The Days Forward

West Point Class of 1969

Suzanne Rice

9-11 from the Hudson Valley – 2001

by Bob Jannarone

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

     We lived in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York in 2001.  We had retired over a year before from our jobs at West Point and were looking forward to our first Elderhostel* program in about two weeks, in Philadelphia; and a tour of a riverboat that was to dock at West Point, thinking we might want to go on it sometime.

     Linda and I were having a leisurely breakfast, listening to a local radio station that had trivia questions for which I won a prize almost every month, when the phone rang.  It was our daughter Barbie, calling from the Rochester, New York area.  She told us that one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City had been hit by a plane.  So, we went to the den and turned on the TV.  Soon we saw that the second tower had been hit.  

     We knew that we were watching history in the making.  Soon I had several thoughts.  The first was that I had been there many times, taking the train from Salisbury Mills/Cornwall and then the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) train from Hoboken, New Jersey into the city one Friday every month and getting off at the World Trade Center stop.  From there, I went to 26 Broadway (the Federal Building) to my post as an Individual Mobilization Augmentee as an Army Reservist for the New York District, Army Corps of Engineers.  Later, I didn’t have to walk as far, as I was assigned to the North Atlantic Division Headquarters, just across the street north of the World Trade Center.  Sometimes I ate lunch in the Customs House cafeteria at 1 World Trade Center.

     My boss (another Army Reservist) at Division Headquarters had been scheduled to have his monthly duty there in 1993 when a bomb had been set off in the parking lot underneath the World Trade Center.  He had his plans changed the day before that.  He usually parked his car there, so he avoided that disaster.  I wondered if there had been some damage to the Post Office building where Division was housed at this time.  There was, it turned out.  Division moved to Fort Hamilton not long after that.

     My next thought was for my brother, Jack, a United Air Lines pilot.  I called many times, sometimes not getting through, sometimes with no answer.  It wasn’t until late the next day that he answered the phone by saying, “I’m home, I’m safe.” **

     My wife’s mother and her sister, who lived near us, had been visited by her cousin and his wife for the last several days.  We had the four over for dinner the night before.  The cousin was flying back to Atlanta that morning.  He saw that the first tower had been hit while on his way to Newark Airport.  When he found out that all flights were canceled, he had to rent a car and drive to Atlanta. 

     That night there was an impromptu gathering at St. Thomas Church.  It was packed just like Easter and Christmas.  Would that it always were so.  

     We knew that one of the Folk Group members worked at the World Trade Center.  On Sunday, we found out that he had car trouble on the 11th and didn’t go to work.  We also found out that a fireman who lived in Cornwall had died at one of the towers.  His funeral Mass was a St. Thomas, attended by at least a hundred firefighters in full regalia.  There is a memorial bench at the traffic circle in Cornwall, “Lest We Forget.”

     About ten days later, having had word from Eldershostel that the program would still take place, we took a train into New York.  When we got to the subway and Penn Station, we saw hundreds of missing persons signs plastered on every wall. 

Wall of Missing Persons in NY Subway

We also saw Army National Guardsmen with rifles and Amtrak Police everywhere.   

     We took the train to Wilmington, Delaware, then a rental car to Ocean City, Maryland, where we stayed with one of Linda’s friends from her youth.  In those two cities, everything seemed to be business as usual.  

     At the Elderhostel program in Philadelphia a few days later, very few people had canceled.  When we got back to New York City, we tried to enter the subway, but people were streaming up the stairs.  There had been yet another bomb scare, as apparently there had been every day for three weeks.  There had also been bomb threats daily at the Empire State Building. 

     Soon after we got home, we got a call from the riverboat cruise line.  The ship was not going to be allowed to dock at West Point but would instead dock at Bear Mountain.  We went, and were very impressed, and now have cruised with them several times.

