For What It's Worth
It was a quiet Tuesday morning in September 2001. I was in the early stages of what would prove to be a short-lived career in insurance sales, sitting in a rural Iowa farmhouse alongside my trainer. We were mid-pitch, presenting our policy options to the family at their kitchen table, when our eyes drifted toward the television in the living room.
Live footage showed thick black smoke pouring from a gaping wound in a New York skyscraper. We paused our presentation, transfixed by the sight of flames licking the upper floors, wondering aloud what kind of catastrophic pilot error could cause such a disaster. Answers were nonexistent in those opening moments, but a sense of unease filled the room. We soon realized we were not watching a tragic aviation mishap. We were witnessing an orchestrated act of war.
The date was Sept. 11, 2001. The building on screen was the South Tower of the World Trade Center, struck just seventeen minutes after the North Tower. What unfolded over the next few hours would be etched into global memory simply as “9/11.”
Nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists had hijacked four California-bound commercial jetliners departing from East Coast airports. Loaded with thousands of gallons of cross-country jet fuel, the airliners were converted into guided missiles aimed directly at the symbols of American economic, military, and political strength.
The coordinated strike claimed 2,977 innocent lives across three separate sites. In lower Manhattan, the Twin Towers collapsed into a mountain of pulverized concrete and twisted steel, killing 2,753 people. In Arlington, Virginia, American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon, taking 184 lives. In a reclaimed strip mine near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, 40 passengers and crew aboard United Airlines Flight 93 mounted a heroic counterattack against their captors, driving the plane into the dirt at 500 mph and sacrificing themselves to spare the U.S. Capitol or the White House.
The loss of life among rescue personnel in New York remains the deadliest day in American emergency response history. In all, 343 New York City firefighters, 23 NYPD officers, and 37 Port Authority police officers perished after rushing straight into burning, doomed high-rises to shepherd civilians down emergency stairwells. In the quarter-century since that morning, the death toll has continued to climb. Toxic dust and pulverized toxins blanketed Ground Zero for months, leading to late-emerging cancers and chronic respiratory illnesses that have claimed hundreds more rescue workers, cleanup crews, and lower Manhattan residents.
Our insurance sales call was swiftly abandoned that morning. I returned home to sit before the television, watching the towers collapse on loop, engulfed in the same dread and disbelief felt across the nation.
Where were you on that morning? What images resurface whenever the anniversary rolls around? While sitting in that Iowa living room remains my primary memory of the attacks, two subsequent experiences permanently tied themselves to the legacy of that day.
The first realization struck after my wife and I relocated to Northwest Mississippi. Our home sits directly beneath the heavily traveled approach and departure paths for Memphis International Airport. The low roar of commercial jetliners climbing out or descending on final approach is an ordinary, predictable rhythm of life here.
Early on, I remarked to a longtime resident about the near-constant aerial traffic tracing the clouds above us. My neighbor nodded and replied, “Well, there was one day where it was completely quiet here.”
When I asked which day that could have been, the answer came instantly: “9/11.” Minutes after the second tower was struck, FAA National Operations Manager Ben Sliney-- serving on his very first day in that high-stakes position--issued an unprecedented command to clear the skies. Air traffic controllers pulled off a logistical miracle, safely guiding roughly 4,500 airborne aircraft to the nearest available runways in less than three hours without a single incident. For three straight days, civilian aviation was entirely shut down. Over North Mississippi and across the entire continent, the skies were eerie, empty, and dead silent.
The second memory involves a side gig I held around that time, working as a driver for an Iowa limousine service. One assignment sent me to pick up a passenger at an isolated farmhouse and deliver her to Eppley Airfield in Omaha, Nebraska, for a flight to New York City.
She was booked to appear on television’s “Sally Jessy Raphael” show for an emotional on-air reunion with an estranged son she had not seen in years. During our two-hour trip across the plains, she shared a remarkable, hair-raising backstory about running from organized crime figures, explaining that she had been laying low in rural Iowa under deep cover. The daytime talk show’s producers had spared no expense, paying for private car service to get her to the airport.
A few days later, I checked in with the limo service owner to ask how our passenger’s trip had gone and whether she ever reunited with her son on television.
“She never made it to New York,” she told me. “She only got as far as Cincinnati.” The date of her flight was Sept. 11. Caught in the national ground stop, her plane was forced down midway across the country, stranding her hundreds of miles from the studio and putting an abrupt end to the planned reunion.
The world changed permanently in the wake of that terrible Tuesday. The federal government established the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, introducing the rigid security checkpoints and shoe-removal policies that travelers navigate at every terminal today. Overseas, the attacks ignited the Global War on Terrorism, launching a twenty-year military campaign in Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, reshaping military doctrine and touching countless military families across the nation.
Yet, amid the shock and devastation, the days following Sept. 11 revealed an extraordinary unity. Partisan hostilities evaporated overnight. Members of Congress from opposing parties stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the Capitol steps singing “God Bless America,” reflecting a deep civic solidarity and shared purpose that feels distant in today’s polarized political climate.
A full generation has now passed since the towers fell. Anyone under the age of 25 possesses no living memory of the towers burning on live television or the quiet skies that followed; they know the event exclusively through textbooks, documentaries, and museum exhibits.
Patriot Day remains an essential annual observance, marked by flags flown at half-staff and solemn ceremonies across the country. At the National September 11 Memorial in lower Manhattan, loved ones will once again read the names of the 2,977 victims, along with the six people murdered in the February 1993 World Trade Center truck bombing. Moments of silence will mark the exact instances when each plane hit and each tower fell.
It was an earth-shattering day that reshaped modern history, and its ripples continue to influence our laws, our travel, and our national defense. As personal recollections gradually pass from firsthand experience into the history books, our obligation remains the same: to ensure that the memory of those lost, and the unity forged in their absence, never fades away.
That’s what I have for now... for what it’s worth.
Bob Bakken is Editor of the South Reporter.