On Sept. 11, 2001, four airplanes were hijacked by terrorists of the extremist group al Qaeda. At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. At 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. At 9:37 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington, Va. The fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed into a field in Shanksville, Penn., after passengers revolted against the terrorists.
The South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m. The North Tower collapsed at 10:28 a.m.
Nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks. At the World Trade Center alone, 2,753 people were killed in the attacks, including 343 FDNY firefighters, 23 New York City police officers and 37 Port Authority police officers.
People in the U.S. and around the world watched in horror and disbelief as the events of that day unfolded. Like other momentous events in American history, such as when President John F. Kennedy was shot or the attack on Pearl Harbor, 9/11 is ingrained in the memories of those who witnessed that day—both up close and from afar.
For the 25th anniversary of 9/11, the Hendersonian spoke to several people and asked how they remembered that fateful day.
Kurt Wiesen
Kurt Wiesen currently works as the Henderson County deputy judge-executive. In 2001, he was in the Coast Guard and worked at Coast Guard Base Boston right on Boston Harbor.
Wiesen said the attacks were very personal for many of the Coast Guard personnel he worked with at the time. Friends of his had friends who died in the planes, and one of his colleagues had a son who died in the World Trade Center, he said.
When asked if he still gets emotional about it, Wiesen said, “Oh yeah, oh yeah.”
“We took it personally because it affected people we knew,” Wiesen said.
Wiesen wasn’t at the Coast Guard base on the day of the attacks, but instead in the New Hampshire town where he was living about 50 minutes away. It was day off for him and he was at Home Depot when people started to talk about something going on.
Wiesen went next door to Sears where a mass of people had gathered to watch the happenings on the wall of televisions at the store. “Everybody was just glued (to the screens),” he said.
Later he got a call from command telling him to be in the next day.
“I was in by six o’clock the next morning,” Wiesen said.
He was told it was uncertain when he’d be getting off. That would be six days later.
Because two of the planes involved in 9/11 took off from nearby Logan International Airport, authorities were forming a Critical Incident Command center at Coast Guard Base Boston. Law enforcement personnel from different departments—FBI agents, state police and local police—would be staying and working at the command center, which was set up in the Coast Guard club’s banquet hall, Wiesen said.
He spent the next six days working on a logistics team so that all the personnel brought to the command center had what they needed. That included a range of needs, from the everyday copier paper and pens to special radios so that everybody was on the same frequency.
Those days seemed “like something out of a movie” with base security immediately beefing up which included placing concrete barriers around the base. Flights coming and going from Logan International Airport, which is located across the harbor, were suspended for at least a few days, and boat traffic in Boston Harbor was cut off, Wiesen said. So, the normally hectic activity seen from the base was transformed to almost a stillness. Wiesen said it was an “eerie feeling.”
He said the command center was active for about 60 days after the attacks.
Wiesen was also a volunteer firefighter in the New Hampshire town where he lived. And there was an effect from that with the deaths of the firefighters in the World Trade Center. Additionally, some personnel from the Coast Guard volunteered to help at Ground Zero, and they brought back some harrowing stories.
“It touched us several different ways,” Wiesen said.
Jed and Debbie Dunaway
It was Jed and Debbie Dunaway’s first trip together out of the United States.
Lured by the promise of pink sand beaches, they selected Bermuda for an early autumn week-long vacation with their Henderson friends David and Connie Hetrick.
It was a lovely choice because of the island scenery, the flowers and the Bermuda’s British ambience.
On their fourth day, the vacationers took public transportation to the harbor town of St. George. They’d just arrived at the public square and were strolling by the harbor when they heard a man yelling.
He was leaning over the rail of a boat shouting to people on the wharf, “America’s been attacked.”
Alarmed, they quickly found a pub where people were gathered around an old-fashioned TV, watching news coverage.
One building of the World Trade Center was smoking.
“We got there just in time to watch the second plane (hit),” Debbie remembers. “I can remember feeling so sick.”
They weren’t alone with their feelings.