Docked at Bear Mountain (circleline.com)

     Did we learn anything from September 11?  We have read several books by Jonathan Cahn, showing our relationship to ancient Israel, and how we, like they, have turned our back on God.  The events of September 11 are only a warning.  According to him, our leaders have only spoken of defiance.  But unless we repent and turn back to God, we will suffer the same fate.  

* Elderhostel was a low-cost educational program using college dorms for adults 55+.

** It turns out that Jack was on standby waiting to be called back to flying. As we know that call didn’t come for some days while aircraft was grounded around the country. Instead, Jack went up to the Air National Guard base at Stewart Field in Newburgh. It was a staging ground for emergency responders moving into the World Trade Center site. Jack asked what he could do to help; he was sent to the Mess Hall to peel apples for cobbler for lunch dessert and later worked in the serving line where he could talk to the first responders and even a Forest Service crew from Oregon there to help.

9-11 from Oklahoma – 2001

by Dave Himes

       On Sept. 11, 2001, my wife and I were visiting my mom in Lawton, OK on the occasion of her 80th birthday just two days before. My dad had passed away some years earlier. At the time I was a captain at Northwest Airlines, and we had flown into Oklahoma City a few days earlier “pass riding” on one of my company’s airplanes. Our plan was to reverse that process in a few days to return to our home in Florida. My wife turned on the TV that morning and informed me that an airplane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. The “little airplane, tall building, bad weather” scenario came to mind. It had happened very occasionally in the past… a tragedy for a few but little more. Soon video of the second impact showed up and it was obvious we were witnessing something entirely different. Then came the announcement that all civil air traffic was grounded indefinitely. We would not be flying an airliner back to Florida. I opined that we’d have to rent a car for that trip. At my wife’s insistence, I called out to the Lawton airport (about the only place you could rent a car there) and the only agency still with cars was Hertz. I planned to pick the car up the next day and hit the road. Once again, my wife was more in tune with the unfolding disaster than I and insisted that we pick up the car ASAP. We headed for the local airport in my mom’s car and got the last rental car in Lawton, OK just before it left for Dallas. Apparently, all the national rental car companies were ferrying everything they had in that part of the country

Rental Cars from Lawton to Dallas (best places)

to Dallas to deal with the thousands of stranded airline passengers at the two big airports there. The smaller markets were stripped bare. 

      We hit the road the next morning so I could be in place for my next airline trip. As we now know, there was no hurry on that score.

Planes grounded in Gander, Newfoundland, 9-11-01  (CNN)

When the airlines were finally allowed back in the air a couple of weeks later, I was assigned a trip out of Dulles airport (IAD) near Washington, DC. The government had allowed the airlines to position crews and airplanes the previous day. My crew and I stepped off the hotel van at the airport into a solid wall of people both inside the terminal building and out. We knew where the employee entrance through security was but getting there resembled football practice on a hot afternoon. I sure could have used my classmate Charlie Jarvis, an amazing Army running back, as a lead blocker. We finally got to our airplane and the next few days were repeats of that experience. Our military training gave us the confidence to keep the planes in the air even under these most unusual and difficult circumstances.  Getting back to normal airline flying was a long-term process with the eventual creation of the TSA in November 2001. My fellow airline pilots that were actually flying on Sept. 11 had a lot of interesting stories.   

9-11 Near Philadelphia – 2001

by Bernie Tatro

     I was at work as Director of Marketing for Jerome Medical in a New Jersey suburb of Philadelphia. Someone received a call about the first attack, and I brought up CNN on my PC to get details.  There was general shock among the employees. After the attacks on NYC, I thought this might be a first attack on major cities around the U.S. and suspected Philadelphia might be on the target list. I called my wife at home (fortunately about 20 miles from Philly, so probably not on any target list), and I suggested she fill available containers with water in case supplies were cut off. I was concerned that this might be the beginning of attacks on infrastructure, so water, power, etc., might be at risk.  In any case, “Plan for the worst; hope for the best.” I also asked her to stay in the house, but she said we needed food, and so went for groceries, which was her normal routine, anyway. 

