By John Ostapowicz / The Jambar
Today marks the 24th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.
Both local and national events honor the nearly 3,000 people who lost their lives when four commercial airliners were hijacked. Two planes crashed into the north and south towers of the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon and another landed in Pennsylvania.
In the latter, the 40 passengers and crew aboard United Airlines Flight 93 fought to regain control of the aircraft, causing it to crash into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania — more than 100 miles from Youngstown.
For the people who witnessed and experienced 9/11, the remembrance sheds light on the traumatic events. In relation to the attacks, Youngstown State Univeristy remembers Terry Lynch — a YSU alumnus who lost his life while meeting with officials at the Pentagon.
Tom Leeds, docent and volunteer at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City, experienced the events firsthand as he worked on the 74th floor of the south tower.
At approximately 8:46 a.m. that morning, Leeds said he remembers typing an email, before hearing a subsequent boom and watching thousands of papers fill the air — the time when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north tower.
“We knew it was serious, but people had been there that I worked with in 1993 when the [World Trade Center bombing] happened, and so they said, ‘Just get out, you can always come back,’” Leeds said.
In an effort to search for answers, Leeds proceeded to the 44th floor — the second tower’s sky lobby. While watching television on the same floor, the signal went out, followed by another huge boom.
Around 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 struck the south tower.
Leeds said the part he will always remember was seeing the first responders heading up the stairs, while those inside headed away from the crash.
“Unfortunately, everyone was going down. The only people that we saw coming up were firemen,” Leeds said. “That always hits me when I think about that, that it was only the firemen coming up as we were going down the 44 flights.”
Alyssa Sadoff, docent at the Sept. 11 Memorial, was living in downtown Manhattan on the morning of Sept. 11.
Sadoff said she was attending a meeting uptown in a basement and was unaware of the attacks until she went to a doctor’s appointment.
“Eventually, we were able to get back to our apartment. The police, who were guarding at the zone, let us come home. We stayed at home that night, [and] we lost electricity,” Sadoff said. “Nobody knew what to do, our neighbors were all still here, and we tried to carry on [as] if everything was okay.”
Sadoff said it wasn’t until a few weeks after 9/11 that her family was able to acknowledge and process the effects of the event.
“It wasn’t until much later that when we took steps back and really woke up from the nightmare … we realized the gravity of what was going on,” Sadoff said.
Both Sadoff and Leeds expressed the importance of memorial events and informing those who were born after the events of Sept. 11.
“You can’t take your family, you can’t take your friends [and] you can’t take life in general for granted. You need to remember that [9/11] happened, never forget it, but you also have to move forward,” Leeds said.
“It’s very fulfilling to be able to share the stories and answer the questions. We get a lot of young people who come, they are well-read and well-versed — some of them are eight or nine years old, but they’ve done the research before they get [to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum],” Sadoff said.
Beginning at 8:40 a.m., the 9/11 Memorial & Museum is holding a private ceremony on the Memorial Plaza in commemoration of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and the Feb. 26, 1993, bombing of the World Trade Center.
Also at the Memorial Plaza, the annual “Tribute in Light” art installation will be present today from dusk to dawn.
At YSU, four separate events are being held in remembrance of 9/11. Starting at 8:30 a.m., the events include a one-mile walk around center campus, followed by a blood drive, a 9/11 remembrance ceremony hosted by the Department of Criminal Justice and Consumer Sciences and a documentary discussion in the John J. McDonough Museum of Art auditorium.
Rick Williams, a retired major of the U.S. Army and associate director of the Office of Veterans Affairs at the Carl A. Nunziato Veterans Resource Center, said YSU President Bill Johnson wanted the campus to commemorate the tragedy in ways multiple people could participate.
