20 Stories Of Valor And Perseverance On 20th Anniversary Of 9/11

ACROSS AMERICA — Saturday marks the 20th time Americans have come together to reflect on the enormity of 9/11.

Anyone old enough on that day to know what was going on remembers the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. What they remember in many cases isn’t as important as what they’ve done with it.

Below are 20 stories of valor, perseverance and hope on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, told by Patch editors across our hyperlocal news network of more than 1,000 sites.

‘Oh, No.’

The pain still feels fresh for Michael Burns of Eastport, a hamlet of about 1,900 people on Long Island. He watched the 9/11 news coverage with the false confidence that his father, one of the Fire Department of New York’s highest-ranking officers, was safely away from the inferno and crumbling debris of the World Trade Center.

His dad — Assistant Fire Chief and Citywide Commander Donald J. Burns — didn’t answer his phone because he was in a meeting talking about his retirement from the FDNY after 39 years, his son told himself. Even when he didn’t answer his phone hours later, his family had an explanation. He never picked up the phone while fighting fires.

Eventually, though, Burns and his family couldn’t escape the truth. The soon-to-retire FDNY officer was doing his job. Then the first tower collapsed. Concern turned to fear.

“All of a sudden, you thought, ‘Oh, no,’ " Burns told Patch. "Now you know hundreds of people died. I knew my father was there, and possibly my brother, too.”

In the 20 years since Sept. 11, 2001, the phrase “my father died on 9/11” still cuts deep.

“I don’t bring it up very much,” Burns said. “It still hurts.”

Reporting by Lisa Finn

» Read the full story on Center Moriches-Eastport, New York, Patch

‘Daddy’s Missing’

Sean Jordan never met his father. He was born 15 days after his dad, a firefighter for the Fire Department of New York, died trying to save others.

Andrew Jordan Sr. wasn’t supposed to work that day, but he was banking hours so he could spend time when the new baby came. When he didn’t come home the first night Lisa Jordan didn’t worry too much about her husband, who worked out of a firehouse in Brooklyn. She figured he’d just stay with her mother, in Queens. There was, in her mind, no conceivable reason he would be in Manhattan.

When her phone rang just after midnight on Sept. 12, she felt relief.

“I thought it was him calling, and I said, ‘Oh, thank God,’ and I got up to answer it,” Jordan said. “They told me that they wanted me to know that my husband was missing. I said, ‘What do you mean?’ I couldn’t understand it.”

The next morning, she broke the news to her kids with all the optimism she could muster. “I told them, 'Daddy's missing, but he's OK. Get your backpacks.' "

She was already scheduled to give birth to Sean on Sept. 21. Holding out hope her husband was still alive, she bought some time with her doctor and scheduled her C-section for Sept. 26.

When that date arrived, she leveled with her kids: "I told them, 'Daddy's probably not going to come back.’ "

Reporting by Lisa Finn

» Read the full story on Westhampton-Hampton Bays, New York, Patch

‘Like You Walked Into Hell’

Steve Griffin, a police officer for the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., has investigated dozens of crime scenes that would wilt others. So, as he always does, he steeled himself against the scene he would find after a plane controlled by suicide bombers slammed into the Pentagon.

“It was like you walked into hell,” said Griffin, now a 35-year veteran of the Metropolitan Police Department. “Everywhere was black. I mean, I've seen a lot of arson scenes and death scenes. Nothing like this.”

What broke him was a pair of shoes belonging to a female naval officer, her handbag, her hat and her ID, “all stacked together.”

“I looked at it and just started crying,” he said. Yet he continued the somber work to be done.

As Griffin looks back 20 years, it’s clear to him that supporting each other is how America got through it all.

“When people are in need, drop what you're doing and go help,” he said. “That's the thing. That's what I saw that day.”

Reporting by Liam Griffin

» Read the full story on Arlington, Virginia, Patch

‘Let’s Roll’

Todd M. Beamer was aboard United Airlines Flight 93 and helped lead the charge of passengers and crew to regain control of the plane after it was hijacked by four al-Qaida terrorists.

