By Jeff Dolan, Director of Flight Services
There are some days you remember because of where you were.
September 11, 2001, is one of those days for me.
That morning, I was flying.
At the time, I was working for a smaller charter company in the Northeast, and I was also working toward my private pilot certificate. I was flying with a friend of mine from school, well north of New York City.
For pilots flying around the area, the Twin Towers were impossible to miss. I had used them as a landmark many times. You could see them from a long way off, and if I headed toward them, I knew I was getting close to where I needed to be.
That morning, when we turned back toward the city, something was wrong.
We could see smoke.
At first, we did what people do when something completely outside normal experience is happening: we tried to make it fit into something familiar.
Both of us had worked in restaurants, and we wondered whether the smoke could somehow be coming from Windows on the World at the top of the North Tower. But it was clearly coming from the wrong place.
We tuned the ADF to a local AM news station and heard the early reports that a small airplane had hit the World Trade Center.
Of course, we know now how incomplete those first reports were.
Within about 20 minutes, we were back on the ground. Before the full scope of what was happening was understood and before the nationwide ground stop had taken effect, military aircraft were already moving overhead.
Then came the waiting, watching and trying to understand.
I had four or five company airplanes scattered around the Northeast, and there was the immediate operational question of how we were going to get our crews home.
But the business questions became secondary very quickly.
My family knew I had been flying. My sister was trying to reach me to find out where I was and whether I was safe. My wife and daughter had plans to go shopping that day, and I remember calling them and saying, essentially, turn around and go home.
Nobody knew what was coming next.
A Beautiful Blue Sky
One of the details that has never left me is just how beautiful the weather was.
It was an absolutely clear blue-sky day.
That contrast made what we were seeing even harder to comprehend.
The smoke over New York lingered. The images were everywhere. Airplanes were grounded. Military aircraft were flying overhead. Like everyone else, we watched the news and tried to absorb what had happened.
For those of us connected to aviation, there was another layer to the shock.
Aircraft had always represented movement, opportunity and connection. Suddenly, airplanes had been turned into weapons.
Nothing about flying — or the world around it — felt quite the same afterward.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed that day. Families lost husbands, wives, sons, daughters, parents, colleagues and friends. First responders ran toward danger while thousands of others were trying to get away from it.
Those numbers are so large that, with enough time, there is a danger that they become abstract.
They shouldn’t.
Finding a Way to Remember
Years later, I became involved with the America’s 911 Foundation.
The organization began with a relatively small group of people who simply wanted to help after the attacks. Some of them rode motorcycles to Ground Zero in the days following September 11.
When they arrived, they quickly realized they were not trained responders and there was only so much they could physically do.
So they found something they could do.
They bought roses and handed them out to women they encountered around Ground Zero.
That simple beginning eventually grew into an organization dedicated to remembering those who were lost and supporting first responders and their families.
I have participated in the Foundation’s motorcycle ride three times.
The ride visits all three September 11 attack sites. It begins at the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, continues to the Pentagon, and then heads north toward New York City.
One of the memorable parts of the ride is entering Manhattan with hundreds of motorcycles together. On one of the rides I participated in, there were close to 600 bikes. When a group that size gets moving, the procession can stretch for miles.
Eventually, we make our way to Ground Zero.
It is difficult to describe what it feels like to arrive there as part of that group.
There is the sound of the motorcycles, certainly. But underneath that is something much more important: the knowledge that everyone is there for the same reason.
To remember.
Jeff and Linda Dolan in America’s 911 Ride 2021
Photo from the 911 Foundation
Photo from the 911 Foundation
“Never Forget” Has to Mean Something
Twenty-five years is a long time.
There is now an entire generation of Americans who were not alive on September 11, 2001. For them, the attacks are history rather than memory.
That makes the responsibility to remember even more important.
“Never forget” cannot simply be a phrase we post once a year.
It means remembering the people who went to work that morning and never came home.
It means remembering the passengers and crews aboard the four airplanes.
It means remembering the firefighters, police officers, emergency personnel and ordinary citizens who helped one another during circumstances nobody had ever imagined.
It also means supporting the people and organizations that continue to carry that memory forward.
For me, the America’s 911 Foundation has been one way to do that.
Others will have their own ways.
What matters is that we keep telling the stories.
I still remember that blue sky.
I still remember looking toward a landmark I had used countless times and seeing smoke instead.
I still remember the military aircraft overhead and the calls from family members trying to find out whether everyone was safe.
And every September 11, I am reminded that remembering is not about reopening old wounds.
It is about making sure the people, the courage and the lessons of that day do not disappear with time.
We owe them that.
Never forget.