Fifteen years ago, the world changed.
Nearly everyone old enough to remember the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, does remember — where they were, who they were with, what they were doing and, with a clarity unclouded by time, how it felt, how it ached.
A day that could have been like any other turned into a day unlike all that came before and one that colored every day that followed.
For a few, the events became the catalyst for a life redirected, for a life repurposed, for a life unimaginable on Sept. 10, 2001.
On the 15th anniversary of Sept. 11, The Sunday Times presents some of their stories:
‘9/11 was the catalyst’
Noah Dolph sat in the glow of his parents’ television, watching the north tower of the World Trade Center fall.
His seventh-grade class dismissed early that Tuesday morning in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He was just 11 in 2001, but watching what unfolded in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania stirred an innate calling for military service.
“When 9/11 happened, it was kind of hard to process,” said Mr. Dolph, 27, of Union Dale. “I knew from seeing it on television ... that it was a big deal. ... If New York City and these huge towers that were kind of representative of the American dream are so easily taken away, then how vulnerable is the rest of the country?”
This realization, and the lingering anxiety of another potential attack, stuck with Mr. Dolph, who comes from a military family.
“I became somewhat more protective,” he said. “I didn’t like the idea of there being terrorism domestically. I wanted to maybe do something about that.”
That “something” ultimately led to his enlistment in the Marine Corps infantry in 2007. He was only 17, so he needed his parents’ consent. They were understandably hesitant, given the combat he would inevitably see, but Mr. Dolph, citing a “moral responsibility,” remained steadfast in his conviction and eventually won their blessing.
He joined 159,240-plus people who enlisted in the Air Force, Army, Marines and Navy in fiscal year 2007, according to data provided by the U.S. Department of Defense.
In 2008, Mr. Dolph served his first tour of duty in Iraq, where he acted as part of the personal security detachment for his battalion commander. At the time, the country was relatively quiet. His second deployment, to Marjah, Afghanistan, in 2010, was much different. Soldiers engaged in dangerous fire fights and faced the threat of improvised explosive devices, he said. The war was costly; friends didn’t come home.
“Not everyone came back from that deployment,” said Mr. Dolph, adding that the enemy was unconventional and bombs made of fertilizer were a realistic threat.
Through it all, however, memories of 9/11 remained in the back of Mr. Dolph’s mind.
“It was something that you could use to remind you ... why you were there,” he said. “If you’re struggling to find a reason, the best reason is the guy next to you, and then another reminder is 9/11 was the catalyst for this entire war. We’re here now. We want to keep terrorism on this side of the world.”
Mr. Dolph acknowledged that his personal connection to 9/11 was more tenuous than that of many of his fellow Marines, some of whom lost friends or loved ones in the attacks and many of whom enlisted in the days immediately following.
One was a New York City firefighter, haunted by horrific memories.
“He lost some friends during the attacks and he kept a couple of pictures with him at all times,” Mr. Dolph said. “He had pictures of mangled bodies in rubble on 9/11. He always kept that with him in his blouse pocket. I thought that was pretty powerful. There’s definitely a lot of people who were really affected. And then there were people who ... saw this as another reason to help the cause.”
Today, Mr. Dolph knows the threat of domestic terror is still very real. Look at the recent attacks in Orlando and San Bernadino, he said. It disheartens him to see cities in which he fought fall again to terrorist organizations. He thinks the American withdrawal from the Middle East was premature.
Mr. Dolph was honorably discharged from the Marines in 2011, but still feels compelled to serve. Last year, he graduated from helicopter flight school in Arizona, and just returned to school to study radiologic technology in the hopes of becoming an X-ray technician.
“Ideally down the line, I’d love to be a helicopter pilot for a hospital and do medivac flights, and get to crash scenes and potentially save someone’s life,” he said. “Or, in the radiologic technology field, maybe go back overseas and work on a military base for the guys who do get injured overseas during their deployments.”
‘Choices along the way’
When people write or talk about the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the story often opens with the description of a beautiful late summer morning without a cloud in the sky.
Teresa Grettano, Ph.D., finds meaning in those accounts beyond the words themselves.
“Why do we start most of the 9/11 stories that way, and what effect does it have on what comes after that — the rest of the story that you’re telling?” asked Dr. Grettano, an assistant professor of English at the University of Scranton. “We’ve made choices along the way, as a culture, as a country, to discuss this event in certain ways when we had other choices.”
It is the language of 9/11, and for the past 15 years it molded Dr. Grettano’s life and career.