“All of the people were as shocked as we were,” she said. “The whole atmosphere was anger. We were so dumbfounded.”
The Dunaways were also immediately concerned about getting home since they’d left their three children with grandparents and there was their pharmacy business to consider.
“From then on it was no fun,” Debbie said. “It was over.”
Forgoing sightseeing, they headed back to their hotel and on the way ducked into a little cemetery garden.
“The four of us held hands and prayed,” she said, noting that they couldn’t even get a call through to home. “It was horrible.”
But their hotel was a bright spot. The manager created an open area with drinks, tea, sandwiches and anything they needed that he could provide.
“There were more Americans there than we realized,” she recalls. “People were all just trying to comfort us. Everybody was wonderful.”
All they could think of, though, was getting home.
After about three days, they got the last four tickets on a flight to Toronto (Canadian airspace had just reopened.)
Debbie said the plane had been grounded for several days with a cargo of fish and seafood before it was emptied and cleaned.
It still reeked.
But they toughed it out to Toronto where “you could hear a pin drop” in the usually bustling air hub.
“Nobody was laughing, nobody was talking,” she said. “Everybody had one mission in mind: To get home.”
Their next step was to find a rental car (or have someone come pick them up) since there was still no air travel to the U.S.
In the ground transportation area, it was chaos as people jockeyed for cars.
A clerk would loudly announce: “Anybody going to ….?” as they worked to reposition vehicles.
Finally, he said: “Anybody going to the Midwest/Indiana?” and they raised their hands. Evansville was acceptable.
And with that he announced: “I’m out of cars.”
The two couples hit the road in a tiny car holding suitcases on their laps.
Thanks to a tip from a restaurant server, they avoided a 12-hour delay crossing the border by using a lesser-known entry.
“When we crossed over, we stopped at a gas station, and I said: ‘I’m going to get down on my hands and knees and kiss the dirt,” Debbie remembers.
Her friend Connie answered: “I don’t think I’ll ever leave again.”
It would be 18 years before either Dunaway would leave the United States again on an airplane.
David Dixon
Dixon, in 2001, was the managing editor of The Gleaner.
“How the day started, I have a clear memory. I was in bed, asleep mid-morning (he worked past midnight in those days. Gleaner photographer) Mike Lawrence called me, said a plane had hit a skyscraper in New York City, and he had a feeling it would be really bad.
“By the time I got up and turned on the TV, it was really bad. So, I headed to work and the day went very quickly, even though it was a very long day.”
Over the next 14 or so hours, Dixon oversaw the unplanned production of an eight-page special section of The Gleaner that involved combing through hundreds of Associated Press photos and stories, but also managing local coverage, such as cars lined up at gas stations and a community prayer service that night.
“Back then I think the Gleaner newsroom had, maybe 18 people, maybe 20. We were well staffed. And it was a beehive …
“It was a tremendous effort by the Gleaner newsroom. We had a sense that this was a gigantic story, but a lot of us had a sense of the historic threat that had just been presented to the country,” including civilian targets.
Normal deadlines were missed, but the special section got printed and distributed.
“Next day, (Editor) Ronnie Jenkins gave me highest compliment of my professional career. He said, ‘You can be a mean little son of a (expletive) when you want to.’”
Jamie Combs
Combs, an employee at the Sand Lane Sureway, was living in her hometown of Louisville at the time.
She said she missed the footage of the first plane crashing into the World Trade Center because she was still asleep. But her mother, who was living with her, woke her up and told her she needed to watch.
She got up, watched what was happening, and “started crying.”
When the second plane hit, she said she was worried about all the people in the buildings—the firefighters and first responders.
She watched the television the rest of the day.
She also was thinking about her children, ages seven, five and three, who were staying with her sister on the Fort Campbell Army Base. Her sister’s husband was in the Army. She said the base had been put on lockdown because some unauthorized people were trying to get on.
“I knew they’d be safe, but I was still worried,” she said.
More than that, she was worried about her brother-in-law and the possibility of his having to go to war.
“It was a rough day for me,” Combs said. “I cried for all those people.”
