The morning of 9/11, some 23,000 military and civilian employees began a normal day’s work at the Pentagon in Arlington. At 9:37 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77 struck the western façade of the building on the first and second floors, killing 64 on the plane and 125 in the Pentagon.
A quarter century later, several Catholics who experienced the attacks and recovery efforts firsthand share their stories.
Col. Dan Bolas, Retired
Lt. Col. Dan Bolas sat at his new desk on the third floor of the newly renovated offices of the E-Ring sector of the Pentagon. The sector had been emptied as renovations were ongoing, but several offices were ready.
A news broadcast on his office TV caught Bolas’ attention: At 8:46 a.m., a plane had struck the north building of the World Trade Center in New York City. When the second plane hit the south tower 17 minutes later, Bolas said it dawned on everyone — “That’s not just an accident.”
Bolas began receiving emails from his daughter Army Captain Theresa McCrackine, stationed in Germany. “Is the Pentagon safe?” she asked. They were still emailing back and forth when tragedy struck.
“At that point, the plane came through the first and second floor, right underneath our office,” Bolas said.
Bolas was thrown across the room and blacked out. “When I woke up, I looked out the windows, and all we saw were the massive flames hitting the windows,” he said. The newly installed, blastproof windows had saved his life.
With a stairwell filled with black smoke and one end of the hallway blocked by construction equipment, Bolas and his officemates made their way toward the other end. At that point, the floor’s expansion joints began to separate, and ceiling tiles rained down. “We heard a voice yelling, ‘Follow my voice, come this way,’ ” he remembered. The group followed the voice and made their way out and to the Pentagon’s south parking lot.
With no transportation, Bolas and two others began walking the seven miles to the Pentagon Federal Credit Union in Alexandria where his wife, Deb, worked. Military jets zoomed up and down the Potomac River. “They were locked and loaded — any planes coming, they were going to shoot them down,” he said. “You knew at that point, Washington was under attack.”
Meanwhile, Deb had waited for three hours for word of her husband’s condition, praying for St. Michael’s intercession. Around noon, she received a call from an unknown Pentagon employee who was using a landline payphone and spare change to call survivors’ families. Deb recalled her saying, “I saw your husband. He’s safe. He’s walking to you.” After several hours, Bolas reunited with his wife.
The psychological impact of 9/11 still lingers. “If we’re outside and an airplane flies over low, you watch it,” Bolas said. “Anytime that you go into a building, you look at multiple exits.”
Bolas, a parishioner of St. William of York Church in Stafford, said he’ll never forget the outpouring of support and patriotism in the days and weeks following the attacks. “When we drove back up toward work from down here on I-95, every bridge over 95 was covered with American flags and posters. It was a total outpouring of support for 30 miles,” he said. “After 9/11, what you saw every single day was people taking care of each other. We’ve gotten away from that.”
Bishop Emeritus F. Richard Spencer
Bishop Emeritus F. Richard Spencer of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA, now in residence in Birmingham, Ala., said the attacks still impact him today.
Then-Father Spencer was serving as an active U.S. Army chaplain, stationed at the Pentagon in 2001. The morning of 9/11, Father Spencer was meeting with U.S. Army Chaplain Msgr. Philip Hill. Then American Airlines Flight 77 struck the building.
Bishop Spencer said he didn’t feel the impact but chaos broke out. He immediately evacuated the building with Msgr. Hill, who immediately began coordinating with the Army “Old Guard” serving as first responders. He assigned Father Spencer, along with Protestant Chaplain Bob Jenkins, to accompany the Old Guard. “So, Chaplain Bob Jenkins and myself go with the first responders into the building, looking for survivors and looking to recover the dead,” Bishop Spencer said.
The scene was grisly. “Our ankles are covered with jet fuel. The smell, the asbestos — it was a dangerous place to be inside that burning building,” Bishop Spencer said. “And as we came across bodies, we didn’t know if that person was Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Catholic … but every body, that person that we came across, received a blessing.” As they placed each body into a body bag, “we paused for each and every one to pray and to ask for God’s mercy upon that deceased person,” he said.
All throughout that morning and afternoon, “the mantra that sustained us all was, ‘We don’t leave anybody behind,’ ” he said. “That’s the American spirit. We help and give a helping hand to anybody and everybody, especially in those moments of crisis.”
Bishop Spencer said he returned to the Pentagon frequently in the days following the tragedy, as thousands from the FBI, Secret Service and other government departments arrived on site. “That’s prime time for ministry,” he said. “We set up a tent out in the field … as a portable chapel to give people an opportunity to come and pray.”
He described the scene as “surreal.” As the dead were pulled from the wreckage, “there was a portable refrigerator truck that served as a morgue, where we brought the bodies, and of course we tried to identify the bodies as quickly as possible,” he said. All throughout, he prayed, “trusting that guardian angels were at work.”
