Sweeneys still feel 9/11 pain
While Michael Sweeney finds it hard to believe 20 years have passed since that horrible day now known to the world simply as 9/11, the succession of anniversaries over the past two decades have done little to dull the pain for the Sweeney family. If time heals all wounds, it does not erase them.
Sweeney, the brother of former Bruins player Bob Sweeney and the executive director of the club’s charitable foundation, lost his wife Amy in the attacks. She was a flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11 out of Boston bound for Los Angeles that was hijacked by five Islamic jihadists and deliberately crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, the first of two planes that crashed into the towers. A third plane was hijacked and flown into the Pentagon while a fourth hijacked flight, believed to be headed for the U.S. Capitol, was overtaken by passengers and it subsequently crashed in Pennsylvania field.
Amy Sweeney left behind her husband and two young children, Anna and Jack (five and four at the time) and a legacy of courage that endures to this day in the Madeline Amy Sweeney Award for Civilian Bravery, which has been given out on every anniversary since 9/11. This year’s ceremony will be held on Saturday at the John F. Kennedy Library.
The pride that Michael Sweeney has for the courage his wife showed on that day may serve as something of a counterbalance for the grief, but the anniversaries never really get any easier.
“Some people have a hard time understanding, because people die every day,” said Michael Sweeney. “But people don’t die every day in the public way Amy and the people on September 11 who died did. And this happens every year. It’s not what you’d call a normal process.”
As for earlier generations of Americans with the Pearl Harbor attacks and the assassination of JFK, where you were and what you were doing on 9/11 is forever etched in the minds of those of a certain age.
Bob Sweeney, who had just finished a career that saw him play 11 seasons in the NHL – six with the Bruins – as well as several years in Europe, was on the 10th hole of Ballybunion Golf Club in County Kerry, Ireland, on a golfing trip for his brother-in-law’s 50th birthday when he initially got word that something awful was unfolding back home.
As the details filtered out, a sense of dread overcame him. Michael and Bob Sweeney are close. Bob married his wife Angela in June 1993 while Michael and Amy were wed just two months later. After the weddings, the couples lived together for a year at Flagship Wharf in Charlestown. When Bob heard that one of the planes that crashed into the towers was a Boston-based flight bound for LA, he knew his sister-in-law flew that route frequently.
“I could feel the hairs of the back of my neck go up. I was very concerned,” said Bob. “Nothing was confirmed, but when we got in, I remember seeing a few guys from the Ipswich Country club where I belong, and I remember Michael O’Keefe coming up to me and saying ‘Bobby, did you call home?’ I said ‘No, not yet.’ And he said, ‘Well, you better.’ It was probably the worst phone call I ever had to make. It was very hard being over across the ocean trying to reach home. If you remember, they shut down a lot of phone service. But I did eventually get through to my brother around 10 o’clock his time. And it was just awful.”
With much air travel shut down, Bob managed to get a flight to London, then eventually another one to Chicago before finally getting a flight to New Jersey, where he had to rent a car for the rest of the journey. At around 4 a.m. on Friday, four days after the attack, he made it home in time for Amy’s funeral service.
As the harrowing details of the terrorist attacks started to come out, we learned of Amy Sweeney’s bravery in the face of the dire situation.
With the terrorists having taken over Flight 11, she made repeated attempts to contact the ground services crew from an airphone before finally getting through. She was able to identify the hijackers by their seat numbers, including suspected leader Mohammed Atta. She stayed on the phone relaying as much as she could about what she had observed until it made its final, fateful descent. Thanks to Amy Sweeney and her fellow fight attendants, authorities on the ground became aware of the scope and magnitude of what was happening.
“To me, what she was able to do under those circumstances ... she made five phone calls until she finally got connected to (co-worker on the ground) Michael Woodward and relayed the information, which obviously helped and it gave the information to the other flights that there was a terrorist attack happening. It was quite amazing what she was able to do,” said Michael Sweeney.
Said Bob Sweeney: “If you look at it, to think of how many other lives she saved because a lot of the planes got grounded. You think of the guys on Flight 93 (that was crashed in Pennsylvania), who said ‘Let’s roll,’ Those guys knew what was happening because of what Amy did and everybody was alerting ground control people that there could be more terrorist attacks. What she did was pretty amazing, not only her but the other flight attendants and the crews on all of the planes. It’s pretty heroic knowing your flight is probably not going to land and you take on some terrorists that have taken over your plane.”
As with all the victims’ families, the events of 9/11 left a huge hole in the Sweeney family. Jack and Anna Sweeney, now young adults, were raised without a mother. She was someone who would do anything for a friend in need, said Michael. He was reminded of that just recently when he was golfing with friend Roy Arsenault.
“He said ‘I called her at 2 o’clock in the morning and said ‘Amy, can you come over. I have to bring (Roy’s wife) Caroline to the hospital, she’s having a baby,’” said Michael. “He had two young ones at home like us. So she pops out of bed and said ‘Caroline and Roy need me to watch the kids.’ That’s the type of person she was, she’d give the shirt off her back with no thought, if someone needed her help.”
Bob Sweeney recently spoke at a ceremony honoring Paul Veneto, a retired United Airlines flight attendant who was pushing a beverage cart from Boston to New York to honor those flight attendants who died on 9/11. He touched on the loss that Jack and Anna endured.
“I said, ‘this is no disrespect to the fathers out there but it’s very hard to replace a mother’s love.’ It’s very true. And Amy was a great mother,” he said. “It’s hard even now, 20 years later, to talk about this.”
On Saturday at the JFK Library, the Sweeneys will join other Massachusetts families who lost loved ones on 9/11 in the commonwealth’s annual commemoration ceremony. They will give out the Madeline Amy Sweeney Award for Civilian Bravery, as they have every year since the attacks. Past winners have included every-day heroes who have saved people from burning cars and potential drownings.
It’s never an easy day for the surviving family members.
“By statute, the award is issued every September 11. So as a result, every year is a memorial service and it’s like every year she dies over again. That makes it difficult,” said Michael Sweeney. “But on the flip side of that, it’s nice to know that something good can come out of September 11 instead of all the negativity as a result of what happened. So it’s good to be able recognize the recipients of the award throughout the years.”
And it’s good for the rest of us to never forget.