Gourley, a 31-year-old Dallas-area attorney who began to question the events of Sept. 11 during law school, while watching an activist make his argument on C-Span.

Gourley is aware of the theories about how skeptics are simply trying to justify and explain a random, horrific event.

“It’s basically a backwards way of saying we’re psychologically deranged,” he said. “It’s questioning the psychology of the people instead of questioning the facts.”

Even in the heart of the conspiracy theory world, some find the alternate theories hard to believe.

At Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Scott Dew hawked commemorative Kennedy assassination newspapers to tourists, standing under an oak tree, just steps from a white “X’’ painted on the asphalt that marks where President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.

Dew’s newspapers — which cost $5 each and come encased in a plastic sleeve — devote several pages and diagrams to the varying theories of bullet projectiles and second shooters on the grassy knoll.

Kennedy’s assassination was “a conspiracy by the government,” Dew says.

“Back then, in ‘63, this was a money and power deal.”

But Sept. 11? A conspiracy? He shakes his head.

“I believe bin Laden was the attacker. I don’t believe the other theories that President Bush or the government had anything to do with it. That would just be a little too sinful,” he said.

MORNING JOURNAL

WE REMEMBER

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011