People from throughout the North Olympic Peninsula wrote the Peninsula Daily News and sent their thoughts and memories of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Here, they share their emotions and recollections with their neighbors.
Young mother watches veterans cry on 9/11
By Shenna Straling
Sept. 11 is a day I will never forget.
I was only 22 at the time and had just become a first-time mom.
I was on my way to my Lions Club meeting when I heard on the radio about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center.
At the time, I did not realize the World Trade Center was the Twin Towers, those amazing towers I was used to seeing in movies and in pictures.
When I got to the restaurant where the meeting was, I saw a huge hole in one of the towers on a big-screen TV.
The Lions Club I was in was primarily made up of veterans who had served our country during World War II.
I stood there in shock with them in front of the television and watched as the second plane hit.
My most vivid memory of Sept. 11, 2001, was seeing our heroes who had served and fought for our country crying — crying as they realized we were under attack, crying as our Pentagon was hit and crying as the towers fell.
I was not used to seeing men cry, especially men who could have been my grandpa.
I stayed there with them until they wanted to go home.
When I got home, I held my baby differently than I had ever before.
Life had much more meaning.
To this day, I turn on the news every morning before I leave to make sure our country is OK.
Straling later wrote:
It is so important for our country to remember and never forget what happened.
My baby is now 11, and we just watched “CNN Presents 9/11.”
We have talked about that day in detail, and I make sure she knows that yes, we were attacked, but more importantly, there were so many heroes that day from the fire departments, as well as the police officers and the heroes on United 93.
That is what we want to remember most from that day. Not the hate that caused it.
________
Shenna Straling is the branch manager of the Sterling Savings Bank’s Port Angeles office.
Fisherman on vacation: We were at war
By Dan McGee
Launched Zodiac at 6 a.m. Silver King Resort.
AWESOME SUNRISE/Day and fishing limits.
Store person stopped me bragging mid-sentence at 2 p.m. and filled me in re: event.
VIVID MEMORY: When leaving Silver King on 9/12/01, all road equipment (massive project) had already been removed from state Highway 112 EB to Joyce.
We were at war.
________
Dan McGee, who now lives in Lake Stevens, was vacationing in Clallam Bay on Sept. 11, 2001.
Teacher comforts kids on day of tragedy, horror
By Jennifer Frazier
I was a Special Education teacher in Colorado Springs on 9/11.
It was the longest teaching day of my life.
How do you explain to 5-year-olds that they are safe?
How do you comfort a hysterical fifth-grader whose dad was in New York at the time?
I gave more hugs and wiped more tears that day than any other teaching day in my career.
When the school day was over, I went home and called my mom to be reassured that I, too, was safe!
Later, she wrote:
There is a National Firefighters Memorial in Colorado Springs, and every year, I laid flowers there to give thanks.
________
Jennifer Frazier lives in Port Angeles. She teaches Seattle City University students specializing in special education and works for Peninsula College in the writing lab and as a math tutor.
National Guardsman prepared for action
By Jeffrey J. Thayer
I served for 25 years in the U.S. Army and the Washington Army National Guard.
I spent six years in the Army and the past 19 years as a National Guardsman.
I was mobilized for several tours in support of natural disasters — fighting fires, helping with flooding at Fir Island and the Battle of Seattle.
On Sept. 11, 2001, I was working as a sales representative for the local Budweiser distributor and was a part-time National Guardsman.
I first heard of the attacks in New York at 8:17 a.m. on that fateful morning and instantly realized that my life would change forever.
I received my first phone call from Fort Lewis at 8:25 a.m. on my cellphone and knew who it was before I answered the phone.
We were put on our first alert and were instructed to stay within two hours of Fort Lewis at all times and be available for immediate call-up.
We went into extensive training at our normal weekend drills for several months, and then my unit was activated, and we deployed to Iraq in April 2003.
We were deployed there until May 2003.
I was again activated in December 2005 and deployed to Afghanistan in February 2006.
I retired from military service in August 2007.
The picture I have included is me in Kabul, Afghanistan, in March 2006.
I am posing next to a piece of Tower II of the fallen Twin Towers in New York.
________
Jeffrey J. Thayer, a military retiree who works as a volunteer coaching youth sports, lives in Port Angeles.
Sept. 11, 2001, was ‘my saddest day’
By Eckart Mildenstein
The sleek towers of the World Trade Center were part of my life.
In the 1980s, for five years, I had an office there on the 34th floor.
During the following 16 years, I traveled daily through its subway station to get to my office nearby. And often I rode its superfast elevators when visiting clients.
I remember:
■ The magnificent view of Manhattan’s skyline from its windows, even more spectacular in the evening with millions of lights, best seen from its restaurant on the 106th floor.
■ A flyby of a space shuttle on the back of a transport plane.
■ The building creaking like a sailboat as it swayed in heavy winds (3 feet in any direction).
On 9/11, during the terrorist attack, I worked in midtown Manhattan without a view of the WTC.
If we had not had a TV running, we would not have noticed that, just few miles to the south, 2,800 people (including 400 heroic firefighters and police officers) were perishing in an inferno.
Thankfully, tens of thousands were saved.
It hit close to home: Some of my fellow commuters perished, and their cars were left on our parking lot for days.
The son of a colleague, just married, attended a conference on the 106th floor and died.
Five months earlier, a friend had quit his job in the WTC, and his successor was killed there.
An acquaintance got out but remained disturbed by the horrors.
Sept. 11, 2001, was my saddest day, and it changed our world.
________
Eckart Mildenstein, a retired financial analyst, moved to Sequim from the New York area in 2003.
Woman shares despair of New Yorker husband
By Maureen McElravy-Beh
While I am a local settler’s daughter, my husband is from Long Island.
We were glued to the television that morning, and he was especially solemn and sad.
After some time, I saw film footage taken from Battery Park, one place that was familiar to me from our visit there.
It was not until that moment, I think, that I felt the slightest measure of his despair.
All Americans were impacted, but none more so than those who call New York home.
My father once said the people of our nation had no inkling, nor could they fathom, the number of times our nation had been a target, and the enemy thwarted.
It is for our security, that we do not know.
God bless America and those who choose to protect us.
________
Maureen McElravy-Beh lives in the Sekiu-Neah Bay area.
Army veteran imagines agony of families
By Jim Boyer
I heard the news while getting ready for work.
I turned on the TV and saw it live just as the second plane hit.
That horrible image was subsequently eclipsed by the bodies falling from the towers.
It is impossible to imagine what those people went through in the final moments of their lives when they had to choose how to die.
The agony their families have endured, not knowing if one of those falling bodies was a person they loved, is something I still think about when that day is mentioned.
Did they hug their children and kiss their spouse?
Did they leave in a huff or rush off because they were late for work?
Did they agonize over something they said or didn’t say?
Later, we learned about the decision of the people on Flight 93 over Pennsylvania who chose to fight the hijackers in an attempt to stop them from completing their hateful mission of killing more innocent people on the ground.
I read the account of Todd Beamer talking with his wife and then the 9-1-1 operator who prayed with him and recited the Lord’s Prayer during the last moments of the flight.
I realized that how they lived is part of how they died, and that is true for all of us.
We are blessed with the days we have and should live them with that understanding.
________
Jim Boyer, an Army veteran, lives in Port Ludlow.