Day of Trial and Grief
It was a typical day for thirty-eight-year-old Brian Sweeney, a defense contractor who had made the long flight from Boston to Los Angeles countless times. Luggage in hand, he left his home early on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. He boarded United Airlines Flight 175 at the airport, which departed at 8:14 a.m.
Thirty-three minutes into the flight, California was no longer the destination. Hijackers took control of the plane, which made a sudden turn. Instead of Los Angeles, the plane headed toward New York City.
Reality sank in. Sweeney grabbed a seat-back phone and dialed his wife’s number, a local Boston teacher, and left a voicemail. “Jules, this is Brian,” he began. “Listen, I’m on an airplane that’s been hijacked. If things don’t go well, and it’s not looking good, I just want you to know that I absolutely love you.” The voicemail concluded: “I hope I call you.”
At 9:03 a.m., Flight 175 flew into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, killing everyone onboard.
Seventeen minutes earlier, American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower, between floors 93 and 99. Trapped on the 101st floor, a thirty-one-year-old international trade consultant, Melissa Harrington-Hughes, called her husband. “Sean, it’s me,” she said. “I love you and I’m stuck in this building in New York. There’s a lot of smoke and I just wanted to let you know that I love you always.” The North Tower collapsed a little over one hour later.
Bill Spade, a local firefighter, grabbed two flashlights and a rope and ran toward the towers. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” he recalled. “Bodies were dropping right in front of us.” Spade saw “a man and woman jumping, hugging each other.” They died on impact, “their arms around each other as they landed.”
Thick clouds of smoke and dust scattered after the towers collapsed. “The smoke and scale of the devastation were overwhelming,” David Battat, a volunteer firefighter, recalled. “Firetrucks, police cars, and ambulances were flattened. Smoke from the fires made it hard to breathe.” Hundreds of first responders would later die from illnesses contracted following their service in the rubble and ashes of the World Trade Center. “About 200 firefighters were unaccounted for when the day ended,” The New York Times reported the next day, confirming also that 266 had perished on the planes.
A third plane, American Airlines Flight 77, had hit the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m., and a fourth plane, intended by the hijackers to hit the White House or the Capitol Building, crashed instead into a field in Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania, after passengers revolted and attempted to regain control of the plane.
“Mere words were inadequate vessels to contain the sense of shock and horror that people felt,” R. W. Apple, Jr. wrote in the Wednesday, September 12 edition of the Times, whose front page bore the headline, “U.S. ATTACKED.” It was all too reminiscent of December 7, 1941, the “day of infamy,” when Imperial Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Unlike then, however, the enemy (Al-Qaeda) did not and would not reveal itself. Like ABC reporter N.J. Burkett, many thought it was “the opening salvo” of a coordinated assault with no warning or end.
The smoke continued to suffocate, the fires still smoldered, and bodies continued to be located and counted as President George W. Bush, seated at the Resolute desk in the Oval Office, took a deep breath and addressed the nation at 8:30 p.m., hours after he had been told, in a whispering voice, “America is under attack.”
“Today our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack,” the president began. “Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror.” Bush added, with patriotic verve, “Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.”
The president quoted Psalm 23: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me.”
Standing before a joint session of Congress on September 20, Bush held up the badge of police officer George Howard, who perished in the flames of the twin towers trying to save others. “This is my reminder of lives that ended, and a task that does not end,” Bush said, choking up. “Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war,” the president added, “and we know that God is not neutral between them.”
Some remember only the planes, others the terrorists or the geopolitical aftermath. But some, like David Battat, remember the American spirit, animating countless nameless individuals. He worked in the rubble with “tourists who rolled up their sleeves” and firefighters who knew the air they breathed would shorten their lives. “That’s the memory I keep in the forefront,” Battat recalled. “Thousands of strangers trying to help others.”
“We saw that Americans were vulnerable, but not fragile—that they possess a core of strength that survives the worst that life can bring,” Bush said at the Flight 93 Memorial on September 11, 2021. “We learned that bravery is more common than we imagined, emerging with sudden splendor in the face of death. We vividly felt how every hour with our loved ones was a temporary and holy gift. And we found that even the longest days end.”
“On America’s day of trial and grief, I saw millions of people instinctively grab for a neighbor’s hand and rally to the cause of one another. That is the America I know.”
The lost loved ones, the nameless volunteers, the selfless rescuers, the heroism of the Flight 93 passengers, those who embraced strangers, and the service of those who took the fight to evil itself—now, as ever, we must never forget.