They were unsuccessful — the plane crashed into a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania — but his and other passengers’ efforts that day can rightly be called heroic. Because of their actions, Flight 93 missed the hijackers’ intended target: the U.S. Capitol.

The Wheaton, Illinois, man’s final words — “Are you ready? OK. Let’s roll,” overheard by a dispatcher at a call center in nearby Oakbrook, Illinois — became an anthem to American resilience.

And Lisa Brosious Beamer, who at 32 never imagined picking out her husband’s headstone, forged a close friendship with Lisa Jefferson, the dispatcher who heard the final words Brosious Beamer’s husband ever spoke.

They’re engraved on a bas-relief at Wheaton College, his alma mater, that shows him walking into the distance, holding the hands of his two sons.

“Let’s roll,” is engraved beneath it.

Reporting by Eileen O'Gorman

» Read the full story on Wheaton, Illinois, Patch

Patching Broken Hearts

Susan Wolman of New Rochelle, New York, was a new quilter on Sept. 11, 2001. She knew she wanted to help the families of the survivors of the terror attacks, and though her hands were not yet experienced in the art, she liked the metaphor of stitching back together the broken hearts of 9/11.

She and her quilting friends got together, stitching together the blocks of fabric that arrived from around the world in response to their call for help, and then presenting them to New Rochelle families who lost loved ones.

Wolman worried the gesture was a shallow response to an unfathomable tragedy. It seemed to have helped, according to what those who received quilts told her and the other women. But she always wondered if she was doing the project purely for her own satisfaction, or if the quilts did give comfort.

Years after 9/11, she and her husband were in Quebec City, Canada, when a woman asked Wolman to take her and her fiance’s photo. When she learned the woman was from New Rochelle, something clicked. Had she received a 9/11 quilt?

Yes, said the woman, whose husband died in the attacks.

"Until I saw the woman in Canada, the change in me, because of the quilting project, was minimal. I'd handed the quilts to them, and I was happy to be a part of it — but it wasn't until I saw her again that I really felt the depth of the connection,” she said.

Reporting by Lisa Finn

» Read the full story on Pelham, New York, Patch

People Behind ‘Boatlift’

It took 10 days to evacuate 338,000 soldiers from Dunkirk during World War II. On Sept. 11, 2001, more than 500,000 people were evacuated from Manhattan in a matter of hours.

Michael Banahan helped rescue them. Working for the now-defunct harbor unit of the New York City Department of Corrections, he was patrolling the waters around the Rikers Island prison when the U.S. Coast Guard put out a call for ships in the area.

His boat made 40 or 50 trips between lower Manhattan and Jersey City that day, ferrying people off the island to safety. He figures he rescued about 1,000 people. The effort was featured in a short documentary, “Boatlift,” narrated by Tom Hanks.

The unit disbanded a year later. But Banahan wants people to know about the evacuation, what he and his colleagues did, and what he would do again.

"I don't consider myself a hero," he said. "I consider myself someone who helps heroes."

Reporting by Alex Costello

» Read the full story on Long Beach, New York, Patch

A New Sept. 11 Tradition

Every Sept. 11 for many years, Laurie Tietjen made the trip to Lower Manhattan to attend 9/11 memorial services. Her brother was among 37 Port Authority police officers who died trying to save people from the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

About six years ago, Tietjen said, it just got too sad to keep going to Ground Zero.

“That's not how my brother would have liked to be remembered or have the day remembered, really sad like that," said Tietjen, now 49, who established a new Sept. 11 tradition: She made and ordered a whole bunch of food and sandwiches and showed up at random firehouses in New York City.

Reporting by Carly Baldwin

» Read the full story on Middletown, New Jersey, Patch

Fighting The Hate

Saima Bhutta sat there, staring at the TV with her baby in her lap, as two airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center. The terror attacks would change her life, setting her off on a course of activism that touched the lives of many throughout South Jersey and helped her find her calling in life.