Since 2011, Dr. Grettano has taught a first-year seminar class at the university, “Making Meaning of 9/11,” in which she challenges her students to explore the cultural narrative of Sept. 11 and how the terrorist attacks shaped their understanding of themselves and the world.
Her own 9/11 story began at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, where the native New Yorker had just completed her master’s degree and was teaching on the day of the attacks amid circumstances that would plant the seeds for her study of the discourse of Sept. 11 and its significance.
Of the 25 students in her first-year writing class for non-native English speakers at South Alabama, 20 came from the Middle East, and 18 of those were male.
Dr. Grettano, who had family in New York City on Sept. 11 and lost a firefighter cousin in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, wanted to prepare her students for the backlash she knew would come. She wrote out a statement about the need to talk about the events in a calm and mature way.
She ended up sharing it with all her classes.
About a week later, Dr. Grettano sat down and prepared a detailed outline for a five-chapter doctoral dissertation of the effects of the attacks — “We weren’t even calling it 9/11 then” — on international students at universities in the United States.
“In terms of life choices ... I knew at that point, if I was going to get a Ph.D., that more than likely my dissertation would be on 9/11, and it was,” she said.
By the time she finished her dissertation in 2013, its focus shifted to rhetorical education in the aftermath of Sept. 11, which is more in line with the class she now teaches at the university.
Most of today’s college students were still preschoolers in 2001, and in many cases their understanding of 9/11 is dictated by the “overarching stories that have prevailed in the last 15 years,” Dr. Grettano said.
For example, about three years ago, as Dr. Grettano read through the journals her students kept as one of their class assignments, she noticed the first five or six all used the same words — “that fateful day” — to describe Sept. 11. She started keeping a tally and found the phrase in 25 of the 36 journals.
When she returned their notebooks and quizzed the students about their use of the phrase, some became angry.
“They were like, ‘What do you mean? That’s the way you say it. How is that wrong?’” Dr. Grettano said. “It’s not a matter of anything being right or wrong. It’s a matter of understanding the language we use to talk about these things and the effect that language has. Obviously, somewhere along the line of their lives, they all learned that 9/11 was a ‘fateful day.’ So then you have them look at what it means — not just where did you get it and why are you using it but what the effects are of you using it.”
Dr. Grettano recalled one of her faculty colleagues once described Sept. 11 as a “moving target.” It is, she said, an event with a language that is constantly evolving as attitudes change and the attacks fade further into history.
There is a mythology associated with 9/11, with misconceptions that persist, she said, but her work is not as much about correcting information as it is about understanding what we believe and why.
“I’m in rhetoric, and in rhetoric you can study basically anything you want as a text,” Dr. Grettano said. “The people in literature study literature as texts. I’m studying 9/11 as a text and analyzing it very much so in the same way literary critics would study a piece of literature.”
‘I feel at home’
The attacks of 9/11 were momentous for Riaz Hussain, Ph.D. They cast a suspicious spotlight on the Muslim-American community, of which he is a member. They also resulted in his son and his grandson, both members of the Army, serving dangerous tours in Iraq.
“It was a terrible day,” he said.
Born in Pakistan, where he earned doctorates in physics and finance, Dr. Hussain moved with his wife to the U.S. in 1960. He made Scranton his home in 1966.
The couple’s son, retired Maj. Paul Hussain, was born in the U.S. and served the country, just as his son, Capt. John Hussain, does now.
In his home country, Dr. Hussain taught a young Pervez Musharraf, who went on to become president of Pakistan from 2001 to 2008. In his adopted hometown, his students became local politicians, judges and doctors.
Before 9/11, the professor said American Muslims lived mostly in peaceful incognito, without much notice from their neighbors. That changed on the day of the attack.
Like most, he watched on television as the second plane hit the World Trade Center.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “It was so surreal.”
As the imam of the mosque on the University of Scranton campus, he led the first service after the attack. He still remembers faculty members who attended in solidarity with the school’s Muslim community, and the campus police car parked out front for security.
The university granted the mosque to the Muslim community 20 years ago. Unlike a priest, an imam is not ordained by a higher-ranking religious official. Instead, members chose the person to guide the mosque.
Dr. Hussain writes and reads sermons based on the teachings of the Quran but often applies it to modern issues like addiction, child abuse and terrorism.
“My sermons are very liberal,” he said. “Not dogmatic. I think Islam is a flexible, moderate religion. Moderate is the key word. I don’t want to be a hard-liner that (says) you must do this thing.”
The 9/11 attacks brought a diametrically-opposed viewpoint of Islam into the lives and minds of many Americans. It also brought added scrutiny to the millions of Muslim Americans living here, and the anxiety that comes with it.