Philadelphia Reacts to the Attacks

     As we now know, things got worse as the second tower was hit, both towers fell, the Pentagon was hit, and brave passengers fought the terrorists and sacrificed their lives bringing the plane down in Pennsylvania.  Everyone remained at work, but we were all depressed and distracted. Meanwhile, available ambulances from Philadelphia and elsewhere raced to New York to help. I lived about 5 miles from the office and had no difficulty getting home, or to work the rest of the week.  Fortunately, I had no need to go through Philadelphia; don’t know how it was there.  The only noteworthy thing about driving was courteous behavior.  Drivers waved to each other and readily yielded right-of-way.

     The following weekend, I attended a business meeting. Fortunately, it was within driving distance, so I was not affected by the grounding of commercial airplanes. When I returned home on Sunday, I found all my neighbors gathered together in the yard of the house next door.  There was no occasion, other than a desire to just “be together.” We were kind of an extended family, and it was comforting to be together.

      My father enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor.  I think after this I knew how he felt.

9-11 In Northern Virginia – 2001

by Glenn Porter

     As a Department of Defense contractor, I arrived at HQ Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) at 9:00 A.M. to sign a new contract scheduled for 9:30 A.M. – it was supposed to be a good day.  We walked into the conference room, and everyone was watching the burning World Trade Center North Tower in New York City on TV. Three minutes later, my heart and lungs felt physically crushed as I watched Flight 175 crash into the South Tower. Our meeting was canceled but no one left – we continued to listen and watch in disbelief, silence, and tears as the news tried to keep up with the events of that morning. One of our team arrived 5 minutes late and shouted that an airliner had just passed low over our building. It turned out to be Flight 77 that then crashed a few seconds later into the western façade of the ill-fated Pentagon, a little over a mile to our east.  

Map Shows Glenn’s Location at the Red Dot Just Below Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall and His Daughter’s Location in the Open Space Just West of the Air Force Memorial in Relation to the Pentagon (Google)

     Almost directly between my location and the Pentagon, my daughter was working in Wing 7 of the Navy Annex just across Route 27 from the Pentagon.  She was entering a conference room when the plane hit and had to grab the doorframe as the building shook so much.  She and others then went outside and saw the Pentagon burning. 

View from Outside Wing 7 of the Navy Annex

     All who worked there were told to leave immediately (as were many in the area), but she could not get to her car as it was in the parking lot nearest the Pentagon.  She started towards home with a friend by car.  Many of my company’s employees worked in Government buildings, and we spent the rest of the day accounting for each one, including one who worked in the Pentagon – thankfully all were safe.  Because of the overwhelmed phone and cell systems, we didn’t get confirmation until late in the day.  I tried to get my daughter but couldn’t connect.  After our daughter took buses and got rides from other friends, she finally showed up at our house in the late afternoon.

     My wife and I took our daughter back after midnight to get her car (figuring the security perimeter would have been reduced by then). I used my retired Army ID card to be allowed through law enforcement checkpoints to reach her car.  Before leaving, we stood together on the shoulder of Route 27 facing the still burning western Pentagon façade, emblazoned in lights, workers and vehicles in action everywhere, with the iconic huge American flag illuminated and hanging down – at that moment I felt an overwhelming sadness, a boiling anger and a feeling that things would never be the same again.  My family remembers my anger.  God bless all who died that day.

Honor On the Line – The Seventh Flimsy, 1971

by Eric Robyn

1971 … a period of extreme turbulence in the Army and American society.

