Paul Sylvain
“Where were you when the world stopped
turning that September day?
Teaching a class full of innocent children or drivin’ down some cold interstate?
Did you feel guilty ‘cause you’re a survivor? In a crowded room did you feel alone?
Did you call up your mother and tell her you love her?
Did you dust off that Bible at home?”
— Alan Jackson, from “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)”
These lyrics, written and recorded in December 2001 by country music singer Alan Jackson, summed up the feelings and raw emotion of Americans who witnessed the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks live on TV. As Jackson explained in a 2024 interview with Billy Dukes for Taste of Country, he woke up at 4 a.m. one Sunday morning, humming the melody and thinking of the first few words that would go on to become this song.
“I got up and scribbled it down and put the melody down so I wouldn’t forget it,” Jackson said. “Then the next day I started piecing all those verses. … It was a Sunday and I finished it that day. Like I said, that song was just a gift. I’ve never felt I could take credit for writing it. Looking back, I guess I just didn’t want to forget how I felt on that day and how I knew other people felt.”
In one’s lifetime, there are a handful of events eternally seared into our memory. People can tell you decades later exactly what they were doing at the instant those events happened. For my parents, the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, was one of those moments. For my “Baby Boomer” generation, it was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. The attacks on 9/11 are another.
It’s one thing to have seen this horrific event unfold on TV, as most Americans did. It’s entirely another thing to have witnessed the carnage of 9/11 up close and personal.
I was an instructor at the U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) Academy in Dallas and later Charleston, S.C., who traveled to New York City several times to conduct training with new USCIS hires at 26 Federal Plaza, just two blocks from Ground Zero. The stories those students shared with us were chilling.
They saw and heard jumpers from the Twin Towers’ upper floors falling and impacting the ground below. Many who worked at the WTC back on 9/11 spoke of stepping over human body parts while escaping from the Twin Towers. One student recalled the Brooklyn Bridge swaying from the weight of everyone crossing on foot from Lower Manhattan to Brooklyn.
What follows are accounts from others who witnessed the events of that September morning, a quarter century ago. The passage of time has done nothing to erase the pain and sadness of people like Machias Town Manager Sarah Craighead Dedmon, who broke down in tears while sharing her recollections of that day.
DONNA DENNISON — “I was the financial accountant for Washington County and worked in the treasurer’s office in the courthouse. Somebody from RCC [Regional Communications Center] came upstairs and informed us that there was a situation in New York City, where a plane had just slammed into one of the Twin Towers. They suggested that we go downstairs and see for ourselves on the TV.
“Shortly after I got there, we witnessed the second plane [United Airlines Flight 175] slam into the other tower. At this point people were surmising that we might be under a terrorist attack. Emergency Management decided to send us home for the day. I miss the patriotism that followed that very sad day.”
ANN SPRAGUE CROCKER — “I was watching it on TV as it was happening. First plane (when the news broke) I thought, ‘Terrible accident,’ until the second one hit. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what was happening. Devastation hit our country. Sad days indeed.”
SARAH CRAIGHEAD DEDMON — “I was working for Sun Microsystems, covering Boston and New York, where our offices were on the 25th and 26th floors of 2 World Trade Center. I still have my faded 2WTC ID badge, made necessary by the first attack on the towers [in 1993].
“On the morning of Sept. 11, I was at my gym near Boston, watching the news, when the first tower was hit. I knew that my father — an American Airlines 767 pilot who routinely flew Flight 11 — was safe at home that day. I returned to our apartment and called my then-fiancé, Chris. I hastily packed, picked him up, and we headed north on Interstate 93 toward my father’s home in New Hampshire.
“Even today, it brings tears to my eyes to remember the slow procession of cars crawling north beneath bridges where people stood waving flags, holding lights, and raising signs of unity. That night in New Hampshire, my father, Chris, and I sat dumbfounded around his backyard campfire, with no words of comfort to be found.”
CHRIS GARDNER — “[I was] working for the sheriffs office as a detective. Watched the second plane hit the towers live in the jail administrators office. We thought it was an accident at first …. until the second plane hit.”
WENDELL “DOSS” DENNISON — “I was a co-pastor at Calvary Temple Assembly of God and taught middle school U.S. History at Temple Academy, our private K-8 Christian school. The planes hit the twin towers at 8:46 and 9:03 a.m. Within the hour, the staff was informed that America was most likely under some type of terrorist attack and told to stay calm, keep the students in at recess, and that we would be updated when more information was available.
“The feeling was surreal, and without seeing the actual footage, my mind had a hard time conceiving the reality. All I could think of was the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that I had seen pictured in history books. There were no TVs in the school and we were not released early.
