Firefighters, police and first responders across Greater Lafayette joined mayors and an early morning crowd at the Tippecanoe County Fairgrounds Coliseum Friday to honor those who lost their lives in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, ringing a fire bell 15 times at 8:46 a.m., the moment terrorists sent the first hijacked airliner into a World Trade Center tower in New York City.
Tucked into speeches about the memories of where people were when they got the news that day; tributes to firefighters and police who were among nearly 3,000 killed in New York City, the Pentagon and at a plane crash site in western Pennsylvania; and vows to never forget, Lafayette Jefferson High School’s Varsity Singers performed and first responders and others placed flowers on a portion of a girder recovered from the World Trade Center site.
Kurt Sinks, a training specialist with Lafayette Police Department, told about going to New York City the day after the attacks to help with rescue and recovery, “because like millions of other Americans, I needed to do something.”
“It remains one of the greatest honors of my life,” Sinks told the crowd, speaking against a backdrop of a U.S. flag hoisted between the ladders of two aerial fire trucks.
“I’ll always remember being handed a hardhat and a shovel,” Sinks said. “I remember the twisted steel, the smoke, the fires and the smells. More than anything, I remember the silence.”
Sinks described how crews would put down their shovels and buckets when a whistle blew, everyone silent while listening for anyone still under the debris.
“Unfortunately, those calls for help never arrived,” Sinks said. “Twenty-five years later, we remember those who gave their lives in the service of others. … They didn’t know that morning what would be asked of them, and none of us know what will be asked of us later today, but when the moment arrives, we will honor the legacy of those who came before us. We will go toward the danger. We will do the work. And we will take care of one another. That is how we honor them, and that is how we never forget.”
A full version of Friday’s ceremony is available here, via the West Lafayette Fire Department’s Facebook page.
Other 9/11 reads …
Worth rereading is the 9/11 story of 1995 Purdue grad Heather Penney, a fighter pilot stationed at Andrews Air Force Base that morning in 2001. She wound up scrambling as one of two F-16 pilots – along with Marc Sasseville – in search of the hijacked plane that wound up crashing near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Purdue had an account in 2021, on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, of Penney’s story including this passage: “With no time available to arm their F-16s after learning the nation was under attack, the pilots took off from Andrews Air Force Base, fully expecting not to return. If they successfully located the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 — a flight from Newark to San Francisco that had veered back toward Washington, D.C. — they would crash their fighter jets into the rogue Boeing 757-222. Sasseville would ram the cockpit and Penney the tail, preventing the plane from reaching its intended target, reportedly either the White House or U.S. Capitol. ‘When Sass and I took off, we believed that if we were successful that this was a one-way mission, that this was a suicide mission,’ Penney says.” Read the full account here: “Fighter pilot was prepared to sacrifice her life on 9/11.”
It took more than four hours to read the names of those who lost their lives in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, while cellist Yo-Yo Ma and other musicians performed in the background. This video is via Fox 5 in New York:
Purdue ROTC members moved their annual 9/11 Memorial Steps of Sacrifice indoors Friday, using the stairs in Mackey Arena from Ross-Ade Stadium. There, ROTC members climbed the equivalent of the number of stairs to the top of the 110-story World Trade Center in 1 hour and 42 minutes – the time between the impact of the first plane and when the second tower collapsed in 2001.
Mirror Indy reporter Sophie Young had a Q&A with Cathy Weimer, an Indianapolis resident who was among the passengers on a London-to-Indianapolis flight diverted to Newfoundland, Canada, when U.S. airspace shut down on Sept. 11, 2001. The experience of the emergency landing in Gander, Newfoundland, and an extended stay in a nearby town of Gambo as travel came to an immediate stop became the source material for the Broadway show, “Come From Away.” Here’s the story in Mirror Indy: “Five days in Gambo: A Hoosier’s journal takes us inside 9/11 history.” A similar story came two years ago, as Purdue Convocations prepared for a touring production of “Come From Away” at Elliott Hall of Music, based on a firsthand view from Lafayette resident Judi Hawkins, who also was among the 6,700 passengers from dozens of flights who were taken in by Canadian hosts in Gander and in makeshift shelters in schools, community centers and homes in nearby towns in Newfoundland: “A Lafayette story from Broadway’s ‘Come From Away.’”
I’ve read and re-read this story in Esquire, about photographs of a man falling from the World Trade Centers after airliners hit and before they collapsed, on or around Sept. 11 in the years since it was published in 2021. Horrifying, and in context: “At fifteen seconds after 9:41 a.m., on September 11, 2001, a photographer named Richard Drew took a picture of a man falling through the sky — falling through time as well as through space. The picture went all around the world, and then disappeared, as if we willed it away. One of the most famous photographs in human history became an unmarked grave, and the man buried inside its frame — the Falling Man — became the Unknown Soldier in a war whose end we have not yet seen. Richard Drew’s photograph is all we know of him, and yet all we know of him becomes a measure of what we know of ourselves.” I’m reading it again today: “The Falling Man: An unforgettable story.”
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Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.
"Come From Away" is another reminder of how lucky we are to have Canada as our neighbour.
It is hard to believe it has been 25 years.
I was working at Warren Paper at the time. I remember my wife calling to tell me there had been a plane crash in NYC, and then a second plane hit. We found a TV in our conference room. It was on a cart, like the ones we had in school. We turned on the coverage. The conference room looked out over South and Earl Streets.
I remember the gas station on the opposite corner getting progressively busier during the day with cars lining up for gas. I even remember the price going up.
The internet was pretty new and I remember refreshing the NYTimes website and it literally not loading, I suppose from so many others trying to access it and maybe lines being down in NYC.
We had four or five employees in NYC that day on business. No one knew where they were. There were no cell phones. As I recall, one of them had rented a car to visit a client in the suburbs, while the others were in the city for meetings. At some point, they realized they needed to find a way out of Manhattan and meet up with the coworker who had the car. They walked across the bridge the next day, I think. They somehow managed to find each other. They ended up driving all the way back to Lafayette.
Another thing I remember is the next few days, not seeing or hearing any airplanes in the sky. No contrails. That was such an unusual thing to notice, but I remember it clearly.
We did our best during those days to shield our young kids from the TV coverage, while stealing every chance we could to watch it ourselves.
Such a surreal time. It still feels strange to realize it was 25 years ago.