     I had just returned home from Vietnam.  Reunited with my wife Sally and 8-month-old son, Paul, I quickly packed them up and flew to my next unit in West Germany.  Assigned to the 210th Field Artillery Brigade, we arrived in April 1971 in the town of Ansbach, about 35 miles west of Nuremberg. *  

     Although our sponsor was a no-show, when we finally arrived at the BOQ (bachelor officer guest quarters) in Ansbach, we were warmly greeted by my dear friend and West Point classmate Bill Rice, https://thedaysforward.com/bill-rice/ who was assigned in the Brigade headquarters as Assistant S-3 (Operations).  Bill and I had known each other since grammar school days in St. Louis and later graduated together as members of the US Military Academy Class of 1969.  Unmarried at the time, Bill generously helped us get settled in Ansbach, even loaning us his car while we waited 2 months for ours to be shipped from the States.  Incidentally, Bill and I shared the same promotion orders to captain and pinned on captain’s bars standing side-by-side on 4 June 1971, 2 years to the day from our graduation at West Point.  We laughed about the simple fact that every first lieutenant who survived to his 2d commissioning anniversary was automatically promoted to captain, so it was no big deal … a handshake, a beer with friends in the club, and a wife who never let me forget I failed to invite her to the ceremony!  We soon learned that promotions thereafter were increasingly competitive and slow to come, but much to be celebrated with wives, family, and friends!

     I was assigned as the Brigade S-2 (Intelligence Officer) on arrival and would be responsible for safeguarding and maintaining all classified documents and material in the brigade headquarters.  With nuclear weapons capability in all our subordinate battalions, we managed literally thousands of pages of documents (all on paper, no computers!) ranging in classification from the lowest “For Official Use Only” to “Confidential”, “Secret”, to the highest “Top Secret.”

To assist me in this daunting mission of guarding, organizing, inventorying, and insuring accessibility to authorized users, I was assigned an Intelligence NCO, Sergeant First Class (SFC) Gonzales.  He was an experienced and wise NCO who had done this type of work for several years.  Anyone with proper clearance and “need to know” could sign out and return whatever document he needed at any time, noting name, date, and time in our register.  SFC Gonzales meticulously maintained records of daily inventories and accountability checks in our logbook. At that time, all nuclear capable artillery units operated under a “zero defects” atmosphere when it came to any nuclear operation:  assembly, transport, guarding, deployment, communications, surety procedures, etc.  In the S-2 shop, we were not directly handling actual nukes like Bill, so we weren’t under the same gun as Bill, so to speak.  Nonetheless, we all felt we were always under the intense scrutiny of higher headquarters.  Lots of young Field Artillery officers lost their careers by messing up a nuclear inspection!

     I was on a fast track of learning the intricacies of classified information, when, as part of many USAREUR unit and headquarters relocations that year, we moved the brigade headquarters to “Herzo Base” in the summer of 1971.**  This move required the construction and certification of a secure, reinforced bank-like vault with a dozen high security, fireproof filing cabinets to maintain classified documents to include Top Secret materials, as well providing work space for our desks.

Entrance to HerzoBase, Herzogenaurach, West Germany

     A few weeks after we had safely moved and accounted for all the classified documents and material in our newly certified vault, SFC Gonzales informed me that he could not find a classified document and considered it might be lost.  That got my attention quickly!  He explained that during his regular inventory, he could not find the 7th copy of a 3-paragraph, 1-page Confidential document.  He showed me the original document, with its paper-clipped 6 carbon-copies (“onion-skin” or “flimsies,” as we called them).  Sure enough, the original Confidential document clearly stated, “Original plus 7 copies.”  When I read the document, I realized it should never have been classified Confidential by the VII Corps G-4 (Logistics).  It referred to a very minor administrative instruction for a military exercise applicable to another unit outside our brigade.  But it was classified, in our vault despite its irrelevance, and I was responsible for it.  Our records showed the original and copies had been checked out by our brigade S-3 and S-4 sections, so SFC Gonzales and I spoke with everyone who had access, and searched through our vault and all our files, but could not find that single flimsy copy.