Dr. Hussain compared the situation to what Japanese-Americans faced after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
Eventually the unfair association will fade from people’s minds, he said. This year’s presidential campaign, he said, only inflames the issue.
The finance professor is quick to point out he felt none of the tension that other American Muslims experienced. His decades of living in the city and his deep integration here — he’s the treasurer of the neighborhood group in the Hill Section where he lives — has inoculated him to those concerns.
“When you live in a city for a number of years, you end up knowing everyone,” he said. “I feel comfortable. I feel at home. I feel at peace.”
‘I just wanted to help’
On her last day of vacation 15 years ago, Mary Kay Goddard flipped on her TV and saw the twin towers “crumble like cardboard.”
All the death and suffering devastated the emergency medical technician and mother of three. She couldn’t sit around and do nothing. That afternoon, the Falls Twp. woman drove to the Scranton chapter of the American Red Cross to volunteer as a disaster worker.
“I just wanted to help,” she said. “Some way.”
She was part of a national wave of more than 57,000 people who enlisted with the organization in the wake of the attack. Since then, the 66-year-old woman has traveled the country assisting people at various disaster sites. After joining the Red Cross, she worked at 28 disaster sites, including three-week stints in Virginia, Texas and Florida in the aftermath of several hurricanes.
“I’m sorry I didn’t join it sooner,” she said. “I would have had a lot more time to help people.”
She deployed to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, after Hurricane Katrina hit there in 2005.
“It was devastation like I’ve never seen before,” she said. “There was not a home standing.”
She also answers the call locally when floods and fire destroy buildings and drive people from their homes. After flooding caused by Tropical Storm Lee in 2011, she worked in logistics, delivering supplies like cots and blankets to people evacuated from their homes in Luzerne County.
On those many missions, Ms. Goddard tries to put herself in the position of the victims.
“If my house caught fire and burned down,” she said, “I’d want someone there to help me.”
Semi-retired, Ms. Goddard still keeps a part-time job serving others at a personal care home in Clarks Summit. She is taking a temporary break from Red Cross volunteering to care for her teenage grandson. Her son, who is the boy’s father, died earlier this year from a drug overdose.
She continues to focus on helping others, whether it is those she helps at her job, her grandson or her four other grandchildren who live down the street. She tries to instill a sense of service in the children. Her 12-year-old granddaughter, Lily, does charity work with organizations like Friends of the Poor, and some of the children are eager to help the Red Cross, she said.
“It just makes me feel good about myself to go out and help people,” Ms. Goddard said. “I never realized that prior to 9/11.”
‘A very different war’
Inspired by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Michael Calore joined the Army in 2002 to take the fight to the enemy.
But his biggest battle came in the years after he returned home from two tours of duty in Iraq.
Suffering from crippling post-traumatic stress disorder, Mr. Calore sat with a gun in his bedroom and came close to suicide one day in April 2011.
“I was going to shoot myself. I was depressed. I was tired of not being able to sleep, of feeling so worn down. ... I was thinking to myself, ‘It’s OK. You’re tired and it’s time to stop this. It’s over. We can sleep, I can sleep if I’m dead,’” the Hanover Twp. man recalled.
After that, he sought help.
Mr. Calore, 33, wrote an online book about his experiences, called “Army Coffee Sucks.” He now works as a pharmacy technician and was just hired for a state government job in the disability office.
“I don’t regret much,” he said. “My only regret is I wish I got help for PTSD sooner. I wish I was able to admit it sooner and get the help I needed. I wasn’t able to sleep for almost 12 years.”
He was attending Luzerne County Community College at the time of the terrorist attacks. It was the day before his 19th birthday.
As he and his mother watched the twin towers fall, they began worrying about Mr. Calore’s brother, Mark, who was in basic training for the Army at the time.
“Somewhere in that national sense of tragedy — that silent reverence that we felt — I guess we could hear, I could hear, the beating of war drums far off in the distance,” Mr. Calore said.
He finished the school year, then joined the Army in August 2002.
As an infantry soldier, Mr. Calore took part in the invasion in Iraq that began in March 2003. His unit was greeted as liberators, he said, as it easily moved through the country with limited resistance.
He wouldn’t experience the true rigors of war until his second deployment in June 2004.
“By that point, it was a very different war,” Mr. Calore recalled. “There were more IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and coordinated attacks. They had time to prepare ambush attacks.”
He survived perilous gun battles and dodged mortar attacks. He lost some friends in battle, then felt survivor’s guilt.