Cathe and Alan Hedgespeth
Shortly before midnight on Sept. 10, 2001, Alan and Cathe Hedgespeth boarded an American Airlines flight in Washington, D.C., that was bound for London’s Heathrow Airport.
They were in a vacation frame of mind, thinking about the tour that would take them to sites in England and France, including a visit to the beaches of Normandy and D-Day.
They didn’t know that as they flew across the Atlantic, a hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City, starting a day of terror.
“I still cry” when she thinks about that day, Cathe said.
Nothing was mentioned about the events that were unfolding when they landed in London.
The Hedgespeths checked into their hotel and headed straight to the British Museum in an effort to stay alert and get adjusted to a six-hour time zone shift.
They were on their way back when they decided to email their daughters Garrett and Hallie from a cyber cafe and let them know they arrived.
There were two messages from Hallie, a freshman at Kentucky Wesleyan College.
They opened the second one first, which read: Mom, Dad, — School has been called off because of the bomb. Love, Hallie.”
“We didn’t know what bomb she was talking about,” Cathe recalls, but they learned more by going back to the first message
From the Internet, they read news about what was happening.
“I just stood there behind him crying,” she said. “There wasn’t anything you could do.”
Though both daughters knew what time their parents had left Washington and Garrett had actually taken them to the airport, there was still a bit of worry.
It wasn’t beyond reason that their flight had also been compromised.
“The girls freaked out,” Cathe said, but their grandmother helped them verify through the Hedgespeths’ travel company that they’d arrived.
Back at the hotel, the registration desk was flooded with Americans trying to check back into a room since they weren’t going to be able to fly home.
There was nothing to do except continue the trip.
“We were gone two weeks. We couldn’t have gotten home anyway,” Cathe said. They ended up bonding with other Americans including a man who was a NYC police officer on a retirement trip and another who worked for the CIA.
She recalls that people everywhere were very nice to them, and a lot of places displayed the American flag.
“We all had a common ‘something.’ It was a type of camaraderie, (that) when something bad happens, you band together,” she added. “These memories are still very powerful and emotional.”
Capt. Randy Jenkins
Jenkins, of the Henderson Fire Department, got off a shift that morning and decided to take another shift as a fill-in at a different station. He said he got a cup of coffee like he did every morning to start the day and sat down to watch the news. He turned on the national news, and not a minute later, he was watching the first plane crash into the World Trade Center.
At first, he thought it was a “horrible accident.”
But then when the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center, he knew the country was under attack.
Fellow firefighters joined to watch what was happening in New York.
“I think everybody was in shock, disbelief,” Jenkins said. “Everybody was in shock and disbelief that that could happen on American soil.”
Later the feeling among the firefighters was that, “We’re at war, but we don’t know who with,” Jenkins said.
They also knew—because of their own training—that when the Twin Towers collapsed many of those who died would be the firefighters rushing in to help. They would have gone to the scene and entered before they fully knew what was happening, he said.
“We knew those guys were going to do what they were supposed to,” Jenkins said.
Jenkins also knew that once the floors of the buildings started falling on top of another, it would lead to a “pancake collapse.” He said the extremely hot jet fuel would turn the buildings’ beams to pretzels, and “after the first one went down, the second one was going to down.”
Like others interviewed for this piece, Jenkins said the first attacks seen on the television led to a feeling that there could be more coming.
“We didn’t know when it was going to stop,” he said.
He recalls the rest of the day at the station house there was a “pretty somber mood.” He said there weren’t any fire runs that day, though there might have been some EMS or car crashes to go to.
Jenkins in 2024 celebrated his 50th year on the job at HFD. Just before 9/11, however, he said he had given some thought to retirement. But when 9/11 happened, those thoughts “went off the plate.”
“When that happened, I’m not thinking about retiring now,” he said.
For many years after, the attacks were a motivating factor for staying on at HFD, he said.
Danielle Anguish
Danielle Anguish, now an employee at the Henderson County Public Library, had just started her freshman year at Western Kentucky University. She was getting ready for a 9:30 a.m. sociology class and turned on the television when she saw the first plane hit.