Blank Flimsies (onionskin paper)

     I realized that if that flimsy could not be found, I would have to report a missing classified document within 24 hours to VII Corps, which in my mind spelled the end of my career.  I let Bill Rice know the situation and he sprang into action quickly, helping to search the entire headquarters, working with me late into the night.  But, alas, no 7th flimsy could be found.  The next morning, I reported the situation to the brigade executive officer and brigade commander, woefully aware that this incident would reflect negatively on them and our unit when I sent in the report of a missing classified document.  The entire brigade staff was now fully engaged to locate that flimsy.  The next three days were stressful, not only in continuing the search, but also in hearing other ideas on how to “fix” the problem.

     One simple suggestion was to contact the originator who initially classified the document and have him declassify it and thus, instantly, resolve the problem.  I contacted the originating officer at VII Corps headquarters, but he showed no interest in reviewing the document or its classification.  Door shut!

Cover Sheet for a Secret Document

     Pressure built from other sources simply to destroy the original document and its 6 flimsies and then complete a destruction certificate attesting that the original and 7 flimsies were destroyed by shredding and burning.  Of course, I would have to be the attesting officer, swearing that I had witnessed the destruction.  Here is where my 4 years of living within West Point’s Honor Code (“A Cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do”) caused me to stop and consider. 

     Bill had heard this idea as well.  We discussed the implications.  We both knew what the harder right demanded, and I knew I had only one course of action to follow for a clear conscience.  My decision was simple:  report the document as missing, insignificant as it seemed to be, and let the chips fall where they may.  I did so and resigned myself to await the investigation from VII Corps. 

     After 3 agonizing days, the 7th flimsy mysteriously showed up on SFC Gonzales’ desk.  We never learned who returned it, who had it or where it had been, but we gratefully announced its recovery.  The investigation was canceled by Corps to everyone’s relief.  I continued to serve as S-2 for a few more months before taking command of an artillery battery, but for the remainder of my career my gratitude deepened for the foundation of Honor laid at West Point, and the loyalty and encouragement of friends such as Bill Rice.

     There would be many other times in the years ahead when I would be tempted to cut corners or shade things to avoid problems, but the deeply ingrained sense of “choosing the harder right instead of the easier wrong” (as we recited in the Cadet Prayer), would always be a guiding light.  As the Scriptures put it in Luke 16:10: “He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much.”  It is often the little “flimsy” things that trip us up … or challenge us to overcome. 

CADET PRAYER

O God, our Father, Thou Searcher of human hearts, help us to draw near to Thee in sincerity and truth. May our religion be filled with gladness and may our worship of Thee be natural.

Strengthen and increase our admiration for honest dealing and clean thinking, and suffer not our hatred of hypocrisy and pretense ever to diminish. Encourage us in our endeavor to live above the common level of life.

Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong and never to be content with a half-truth when the whole can be won.

Endow us with courage that is born of loyalty to all that is noble and worthy, that scorns to compromise with vice and injustice and knows no fear when truth and right are in jeopardy.

Guard us against flippancy and irreverence in the sacred things of life. Grant us new ties of friendship and new opportunities of service. Kindle our hearts in fellowship with those of a cheerful countenance and soften our hearts with sympathy for those who sorrow and suffer.

Help us to maintain the honor of the Corps untarnished and unsullied and to show forth in our lives the ideals of West Point in doing our duty to Thee and to our Country.

All of which we ask in the name of the Great Friend and Master of All. Amen.

* The 210th Field Artillery Brigade (at that time designated as a “Group”), was part of the VII Corps of the US Army, Europe (USAREUR), then comprising the bulk of NATO’s (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) defense against the -Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact forces threatening Europe.  Incidentally, one-third of the US Army’s combat divisions and one-fifth of its total manpower was assigned to USAREUR … the deterrent “trip wire” of the Cold War.

** In the West German town of Herzogenaurach, called Herzo Base, because it was a former Luftwaffe Messerschmidt fighter base in WWII.  This quaint German village was about 20 miles from Nurnberg and 15 miles from Erlangen.