Remember and Reflect

Twenty years ago, on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, the nation was shaken by an attack on America that would forever change the lives of those living in the country.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed when militants associated with al-Qaeda, an Islamic extremist group, hijacked four planes and crashed two into the World Trade Center towers and one into the Pentagon. A fourth plane was downed in a field in Pennsylvania when passengers attempted to retake the aircraft from hijackers.

Six Perkins County residents shared there stories about where they were as the events of September 11 unfolded, and how that tragedy impacted them.

Diana Tate

Diana Tate, a teacher at Perkins County Schools at the time, said she first heard about the events of September 11 on her way to school that morning.

She felt confused, and thought she must not have heard correctly.

“When I got to the school, it was a very, very somber mood with the adults who knew what was going on,” Tate said. “The kids didn’t know, but by the time classes started at eight, there were rumors and people were questioning everything that was going on.”

The administration set up a large projection screen in the library, which displayed news of the tragedy all day long for those who were interested to keep informed.

Many staff, she said, dismissed classes so they could watch the day’s events unfold on the news and so they would be available to any students who needed to talk.

“The school was almost totally silent,” Tate noted. “No one really believed what was going on. There was nothing about school that day that was normal.”

She continued, adding that it was unbelievable, sad and terrifying to watch. She also noted the fact that information wasn’t as fast-paced as it is today, so they weren’t getting all the news that day which made the situation scary as well.

“Disbelief was the word of the day,” Tate said.

One of the things Tate noticed in the days following was the lack of planes in the sky due to all flights being grounded.

“There were no flights anywhere in the United States, and it was such an eerie sensation,” she said. “No contrails in the sky, and even crop duster planes couldn’t fly. There was nothing in the sky.”

Jon Forney

Jon Forney was also a teacher at Perkins County Schools the day of the attack, and he recounts the day similarly to Tate.

Forney, biology teacher at PCS, was at school when he heard the first tower had been hit.

“Basically classroom activities stopped, pretty much for the rest of the day, so I could keep informed,” he said. “I was shocked and confused and dismayed. It was a difficult situation.”

Forney added he had a nephew living in Manhattan at the time, and he later found out they couldn’t travel freely through the city as they used to for a while after the events of that Tuesday, noting his nephew and family had to walk to and from work and where they lived because everything was closed down.

“I was concerned for them,” Forney said.

As a veteran, Forney said he felt saddened by the fact that the attacks were going to mean some kind of military action would be necessary.

Dana McArtor

Dana McArtor, employee at Perkins County Health Services, said she first heard the news from Dr. Colglazier that morning.

Dr. Colglazier, she said, came into the office and mentioned it to McArtor and her coworkers. They turned on the news and started watching the scene unfold on TV.

“Everybody was in disbelief,” McArtor said, adding she also experienced feelings of shock and fear, among other things. “There were a lot of emotions that went through my head.”

Seeing something like that happen in the United States reminded McArtor that “things can happen anytwhere, and we all have to live each day because we never know what’s going to happen the next day.”

Edward Dunn

City Superintendent Ed Dunn was just a teenager in 2001, and he was a new student at his school in Tennessee.

Dunn said he was at one of his favorite classes, Residential Electric, at the local college campus when he heard the news.

“They immediately bused us back to the school,” he said, noting this was in a time before teenagers would have had cell phones, so contact with parents and adults who knew what was going on was not possible for him and his classmates.

When they returned to the school, they had the news on in the commons. Together, the school was watching as the plane crashed into the second tower of the World Trade Center. Dunn noted his initial reaction, being a teenager at the time, was confusion.

“It was at that point we were told that our parents were being notified and they were going to come get us,” he said.

At the time, he lived near Chattanooga, Tennessee which is not far from Atlanta, Georgia. One of the big thoughts from those in his town, Dunn said, was the question of where they would hit next to create the most impact, and Atlanta was rumored to be another danger zone.