She called her mom, who was at work, but her mom hadn’t yet seen anything about it and couldn’t tell her what was happening.
Anguish went on to class and heard all the buzz about what was going on as she walked. But she said no classes were canceled.
She also said many students expressed their fears and concerns—some were worried about living in the tallest dorm on campus, Pearce Ford Tower, and thought it might be a target. Others talked about gas prices going up.
“All the days to come after, we were vigilant,” she said of the WKU students.
There was also unity, shown through campus events to honor those killed in the attacks, such as vigils.
“I think we were better as a people,” she said.
Even as a freshman college student, she said she grasped the significance of the attacks.
“I knew that it was something that had never happened before,” she said.
Det. John Nevels
Det. John Nevels of the Henderson Police Department was at the department’s investigations building, which in those days was where the back parking lot of the Henderson Judicial Center is now, across the street from HPD’s main offices on Water Street.
He was watching national news with some other detectives when he saw the first plane hit and thought it was a horrible accident. When the second plane hit, everybody knew “this is not just an accident.”
The rest of the day was strange for Nevels. He said detective work paused that day. He didn’t remember much happening that day in Henderson regarding everyday police work.
“Pretty much police work came to a standstill that day,” Nevels said.
Nevels also said it was his son’s fifth birthday, and the party they’d planned was cancelled.
“That’s one of the weirdest feelings and moods I’ve ever seen,” he said. “It was such a weird feeling that day.”
Special directives came to guard the Fourth Street railroad bridge and the oil tanks on the Ohio River in the north part of town near Sunset Lane, he said.
That added to a feeling of wondering what could come next, said Nevels who was the sergeant of investigations at the time.
“Nobody really knew if this was going to keep getting worse,” he said.
Heather Crooks
Heather Crooks was in the Air Force stationed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. A 2nd lieutenant at the time, Crooks was a development engineer. She remembers being at her computer doing research for composite patches which were to be used as in field repair when an aircraft took on damage.
Crooks was in an office with one other researcher, and they noticed the computers were getting sluggish. Crooks remembers one image and a headline that got stuck as it was trying to upload—one of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center.
“I can still see it in my head,” she said.
Quickly, she was up standing on her desk and the colleague in the room was standing on her desk so they could talk without the cubicle walls being in the way. Soon, they moved down to the building’s cafeteria where there were many televisions and many others had gathered. And like everyone else in America, she said they were trying to figure out what was happening.
Later that day, all military personnel performed sweeps of the base, and it was put on lockdown.
“Life on base changed drastically after that,” she said.
All military personnel had to start pulling time assisting military police to check identification for people wanting to get on base—a change from the past when those MPs waved in those who had the proper sticker on their cars.
Dayton is a military town, and Crooks said the community came together, much like the rest of America. It was much the same on base, where people bonded and were more supportive.
“It brought everybody together and made us stronger,” Crooks said.
Lori Maltby
For many people, hearing the first inkling of the events of 9/11 was so shocking and unbelievable that they thought it was a bad joke.
That was the case for Lorie Maltby, a long-time history professor at Henderson Community College and now retired.
She was headed to an early morning class when a jokester colleague told her an airplane had flown into the World Trade Center.
She didn’t believe it was true.
But after her class was over, she learned that it very much was.
The advice to the educators was that they continue with whatever was planned for their class sessions that day.
“I remember going to (the next) class and everyone had questions,” she recalls. “The whole event was so surreal.”
She remembers that as the day unfolded students showed up at her office in tears, wondering what was going to happen to our country.
“I felt a responsibility to be calm,” she said, remembering that she counseled her students not to leap to conclusions. “I said ‘Let’s wait. Let’s find out what happened before we react.’”
The rest of that week was a blur, and on the weekend, she attended a conference for history educators in Danville.
Hearing the keynote speaker that day, she was struck by the magnitude of the event and “got choked up.”
“It was one of those generational events,” she said.