When it came time to leave Iraq, military officials debriefed Mr. Calore and his comrades and asked if they were having any PTSD symptoms. To be macho, almost no one answered honestly, he said.
Mr. Calore said he suffered nightmares and flashbacks for years until a college counselor, recognizing something was wrong, asked him a series of questions, including if he wanted to harm himself.
“I said yes,” he said. “It was the first time I admitted it. Yes, I was suicidal at that time.”
He eventually entered an inpatient treatment facility in New Jersey, where he learned to recognize and manage his symptoms.
Reluctance to seek help for PTSD is common, said Matthew Dooley, a staff psychologist for the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Plains Twp.
However, it’s becoming more acceptable for veterans to admit having problems, he said.
“Enough to say progress has been made, but not nearly enough,” Dr. Dooley said.
‘A walking target’
Fizza Saeed was in class when the first plane hit the World Trade Center.
In fourth grade at Dover Plains Elementary in New York, Ms. Saeed remembered teachers coming in and out of the classroom, but she didn’t realize what had happened until she got home to find her mother, father and grandmother huddled around the television, watching news coverage of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“You could see the worried expressions on their faces,” she said.
Her family’s worries had only just begun.
Over the past 15 years, Ms. Saeed, 23, who was born in Pakistan and grew up in Sugarloaf Twp., said she witnessed her family “treated differently” because of their Muslim faith.
“Looking back on that day as an American, I mourn,” she said. “You have to mourn for all the innocent lives that were taken away. But as a Muslim, I feel like that’s when I became a walking target.”
Ms. Saeed’s family reacted to the 9/11 terrorist attacks as any American family living near the New York City area might, she said — with worry, concern and fear to know “something was happening on our land.”
Things changed a few weeks later after the hijackers’ identities and motives became clearer.
“When more information was coming out, that’s when things got a little tougher for us,” she said. “People started ... just associating us with what had occurred and we had nothing to do with it.”
Kids at school bullied Ms. Saeed to the point that she stopped riding the bus. One boy told her to “go home and put on her turban.” She remembers asking her mother what a turban was.
“Kids were just terrible,” she said. “Our neighbors treated us differently. Comments were said to the point cops had to come into it.”
Ms. Saeed, a 2014 graduate of King’s College studying at New York Chiropractic College in Seneca Falls, said she grew up dealing with misconceptions and “ignorance” about her faith.
“Islam is so similar to Christianity and Judaism with what’s right and what’s wrong,” she said. “A lot of what’s happening in the world, people see just a small image that doesn’t represent a majority of Muslims.”
Fifteen years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Ms. Saeed said her family continues to face poor treatment from neighbors and others.
“I’m a citizen of this country but when people see me and know me by my faith they assume I’m not American,” she said. “I don’t understand why you can’t be American and Muslim.”
Her 13-year-old brother is taunted in school, she said. When he arrived late the morning after a terrorist attack in Nice, France earlier this year, Ms. Saeed said a classmate asked him, “Oh, are you late because you were in (France) last night?”
“It’s a conversation I constantly have with him,” she said. “This isn’t everyone, not everyone feels like this. Instead of getting angry, you have to educate them. It’s your job to ... give these individuals a good portrayal of Islam.”
‘We are all connected’
The ways in which people of different cultures understand and live with each other in this interconnected world always interested Sondra Myers.
She refers to the subject as “interdependence,” a concept that became more imperative for her after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The tragedy ushered in “another age of anxiety,” said Mrs. Myers, 82, of Scranton, inspiring paranoia and new fears that created obstacles to understanding others.
As questions of homeland security and the impending military response consumed the national conversation after 9/11, Mrs. Myers and several others working for a project called the Democracy Collaborative mulled a different response — “reminding people of our interdependence and our responsibility to each other even in the face of the attack.”
That idea led to the first Interdependence Day, celebrated at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia on Sept. 12, 2003. The event offered an opportunity to reflect on the attacks and a forum to discuss the role empathy plays in creating a peaceful, productive global society.
For Mrs. Myers, director of the Schemel Forum and senior fellow for International, Civic and Cultural Projects at the University of Scranton, interdependence is a reality, not a philosophic ideal.
“We are all connected things, whether we like it or not,” she said, adding that people have a moral responsibility to use those connections for the greater good.
While there are often great cultural differences between the United States and Afghanistan, for example, Mrs. Myers said she believes we must look for areas of similarity to try to understand other cultures.
“You have to talk about ... (what) we have in common with others,” she said. “We all like to be loved and respected.”