Her instinct to have her children close was strong, so she fetched them from their school. “The next few hours were hell,” she said, “because I was not sure what was going to happen to me and what was going to happen to the world.”

Her crystal ball of fear wasn’t that far off. The next two decades saw a war in Afghanistan that would last as long, anti-Muslim hate and violence, covert surveillance of Muslim organizations and students on college campuses.

"Many Muslims had never faced racism before, and they had no idea what was going on," Bhutta said. "It didn't hit home for them."

When it did, their first instinct was to withdraw from the rest of the community, Bhutta said. She saw a better way.

She founded the Pakistan American Society of South Jersey with Zia Rehman, Aqil Khan and Habib Qurashi, with the goal of building bridges and promoting diversity, as well as understanding of Pakistani culture through social activities in communities throughout South Jersey.

Reporting by Anthony Bellano

» Read the full story on Moorestown, New Jersey, Patch

‘Become A Better Person’

One thing Kandace Sparks will never forget about 9/11 is how so many people responded with the best versions of themselves.

Sparks was one of the heroes of the day and is credited with saving dozens of lives. A former flight attendant, she was working for the Oppenheimer Fund, which had an office several levels above the 30th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

“Everyone out now!” she shouted after feeling the floor beneath her shake after a deafening explosion. No one yet knew American Airlines Flight 11 had been hijacked and flown into the North Tower.

“Keep moving, keep moving, don’t stop,” she said, shepherding an entire floor of her colleagues to safety before United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower.

Sparks now lives in West Orange, New Jersey, with her husband and two children.

“I have tried each day since to always remember to become a better person,” she said.

Reporting by Eric Kiefer

» Read the full story on West Orange, New Jersey, Patch

‘Living Deliberately’

Kara Murphy has spent the last 20 years “living deliberately.” She considers herself lucky to have walked out of the World Trade Center physically unscathed — but said she's carried scars from the experience for two decades.

To heal, she threw herself into volunteer work and ultimately established her own nonprofit group, Welcome Home Jersey City, which helps resettle refugees and asylum seekers.

“I felt like I had to pay back my good luck, I had to be able to earn my right to get a second chance," Murphy said, "I empathize with the refugees we work with because we both have these battle scars that you can't see.

"My body can, like, conjure up those memories, and it's like I'm right back there.”

She’s found helping people settle in a new country to be a therapeutic way through the pain.

Reporting by Samantha Mercado

» Read the full story on Jersey City, New Jersey, Patch

‘It Woke Something Up’

Kindness was the way through the trauma for Megan McDowell, too.

She was living in Colorado on Sept. 11, 2001, when she learned her brother-in-law, Basking Ridge, New Jersey, resident John Farrell, died in the South Tower.

She returned home to comfort her sister and the couple’s four children, staying in Basking Ridge for six weeks. What she saw still amazes her — neighbors dropping off enough food for the family to eat three nights a week for a year. Others tried to keep the children’s lives as normal as possible, driving them to sports practice and helping out in other small ways.

“In the same wave of suffering … comes a wave of kindness that really sustained the people I loved for weeks and months and years during the worst time of our lives,” said McDowell.

"I would say it woke something up in me that helped me make that connection,” said McDowell, the founder of Heartworks, a local grassroots movement of women committed to replicating and sustaining the palpable kindness witnessed after 9/11.

“We can't stop bad things in our life from happening,” McDowell said, “but when they do happen, we can focus on the attention, love, and helping."

Reporting by Alexis Tarrazi

» Read the full story on Basking Ridge, New Jersey, Patch

Responding To First Responders’ Needs

Michael O'Connell had barely been a member of the Fire Department of New York for four months when the planes flew into the World Trade Center. Just 25, O'Connell started his career of service as a New York City police officer in 1998, but firefighting was his dream job.