“We gathered up what we thought was important and headed west,” Dunn said, adding he and his adoptive family stayed with family in Ogallala for around a week to ten days before they felt safe enough to return.

“You learn about all these conflicts that were before you and they feel, at 15 years old, kind of ancient, with the last real conflict being the Gulf War in the 90s,” he continued. “It gave this gut feeling that this was going to be the defining moment for my generation. This will be what my generation looks back at and tell our grandkids about.”

It wasn’t until later in life that Dunn realized witnessing the tragic events of 9/11 in his youth guided his path toward the military.

“I always wanted to do something in service,” he said. “I didn’t know whether that would be humanitarian, Peace Corps or military, but service was something I felt strongly about very early in life.”

He continued that he feels an innocence was lost, being only 15 years old at the time, and stripped his generation of their childhood innocence.

“This was a coordinated effort to cause harm to the American people on our own soil, and it baffled me that this happened at all,” Dunn said.

Becky Uehling

Becky Uehling not only had to watch the September 11 attacks take place, but she also had the responsibility of covering the day’s news for the Grant Tribune-Sentinel, as the editor at the time.

“I thought it wasn’t real,” she said, recalling watching the morning news during breakfast. “I was irritated because they just had this report on the news that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers and they didn’t know what happened at that point. They didn’t know anything at all.”

At the time, all that was showing on the news was what appeared to be a small hole in the tower, she said, so she wanted them to get on with the rest of the news.

When she arrived at work is when things progressed, and the second plane hit. That, Uehling said, was when it hit her that this was serious, and the anxiety and fear set in.

“Everybody was glued to every TV set and every radio station, because the internet wasn’t the way it is now, so you didn’t have the instant social media posts and news feeds.”

It seemed to Uehling like the whole town stopped out of pain and disbelief and shock.

She had to scrap the original plan for the newspaper which was set to hit the press that evening, and she went to work covering the events in New York City instead.

“I remember sitting there as editor wondering what I can do in my position to be able to document this so it can be recorded in our small towns forever,” Uehling said.

Her main focus for the day was getting the news in the Tribune as completely and accurately as possible.

She went over to DJ’s next door to the Tribune office and saw the coverage on TV, whereas she had previously been listening to the radio. Seeing it on TV, she said, added another dimension to the tragedy.

Uehling recalls later in the evening that Tuesday, locals gathered at the football field for a community prayer service where pastors spoke and people sang, prayed and cried together in mourning.

In the days following 9/11, Uehling remembered new footage of people jumping from the towers, people running from the disaster and more, and the gravity of the whole event sinking in.

She noted the lack of planes and contrails in the sky was weird for Nebraska, because she’d always seen jets flying over head, and contrails. But for a while there was nothing.

“It’s a trauma,” she said. “And I think everybody that had to live through it that day feels like every year we are revisiting that trauma again.”

She added that it felt like a death, even if all the people who passed in the towers were complete strangers.

“Even though you didn’t know those people it was still personal because it was an attack on our country and our people. It was scary because this is America, and we don’t get attacked here.”

“I am so worried about the state of our government and the many things going on in the world at this moment,” she continued. “Besides the heightened threat of terrorism to our country because of Afghanistan, many of our freedoms are now also under threat.”

Jim Brueggeman

Sheriff Jim Brueggeman had just got off a night shift from the evening before, and he was in home and in bed when he received a call from his wife telling him to turn on the news.

“I woke up, got out of bed and turned on the TV, and I remember sitting there watching in disbelief as to what was going on,” Brueggeman said.

He stayed up and watched the news “pretty much all day,” he said, trying to keep up with the coverage of the day’s events.

“Aside from being a patriotic American and feeling like we were punched in the gut, I think from my position as a law enforcement officer it had a huge impact in the way we operate today.”

Examples he gave of changes to law enforcement operations included how grant funding is handled, intelligence and monitoring terrorism.

“I hope we don’t see it again with what has just happened in Afghanistan,” he commented.