A quarter-century later, Bishop Spencer said his experiences on 9/11 fuel his desire for ministry. “As long as I still got breath, I’m going to still keep sharing my resources and my talents and gifts.”
Adm. William J. Fallon, Retired
The morning of 9/11, Adm. William J. Fallon woke up early and went for a run through downtown Washington. “I was struck by the beautiful day. It was crystal clear, cool,” he said.
As the Vice Chief of Naval Operations, Fallon entered a meeting as soon as he arrived at the Pentagon. A coworker kept glancing at a muted TV on the wall. “I finally looked over myself, and I recognized the World Trade Center,” Fallon said.
As the room’s attention turned to the TV, “we heard the announcer say, ‘There’s been some horrible accident. An airplane has flown into the World Trade Center.’ And I immediately remarked, ‘That’s not some accident,’ ” Fallon said.
As officials scrambled to answer calls, a second plane hit the south tower. “Then, I got a call that there’s at least one or more aircraft still out there,” Fallon said. “I remember looking out the window and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is pretty vulnerable.’ ”
Half an hour later, “I felt the thud, and the shockwave of the blast,” as the plane slammed into the Pentagon.
Fallon and his staff evacuated the building from the third floor. “Next time I saw my office, about five or six days later, it had been burned (through) the ceiling,” he said.
He rushed to the Navy Annex in Arlington to set up a temporary joint headquarters with the U.S. Marine Corps. Fallon said the first 24 hours were a blur of learning who died and locating their family members. “At the end of the day, we lost 42 people from the Navy staff,” Fallon said.
In the days that followed, Fallon worked to keep U.S. Navy operations moving and to locate Pentagon employees. “People were either killed instantly or trapped and then burned because all the fuel from the jet ignited,” he said. “I had a lot of personal feelings because as we began to get names of who was lost, again, I knew all these people.” He also lost two friends, a Navy colleague and his wife, who were both on the plane that hit the Pentagon. He attended many funerals in the following weeks.
Fallon said he regularly visits the Pentagon Memorial on 9/11. “I try to go by and just pay my respects,” he said.
A parishioner of Blessed Sacrament Church in Alexandria, Fallon wrote a memoir, “Decisions, Discord and Diplomacy: From Cairo to Kabul,” in which he shares his 9/11 story. Now, Fallon said his life’s goal is to “try to make this a better world.” After he retired from the Navy, he began work in international affairs.
“There’s just too many things to do in the world,” he said.
Col. Craig W. Duehring, Retired
Renovations at the Pentagon may well have saved Col. Craig Duehring’s life on 9/11.
In 2001, Duehring served as the acting assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs under the Department of Defense. The morning of 9/11, he carpooled to a meeting at the Army-Navy Club in Arlington, leaving his car in the Pentagon parking lot. Recent renovations had relocated him and his staff to another part of the Pentagon; their old offices sat on the first floor.
During the meeting in Arlington, “somebody came in and whispered to me that the Pentagon had just been hit,” Duehring recalled. Word quickly spread around the room, and the meeting was disbanded.
Duehring hopped in a waiting car with his boss, David S. C. Chu, undersecretary for personnel and readiness. The driver told them that while he had been waiting, the plane flew directly over him toward the Pentagon. When they arrived back at the Pentagon, security guards had put up barricades and wouldn’t let the group through.
They set up camp at a nearby Marine Corps command post. “We had a panoramic view of the whole operation during that day,” Duehring said. For the next few days, his car sat abandoned in the Pentagon lot.
Duehring said that several days later, he helped coordinate a Sept. 14 press conference for “the largest call-up of the National Guard and Reserve since World War II.” As he was given the duty at the last minute, “I was wearing a very loud tie, American flags all over,” he remembered.
In the days following 9/11, airplanes all around the world were grounded. But one morning while shaving, Duehring said he had a moment of inspiration. After talking with his staff, he said he approached Chu with the idea: “Have the president contact the governors, and have the governors call out the National Guard to provide security for the airports.” Chu approved it.
Duehring typed up his proposal and ran it to the secretary of the army, who was meeting with President George W. Bush that morning. “The secretary of the army took it, briefed it to the president. The president snapped his fingers and said, ‘That’s it. Make it happen.’ And it went from concept to approval by the president in five-and-a-half hours, which is probably a world record here in Washington,” Duehring said.
Governors sent National Guard troops to more than 400 airports throughout the country. Several months later, President Bush signed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act Nov. 19, 2001, creating the Transportation Security Administration.
A parishioner of St. Paul Mission in Hague, Duehring counts himself lucky that the Pentagon renovations had relocated him and his staff, keeping them safe that day. He said that in photos of the impact site, you can see the location of his office, next to the gaping hole. “It was a close call,” he said. “We would have had 75 or 80 people killed.” He said he often thanks his guardian angel for saving him.
Donofrio can be reached at anna.donofrio@catholicherald.com.com.