He hadn’t officially been sworn in on Sept. 11. Still, he drove to his firehouse in Queens, then to Shea Stadium, which had been turned into a staging area for first responders.

For weeks, he was part of the search and rescue effort and, eventually, the recovery effort at Ground Zero.

“When you went down there, you joined the bucket brigade,” he said. “You’re on top of a pile hoping you don’t fall through a void, but you have to dig deep enough to find people.”

The work he did during the weeks following 9/11 took away his good health. In 2007, he was diagnosed with sarcoidosis, an autoimmune disease. He got it under control, but the first time he responded to a fire, he inhaled too much smoke and realized he could no longer do the job.

He is still fighting, now for better benefits for first responders who sacrificed their health during one of the greatest tests of America’s mettle. His voice was instrumental in the passage of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010, and its extension to 2090.

Reporting by Alex Costello

» Read the full story on East Meadow, New York, Patch

Love Grows In This Garden

As it has on past anniversaries of the terror attacks, the community garden at an Inwood, New York, park will be filled with people who knew, loved or admired Bruce Reynolds, an officer for the Port Authority Police Department who rushed into the flames of the twin towers.

His spirit will be there, too. Reynolds’ friend Adrian Benepe, the president of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, is certain of that. He and Reynolds were park rangers together in the 1980s, and christening the community garden in his friend’s honor was a fitting tribute, Benepe said.

“He really understood nature and had a love and acknowledgment of nature more than most city kids,” Benepe said. “That led to his career at the Parks Department, and then his love of people led to the Port Authority officer job, and then, of course, he died saving people.”

To understand his dedication, you have to go back to 1965, when Reynolds’ family moved to Inwood from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Reporting by Gus Saltonstall

» Read the full story on Washington Heights-Inwood, New York, Patch

‘No Memories To Replace’ Fallen Brothers

It isn’t as if Dawn Haskell-Carbone is ever going to forget her brothers, Fire Department of New York firefighters Timothy (Timmy) and Thomas (Tommy) Haskell, who died at Ground Zero.

Every anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks hits Haskell-Carbone differently. But 20 years? This one’s tough.

“I never want it to be this far away because that just takes me so much further from the memories that I have of them,” she told Patch. “It's not like I'll ever forget the memories that I have of them, but you have no other memories to replace it.”

Family members went from firehouse to firehouse to find the brothers.

"I don't think any fireman thought, 'Let me stay home, watch this TV and see what happens'," Haskell-Carbone said. "Their mission was to find Tommy and Timmy, or whatever they could, as they were looking."

Reporting by Jerry Barmash

» Read the full story on Wantagh-Seaford, New York, Patch

A Historic Reading Lesson

Sept. 11, 2001, was a big day at Stevenson Tose-Rigell’s Sarasota, elementary school. President George W. Bush would be visiting the 10-year-old fifth-grader’s school to honor his mother, Principal Gwendolyn Tose-Rigell, for turning the school around academically.

He didn’t know that visit would become part of history. Bush was reading to a second-grade class from the book “The Pet Goat” when Andrew Card, the president's chief of staff, told him of the situation unfolding in New York City, thought to be a tragic accident before the terror attack was confirmed.

Bush addressed the nation for the first time from the elementary school. As he spoke to Americans, Tose-Rigell’s class stood behind him. The moment is intertwined with his mother’s legacy of unity, one that he wants to ensure is enduring.

“Her headstone says '9/11 Principal.' That sets her apart from everything else," he said. "I'm proud of her. She definitely was a remarkable person and I wish she was still here. Her history is solidified, and her legacy is solidified, and I want more people to know about her."

Reporting by Tiffany Razzano

» Read the full story on Sarasota, Florida, Patch

‘I Remember Our Mom Not Being Home’

Everyone who died in the 9/11 terror attacks was someone’s child, someone’s mother or father, someone’s brother or sister or someone’s husband or wife.

Alison Wieman was only 8 and her brother, Chris, was 12 when they and their younger sister, Mary Julia, lost their mom, Mary, an insurance marketing executive who worked on one of the top floors of the South Tower.