Connecting on the basis of our shared humanity is a means of transcending biases, and a tool for combating feelings of paranoia or xenophobia that terrorism inspires — feelings that undermine the message of interdependence.
Scranton has celebrated Interdependence Day since 2006 with themed panel discussions, lectures and, occasionally, art exhibits.
People have been receptive to the message, Mrs. Myers said. This is especially true of younger people, who, despite growing up in a post-9/11 world, have been raised in a more diverse and multicultural world, she said.
As for others, Mrs. Myers recognizes the challenge of erasing long-standing prejudices, but that’s not stopping her from trying.
“It’s hard to change people’s minds, but it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible,” she said. “So we just keep plugging away at it. That’s our job.”
BOB KALINOWSKI AND SARAH SCINTO, staff writers, contributed to this report.
INTERDEPENDENCE DAY
This year's Interdependence Day will be celebrated with a reception and panel discussion Monday from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the Scranton Cultural Center. The title of the event is “Immigration, Community, Interdependence.”
Sondra Myers, co-founder of Interdependence Day, will moderate the discussion.
Panel participants are:
• Michael Hanley, CEO of United Neighborhood Centers
• Tariq Adwan, doctorate in cell biology from the University of Colorado, native of Palestine
• Elitsa Neshkova, nurse from Bulgaria, now living in Scranton
• Sonya Sarner, program director for Catholic Social Services
Panelists will explore the theme of how immigrants assimilate into and connect with the community, and how the community can benefit from their ideas and experiences.
Those interested in attending should call Mrs. Myers at 570-941-4089.
— JEFF HORVATH
LANGUAGE OF 9/11
9/11: Commonly used as shorthand for the terrorist attacks that took place Sept. 11, 2001. It is unique in that it references a date, in contrast to other historical events known by geography-based shorthand terms such as “Appomattox” or “Pearl Harbor.”
Ground Zero: In the context of 9/11, refers to the former site of the World Trade Center’s twin towers. It originated as a term for the point on the earth’s surface directly above or below an exploding nuclear bomb.
“Let’s roll”: Words spoken by Todd Beamer before he and other United Flight 93 passengers stormed the cockpit in an attempt to retake the doomed aircraft from its hijackers. Others would subsequently use the phrase as a statement of American resolve.
Homeland security: Refers to national security, especially with respect to threats within one’s borders. Rarely heard before Sept. 11, the term came into broader usage after President George W. Bush established the new Office of Homeland Security just days after the attacks.
Al Qaeda: International terrorist network founded in the 1980s that carried out the attacks. Before 9/11, most Americans had only vague knowledge of the organization and its leader, Osama bin Laden.
— DAVID SINGLETON
EVENTS COMMEMORATING 9/11
Ninth annual Sgt. Jan Argonish Ride: Sunday, 8 a.m., Jessup Hose Company No. 2 Carnival Grounds, 333 Hill St. Sgt. Argonish was killed on Aug. 27, 2007, during an ambush in the Kunar province of Afghanistan. Registration: 8 a.m. – 11 a.m.; Ride starts at noon. For more information, including registration fees, visit www.jansride.com.
9/11 Memorial at McDade Park: Sunday, 9 a.m., Bald Mountain Road, Scranton. The annual commemoration will include an ecumenical invocation, a performance of the national anthem, a fireman’s bell ceremony and more.
Day of Remembrance: Sunday, 9:30 a.m., Waverly Community House, 1115 N Abington Road, Waverly Twp. Community pledge of allegiance in honor of the men and women who serve on the front lines in service to the United States. Flag ceremony conducted by Clarks Summit VFW at the flagpole on the front lawn. Open to the public.
Tower steel unveiling: Sunday, noon, Dickson City Borough Building, Enterprise Drive. Unveiling of the “last piece of steel from the Twin Towers” donated to the community.
ENLISTMENT NUMBERS AFTER 9/11
The number of people who enlisted for active duty military service for the first time. The data does not include the number of active duty officers, or reflect the military’s reserve component.
Fiscal 2001: 182,976
Fiscal 2002: 181,510
Fiscal 2003: 176,408
Fiscal 2004: 175,972
Fiscal 2005: 152,160
Fiscal 2006: 167,389
Fiscal 2007: 159,246
— DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
HOW TO DONATE
To donate to the American Red Cross, visit www.redcross.org, call 800-RED-CROSS or text the word REDCROSS to 90999 to make a one-time $10 donation from your cellphone bill. People interested in volunteering locally can call the Red Cross of Northeast PA at 570-823-7161 or visit the website.