Remembering 9/11
In remembrance of 9/11 terrorist attacks, two Mendoza faculty members and military veterans recall the day and its enduring impact on their lives. Look for Bob Lewandowski's essay titled "The lasting impact of 9/11."

Twenty-Two Years Still Seem Like Yesterday: A Reflection on 9/11

This is Monday, September 11th. For those of a certain generation, this date will live in memory much like November 22, 1963 or December 7, 1941. Twenty-two years ago, everything seemed to stop; people turned to their televisions, radios, or their neighbors to ask what’s happening.

After events like those, we pick ourselves up and move on, but life’s not quite the same, mostly because those images, sounds, and names just won’t leave our heads. They’re there, more or less permanently.

To be honest, my eyes still get a bit leaky when I read or hear about all those cops, firefighters, and first responders who headed into the World Trade Center when everyone else was fleeing in the other direction. All of those young men and women with Irish, Italian, and immigrant names, for whom the FDNY or NYPD was a lifeline up from the tenements and crowded rentals in Brooklyn and Queens. A professional job in the middle class.

As I think of them, along with the emergency room nurses, ambulance drivers, and PAs who train for calamities and mass casualties but – honestly – could never imagine they’d see anything like this. At first, they work from a checklist, then from memory, and after that from pure instinct. What’s next? Can I leave this patient? Who needs me most right now?

I think of my own training – 20 years of it in the U.S. Air Force – knowing that I knew my job and how to make others better at their jobs, but – honestly – the really serious stuff you’re training for just isn’t likely to happen. For me, personally, it never did. I spent two decades in uniform, training myself and others, teaching, demanding the best my airmen could give, but never being asked to step in harm’s way.

I also think of 1st Lt. Heather Penny, an English Literature major from Purdue, who was on alert with her F-16 Fighting Falcon in the 121st Tactical Fighter Squadron, District of Columbia Air National Guard. She and her wingmate, Lt. Col. Marc Sasseville, were ordered into the air without time to properly arm their aircraft. They were both smart, skilled, savvy airmen, but they were defenseless.

Lt. Penny (call sign: “Lucky”) rolled first and climbed fast in pursuit of United Airlines’ hijacked Flight 93, headed from Newark to San Francisco. That Boeing 757 with 182 passengers and crew aboard had been commandeered by al-Qaeda terrorists with the intent to fly into a building in Washington, possibly the White House. None of that seemed possible three hours earlier.

Lt. Col. Sasseville launched from Joint Base Andrews, headed upriver in pursuit of Flight 93. Even as they reached altitude, neither knew that the airplane they were looking for had already crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. As they headed north, Sass told Lucky that, without weapons, they would have to execute a ramming maneuver.

“We did not have missiles,” she reflected later. “We were on a suicide mission. And in order to be able to take an airliner down, Sass would ram his aircraft into the cockpit where the terrorists were, to destroy the flight controls,” she explained. “I would take the tail by ramming my jet into the tail of the aircraft. I would aerodynamically unbalance the airplane and tip it over so it would crash straight into the ground by targeting both ends of the aircraft. It was our plan to prevent any additional casualties.”

Nobody involved thought that was an optimal plan, but given the conditions, it was likely to work. Without flight controls or a horizontal stabilizer, that Boeing jet would come down, hopefully injuring no one on the ground. 

“I had raised my hand,” Penny said, “and swore an oath to protect and defend our nation. If this was where the universe had placed me at this moment in time … this was my purpose. Anyone who had been in our position would have been willing to do the same thing. And the proof is in the pudding, because the passengers on Flight 93 did.”

“[I remember] how crystal blue the skies were that day,” she told an ABC News anchor. “There are so many moments that I remember with such clarity that I can touch, taste, feel, hear, smell every detail from that day. But what strikes me the most, because of how omnipresent it was throughout the entire day was the deep, clear blue skies.” CAVU conditions.

Everyone wearing a uniform that day had a job to do and very little time to work a checklist or call the command post for advice. “Do what you think is right. Do your job” is the most frequent counsel warfighters and first responders received. Things went wrong: radios didn’t work, firefighters on the ground in New York were unable to contact battalion headquarters. Cell towers were down, nobody quite knew where anybody was. Chaos was the order of the day. Remarkably, and I would say dependably, people did what was right.

Rick Rescorla, Phil Purcell’s chief of security at Morgan Stanley got 2,700-plus employees safely out of the South Tower, leaving just six people. Five Morgan employees were above the entry point of the attacking aircraft. Rescorla was headed up the stairs to find them.

That day has a thousand stories similar in some ways to Rescorla’s. Similar to those of Sass and Lucky. My recollections of them, how they responded, how they did what they were trained to do – and what they thought was “right” – is how I make sense of the worst day this nation has ever seen. I was retired from active duty on that morning, watching events unfold in my office and a conference room down the hall. 

I asked my students in my 9:30 class if anyone had a parent or relative working in New York. Of 24 juniors and seniors in the room, 16 of them put up a hand. I paused for a moment and explained to them how so many good people were “doing the right thing” that morning and that with a little luck and God’s grace, they’d be fine. I then explained why their parents were grateful those kids were here at Notre Dame and how mom and dad knew they would carry on, help one another, and get the education they had worked so hard to earn.

A few of my former students called me, asking for help in devising a plan to find lost workers or communicate with people whose phones had gone dead, and to create rendezvous points.  By noon that day, we had a plan, staffed it with smart Notre Dame graduates, and did what we could to help pull the world back together. 

Periodically, I hear from some of my wingmates, colleagues from the Academy and the War College and – sometimes – one will ask, “Where were you on 9/11?” It’s a tough conversation for those who’ve lost friends, mates, and coworkers. But I return to the most important thing I learned on that day: Properly trained, properly equipped, properly motivated people will do remarkable things for their fellow man. 

It’s the one thing I’m intensely proud of as a Notre Dame man and an Air Force officer. Particularly on days like this.

J. S. O’Rourke, IV

Lieutenant Colonel, USAF (Ret.)

Teaching Professor of Management & Organization