Brad Duncan-Green
Brad Duncan-Green works in collections at the Henderson County Public Library. In 2001, he was an intern in the University of Kentucky’s sports information office.
That morning, he remembered someone coming into the office and talking about the incident. Soon employees gathered in the rooms of the full-time people at the office because they had televisions.
“Basically work stopped,” he said. “Nobody knew what was going on.”
He remembers being gathered in an office watching when the second plane hit, and then the reports of the third plane crashing into the Pentagon and the fourth plane crashing into a field in Pennsylvania. Throughout all of it—and the employees watching the news all day—he remembers the speculation in the reports being aired. The reporters and on-air commentators were trying to work through the rumors they were hearing about the incidents, he said.
Duncan-Green said later there was some talk about canceling some UK sporting events, but “I don’t think they did.”
He also said that traveling with those teams got more difficult with new restrictions and regulations in place.
Donna Stinnett (Personal memory)
It was just an ordinary Tuesday morning, and I was getting ready to go to work on the mid-day shift at The Gleaner.
Our daily routine was to caffeine up and check some news sources to prepare for the work day.
Shortly before 9 a.m., Katie Couric and the “Today” crew interrupted their morning show with breaking news from lower Manhattan: An airliner had struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
Before I could get out the door, another jetliner struck the South Tower. All thoughts of an accident evaporated. Clearly, something was very wrong.
At The Gleaner office, Editor Ron Jenkins and Chief Photographer Mike Lawrence were already there, calling in newsroom personnel to prepare for an atypical reporting day.
The TV sets were on in the newsroom, and I started “working” the Associated Press news wire, organizing content for the news desk to consider when they came in to put together the Wednesday Gleaner.
The AP historically used the labels “Urgent,” “Bulletin” and “Flash” to rank its breaking news stories in increasing levels of importance.
Ron was looking over my shoulder at what was being reported on the computer screen when we saw a first — and only — in my 40-year career.
At 9:37 a.m., less than an hour after the first North Tower strike, the AP announced with the rare “Flash” designation that another American Airlines jetliner had crashed into the Pentagon.
We looked at each other and pretty much said simultaneously: “We are under attack.”
Mike called our attention to the TV set, noting that one of the towers seemed to be teetering.
Within a half-hour, both towers collapsed into a pile of twisted rubble.
***
For weeks after Sept. 11, we worked on putting together a trip to New York City.
We didn’t want to be lookie loos. But their mayor said it would be a good way to show support for The Big Apple and its people.
So, in July 2002, we went for a long weekend.
We visited lower Manhattan. The rubble was still smoldering. A piece of structural steel pulled from the wreckage resembled a cross. Candles were burning at a neighborhood fire station. Children’s artwork lined the wrought iron fence of a downtown church.
The next day, we were on a double-decker sightseeing bus headed downtown when we met the first firetruck. Then another. And another. All were ladder trucks or marked as a high angle unit.
Our hearts sank when turned toward the direction the trucks were headed and saw smoke. Much, much smoke.
Just then, all the streetlights stopped working where we were. People starting gathering on the sidewalks.
The four of us decided that we needed to get off the bus and be on foot. Just in case.
We got off in Greenwich Village.
Along about that time, a group of fighter jets flew over us raising the hair on the back of our necks and our level of concern.
Because of the power outage, no televisions or radios were working so we were in a news desert. And this was before mobile phones were widely in use.
So, Chuck Stinnett did the only thing he knew to do.
He found a landline phone and called The Gleaner office in Henderson.
On a Saturday afternoon, Editor Ron Jenkins answered the phone.
After a few minutes of poking around on the newswire, Ron was able to report that there was a major fire at Con Edison Electric Utility in Midtown Manhattan. No terrorism suspected.
Later we would learn that the fighter jets were for a Yankees/Red Sox game in Queens.
Whew.
That afternoon less than a year after 9/11 you could feel the tension that still had a grip on one of the greatest cities on earth.
And we were right there with them.
Compiled by Donna B. Stinnett, Chuck Stinnett and Vince Tweddell.