“I remember getting off the bus stop and our mom not being home,” Alison told Patch, the memory understandably unleashing a flood of tears.

Chris had more time to fret. He first heard about the attacks during the eighth period at school but didn’t believe it until later, when an official announcement came over the loudspeaker.

“From there you start to panic, hope that she made it out,” Chris told Patch. “And that my mom was OK.”

For the siblings, the 20th anniversary of 9/11 isn’t any different than the 19th or the 18th or any anniversary proceeding it. They try not to dwell on it, but to embody the characteristics of their mother.

Reporting by Jerry Barmash

» Read the full story on Rockville Centre, New York, Patch

‘Never Forget’

Geoffrey E. Guja, a lieutenant with the Fire Department of New York, was on desk duty because of a shoulder injury on 9/11. When he and others in the office saw the first plane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center, they tried to rush to Ground Zero.

They were told to stay put. Guja and a handful of others didn’t listen. They were close to Ground Zero when the second plane hit the South Tower.

Guja rushed in, thinking that’s when he could be of the most help.

“He went in and did a few rounds up and down the stairs,” Guja’s niece, Erica Guja, 29, told Patch. “And that’s the last contact we have — of someone having seen him.”

Guja’s “bright light” continues to shine in his hometown of North Fork, New York. This year, a community yard sale to raise money for a woman battling cancer is named in his honor.

Erica Guja said her father, the fallen firefighter’s twin, is “very moved and touched that the community has clearly not forgotten 9/11.”

“That's what we hope,” she said, “that people never forget.”

Reporting by Lisa Finn

» Read the full story on North Fork, New York, Patch

Teach Those Who Never Knew

Ellie Alloway wasn’t born yet when 9/11 changed the world, but the 16-year-old Girl Scout and high school senior has spent the past year interviewing a dozen North Fork, New York, residents about their experiences.

More than a dozen first-person interviews are part of a documentary, “Ripples: 9/11 Reflections from North Fork, NY,” which she hopes will inform generations to come. The film is the centerpiece of her Girl Scouts USA Gold Award project, the highest national award available to Girl Scouts. Ellie, a Girl Scout from Troop 94 in Southold, New York, has been a Scout since kindergarten.

Reporting by Lisa Finn

» Read the full story on North Fork, New York, Patch

A Persistent Kindness

David Russell III, a lieutenant with the Fire Department of New York, had the day off and planned to spend Sept. 11, 2001, renovating their Westchester County home.

Nothing worked out as he planned.

“The world as we knew it was over,” said Russell, who commandeered a New York City bus and rushed toward what he described as "a volcano at the end of Manhattan."

When he got to Ground Zero, there wasn’t anyone left to save.

"It was just like, every time you turned a corner it got worse," Russell said. "Whole companies were missing. This continued on for days."

But there was something else, a persistent kindness through the days and weeks and months he worked at Ground Zero.

"Some days it's like 20 years, some days it's like 40 years and some days it's like a week ago," said Russell, now 63.

Reporting by Anna Bybee-Schier

» Read the full story on Fairfield, Connecticut, Patch

Walk A Mile In A Vet’s Boots

Greg Washington was a freshman at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, on the day America was attacked. He went to war because of it, fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. He saw other soldiers die in battle and at their own hands after they came home with the emotional baggage of PTSD.

On Saturday, the 20th anniversary of the day his and other Americans’ world changed, Washington will be back in West Point, having taken the final steps in an 1,800-mile walk to wake people up to the alarming suicide rate among veterans with PTSD. An average of 17 kill themselves every day, according to Veterans Administration statistics.

Washington has walked through a dozen states. He looks at it as “bridge-building.”

“Everywhere I walk, I ask people to accept my challenge,” Washington told Patch. “Think of that one battle buddy who you haven't spoken to in a while, and give them a call.”

Reporting by Tim Moran

» Read the full story on Across America Patch

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