Area residents recall Sept. 11
Ironworker, student, servicemen, nurse, business owner reflect on day
Soddy-Daisy ironworker Ken Brown remembers seeing the two towers burning from across the Hudson River.
Lt. Gen. Burwell B. “B.B.” Bell III remembers watching American Airlines Flight 77 crash into the Pentagon.
Disaster relief nurse Eva Knab remembers the rescue worker she hugged as he emerged from the Ground Zero rubble.
New York University student Rachel Liles remembers walking against a stream of people rushing from the south side of Manhattan.
For them, Sept. 11 is more than images on a television screen or pictures in a newspaper.
In the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Chattanooga Times Free Press reporters talked to people from this area about their experiences. One year later, here are their impressions of that day.
‘TOTAL CHAOS’
Soddy-Daisy ironworker Ken Brown doesn’t want to see the physical void created by the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
“I don’t want to go look in that hole,” he said. “I saw enough that I don’t feel any urge to go over and see it and smell it.”
Mr. Brown and five other area ironworkers watched two jets fly into the twin towers from a New Jersey construction site just across the Hudson River. Looking over the New York skyline shortly after the attacks, he described “total chaos.”
Today, Sept. 11 brings memories of World Trade Center employees Mr. Brown met while visiting the Top of the World restaurant a week before the attacks.
“There’s no way those people survived,” he said.
Other ironworkers from here who were in New York include Gale Slaughter, Keith Vandergriff, James “Jimmy” Hart, David “Whiskers” Culberson, John Yates, Charles “Chucky” Howell and Gary Brown.
‘A WAKE-UP CALL’
Lt. Gen. Burwell B. “B.B.” Bell III was leaving the Pentagon the morning of Sept. 11 when American Airlines Flight 77 hit the building.
“The very office we had been doing our work in 20 minutes earlier was one of the offices affected by the crash,” said the UTC alumnus, now commander of Fort Hood, Texas. “I lost a lot of good friends.”
Gen. Bell will lead a memorial service at Fort Hood today to mark the anniversary of the deaths of the victims of the terrorist attacks.
He said watching the Pentagon burn was “a wake-up call.”
“I felt at that moment that our constitution, our democracy, was at risk. I think I was dead wrong about that,” the Army officer said. “Our basic rights of freedom to
assemble, freedom of speech, freedom of choice are intact. Democracy is intact.”
THE HEALING PROCESS
Eva Knab said she is relieved to return to New York for the Sept. 11 anniversary.
Ms. Knab spent a few weeks in New York City last fall working as a American Red Cross disaster-relief nurse at the Pier 94 family assistance center. She offered bandages for wounds, some physical, some spiritual and some emotional, to survivors, families of victims and rescue workers.
A year later, she will be one of the few out-of-state nurses on a Red Cross watch team during anniversary ceremonies.
“It’ll be good mental health for me to go back there,” she said. “To see New York and see Ground Zero in a peaceful situation, that’ll mean a lot to me.”
Ms. Knab carries a miniature Statue of Liberty with her everywhere, a present from another nurse in New York. Since last fall, she’s been to disasters in Guatemala, El Salvador, and to the scene of a May tornado in Murfreesboro, Tenn.
None have affected her like her time with the rescue workers and families of victims in New York City, she said.
COLLEGE DAYS
Spring City, Tenn., resident Rachel Liles had been in school at New York University a few weeks when two planes flew into the World Trade Center.
“I consider myself lucky to have witnessed this part of history,” said the 19-year-old psychology major, who saw the attacks from a city street.
Sept. 11 is mostly a blur of memories, Ms. Liles said. Her vivid memory is of walking downtown soon after the first tower fell, struggling against the fleeing crowd of soot- and bloodcovered people.
“It looked like aliens were coming at me,” she said.
Two weeks ago Ms. Liles moved to a residence hall two blocks from Ground Zero. She said she is excited to be back on New York’s bustling streets.
The city has “just kind of kept on going,” Ms. Liles said. “I come back here and everyone still focuses on it. Up there, it’s not prevalent in everyday life.”
INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES
Marine Maj. Stephen Cox, a Chattanooga native, found himself the center of media scrutiny as public-affairs officer for Joint Task Force 160 at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Treatment
of prisoners at the military base, where 598 al-Qaida and Taliban detainees still are being kept, made international headlines.
Maj. Cox said he arrived in Cuba on Jan. 6, 2002. The first group of detainees arrived Jan. 8.
“The media started rolling in on the 11th, and it never stopped until I left on the first of April,” the Marine said.
Maj. Cox dealt with media members from more than 100 agencies and held 52 press briefings. Pictures of him in handcuffs, demonstrating treatment of the detainees, ran in newspapers across the country — an alarming sight for his mother, Chattanooga resident Donna Cox.
The pressure to represent the United States to the world and ensure he “got the right message out, and said the right thing at the right time to the right people” was enormous, he said. He felt honored to serve the country in a critical capacity after such tragic events, he said.
“The event really did enforce it to me one more time, once over, that we’re extremely lucky to live in the United States,” he said.
AN OPEN WOUND
Melanie Young tries to avoid anything that reminds her of being a few blocks away from the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.
Ms. Young is the owner of M. Young Communications, a publicrelations and special-events firm in New York. She is the daughter of Sonia and Mel Young of Chattanooga.
“I don’t really like watching it on TV,” said the Girls Preparatory School graduate. “It’s like rubbing salt on a wound.”
She considered closing her office today but decided to give employees an extra hour of personal time instead, she said.
“Up here, the city is trying to encourage businesses to stay open,” Ms. Young said.
IN MEMORY
Chattanooga native John R. Fisher, 46, died in the basement of one of the twin towers trying to help evacuate the building.
His body was found in February after rescue workers dug into underground portions of the rubble. Mr. Fisher consulted on communications equipment used by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Rossville resident Bill Taylor, his uncle, said Mr. Fisher wasn’t scheduled to be at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.
“He went back in voluntarily to help evacuate the people,” Mr. Taylor said. “As a result, he wound up being there when he wasn’t supposed to and wound up being killed.”
Mr. Fisher’s seven children, ages 6 to 16, live in New Jersey. His mother, Ann Byous, lives in Dalton, Ga.
Staff writers Emily McDonald, Susan Pierce and Lindsay Riddell contributed to this story.