The Breeze JMU’s award-winning newspaper since 1922
September 9, 2021 VOL. 100 NO.04 BREEZEJMU.ORG
JMU REMEMBERS It’s one of the only days where almost everyone on the East Coast can tell you where they were and what they were doing. Sarah Ward was a junior at JMU that day; she watched the second tower fall, sitting in front of the TV in her apartment’s living room. Tonya Amarino was a senior living in the Sunchase apartments; she and her roommates heard about the first tower on the radio while getting ready for class, then watched the second fall live on TV. Mary Larsen was a freshman living in Eagle Hall, watching it all happen. Adam Mattox was a freshman sitting in a calculus class in Burruss Hall when he heard the news. On Sept. 11, 2001, 19 members of the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda hijacked four planes, all headed for California: American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City at 8:46 a.m. United Flight 175 hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center at 9:03 a.m. American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., at 9:37 a.m. United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field in Pennsylvania at 10:03 a.m. Saturday marks the 20th anniversary of what’s often referred to as one of the darkest days in American history. The anniversary is also marked by the recent full withdrawal of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. The drawdown formally ends the longest war in the U.S. — a “never-ending” war — that started with the stated intent of quashing Al-Qaeda and making sure Afghanistan could no longer be used as a haven for terrorist organizations. Saturday also marks the anniversary of the death of four Dukes: Craig Blass, Matthew Horning, Bruce Simmons and Brian Thompson. Twenty years later, JMU remembers. Below are some of their stories. When Danielle Stephan, at the time a senior integrated science and technology major at JMU, found out something had happened in New York City, she was in the car on the way to attend a swimming class. She heard that a plane had hit 1 World Trade Center, the North tower, then right before she turned off the radio, she heard that 2 World Trade Center, the South tower, had also been hit. But, she went to class. It was once Stephan was in the pool that she realized her uncle, Gerard Gaeta, worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey — located on the 88th floor of 1 World Trade Center. As the realization began to sink in, the class instructor told everyone to get out of the pool: The Pentagon had been hit as well. At that point, she said, she “lost it.” Her father worked at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), just blocks away from the White House. She ran to put on her clothes, still soaking wet — she didn’t think to bother drying off — then arrived at her car in time to hear a news report that a bomb had gone off at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce building, across the street from the EPA. The report was incorrect, but at the time it was one more piece of information terrifying Stephan. When she got back to her apartment, she started scrambling to get in
contact with anybody she could. “We’re all frantically on the phone, trying to get in touch with anybody we can, and all I want to do is go home,” Stephan said. “I just want to go home to find my family.” Eventually, the news came through: Meunier Stephan’s father was safe and had found her mother, and her uncle had made it out of the North tower safely, all the way from the 88th floor. Several people on floors 88 through 94 died or were seriously injured. No one on the 91st floor or above survived. The events of Sept. 11 brought the country together, Stephan said, and it saddens her to see the division that’s returned in the 20 years since. “I miss that — I miss that feeling of being an American,” Stephan said. “It didn’t matter that we had different opinions, that we came from different backgrounds. We were just people, and we had survived this event together. That should have made us stronger. On Saturday, Stephan said, she’ll be thinking about that unity and the ways in which it’s been lost. Carol Benassi, who runs the JMU Nation Facebook page, was supposed to be in the same tower that morning. Benassi was working for a software company at the time and had a meeting scheduled for that Tuesday in the Windows on the World restaurant on the top floor of the North tower. The day before 9/11, the meeting was shifted back to Sept. 12. Instead of being at the top of the tower, Benassi was on her way to Times Square. When she and several coworkers who were also supposed to be at that meeting walked back into their office building, several other company employees fainted, having thought the group was dead. Benassi didn’t watch any footage for several days after, and she’s never been back to the site of the World Trade Center — “I probably need to get closure,” she said. Like Stephan, Benassi thinks back to the unity the country showed directly after the events of Sept. 11, saying she wishes for that unity once again — especially considering the current landscape of political polarization. “The one thing that I remember is that everybody was talking to everybody,” Benassi said. “Everybody was an American; everybody was getting along.” On Saturday, Benassi said, she’ll be at JMU for the football game, thinking about the events of Sept. 11 and the lives that day cost. She said she tries to fly on that day each year when possible as an act of remembrance and strength. Erin Meier, unlike Stephan and Benassi who have connections to New York City, has a connection to Washington, D.C. She works as a flight attendant, and that morning, she was supposed to be getting on American Airlines Flight 135 at 11 a.m. out of Dulles, the next flight from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles, after Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon. She was dropping Madison, her daughter who’s currently a fifthyear education major at JMU, off at daycare when she heard the news. see 20 YEARS, page 4