“As soon as school was out, I went directly to the parsonage, where my co-pastor and his family lived. In his living room I got my first look. The first images I saw were the towers crumbling to the ground. I then went home and like most Americans watched the news late into the night, not knowing if it was over or was there more to come. What I remember most in the days that followed, was a sudden spike in patriotism and church attendance.”
MIKE CARTER — “We had just returned from a week-long vacation in New York City, where we stayed at the World Trade Center Marriott [located between the twin towers], and were going through our pictures when our son called and told us to turn on the TV. If my son had gotten married a couple of weeks later we would have been eating breakfast in the Marriott on the 19th floor. We can never thank Michael enough for not getting married any later.”
MYRA DELORENZO — “I was in Whitneyville at a meeting at the Congregational Church. Barbara Maloy, Alice Edgecomb, and Betty Duzen were there. My nephew, Jimmy Burke, worked at the towers. He stayed in his office and decided not to have breakfast. One of the planes hit right where he would have been.”
WILL TUELL — “I went next door to my grandfather’s to tend to his dog about 15 minutes before it happened. She was acting funny and I didn’t think anything of it. After I brought her back in I turned on the TV. We didn’t leave it for six hours straight. She sat right there and watched it with me. It was about a month after my grandmother died.”
LORENA CALER — “I was getting ready for a date with my ‘new’ boyfriend (now husband), Wendell. We were going out for the day. He was called up active duty for the Coast Guard and had to report to Jonesport on Sept. 12. We spent the day in Bangor. It was weird to see everything shut down.”
SIDNEY MITCHELL — “I was living in Tucson Arizona, living a few blocks from Davis Monthan Air Force Base. I was in a third story apartment. I had just gotten up to get ready for work, turned on the TV and immediately felt scared. It was eerie for there not to be planes taking off and landing... Very terrible day.”
LAURA KNIGHT — “On 9/11 I was living in Belchertown, Massachusetts. It was about 8:45 a.m. and I was walking out to my car in the driveway to head to Holyoke Community College. I paused before getting in the car and admired the incredible blue sky. While doing so, I saw a plane high up, flying in the wrong direction. Planes ALWAYS headed east, but this one was headed west. I watched it for a bit, but then got in the car and headed to school.
“A psychology class down the hall streamed out and a student passing by said a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I went home after class instead of heading to work early, as I had planned, and watched what was happening in disbelief. I’m convinced the plane I saw was one of the ones that was hijacked and crashed that day.”
DAN SMITH — “I was at my office at the Department of Energy in Washington D.C., when my girlfriend called and told me what was happening in New York and at the Pentagon. I hung up and ran outside and could see the smoke billowing from the Pentagon. Moments later we were instructed to leave the building and the DC area. As I headed home I could see the Pentagon (where I had worked for 10 years with the Defense Intelligence Agency) and where the plane had hit the building. A few days later I got a call from a friend telling me my friend Chuck, from my days at DIA, had been killed in the Pentagon attack. A significant emotional event.”
VALERIE DORSEY — I was delivering pharmaceuticals at that time in my life. Heard about the first plane at a pharmacy in Windham. Put the radio on on the way to my next stop. Saw the second plane hit live at the next pharmacy. It seemed unreal — this couldn’t be an accident. I was headed towards the White Mountains and heard on the radio that the third plane had hit the Pentagon. I was filled with dread and disbelief. Pulled over to pray next to a field. We were under attack. I’ll never forget — we must remember.
AND FINALLY — Many stories emerged in the days, weeks, and months that followed the attacks. One of the many tragic stories that eventually surfaced involved a former air traffic controller I had worked with several years earlier when I was a controller at the Boston Air Route Traffic Control Center in Nashua, New Hampshire. I learned through newspaper accounts published at the time in the Nashua Telegraph.
It was reported that this controller took his wife to Boston’s Logan Airport that morning to catch a flight to Los Angeles. He returned from Boston, ran a couple of errands, then reported for work at the air traffic center around 10 a.m., oblivious to what was going on in New York.
Several of his coworkers knew his wife was flying out of Boston that morning and told his supervisor as events unfolded in the radar room.
When the controller arrived at the center, he was met at the door by his supervisor and the center’s director, who asked him what flight his wife was on. When he replied, “American 11,” he was quickly ushered to the director’s office and told about the hijacking and that his wife’s plane was flown into the North Tower.
He never worked another flight as a controller and retired from the Federal Aviation Administration a year later. Fellow controllers donated sufficient leave time so he could stay home and raise the couple’s two daughters.
Lest we forget.
