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Friday, Sep. 11, 2009

Let’s hope day never forgotten

CENTERVILLE — It might have been just another September morning, a Tuesday like any other on the calendar.

The dew was still on the ground. The breakfast dishes had been cleared.

Gene Estep was home from his swing shift as a private contractor in the transportation motor pool at Robins Air Force Base.

Then, at 8:45 a.m., some 770 miles away, a hijacked passenger jet crashed into the north tower at the World Trade Center in New York.

At 9:01, Joanne Kile called her parents from her home in Bonaire.

“Are you watching TV?” she asked her mother, Betty.

At 9:02, Betty Estep hurried to turn on the television in the living room.

At 9:03, she and her husband watched in horror as a second hijacked plane crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center and exploded.

Gene rubbed his eyes in disbelief. Was he dreaming? It all seemed surreal.

He was supposed to be in the backyard, tending to his vegetable garden.

Instead, he was watching the events of Sept. 11, 2001, unfold. The country he loves so dearly was being attacked by terrorists who had captured planes and turned them into missiles.

When he was 10 years old, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and America entered World War II. In 1950, he was drafted and joined the Air Force during the Korean War.

His life has always been wrapped up in airplanes. He’s now retired from a civil service job as an electrician on the C-130s at Robins Air Force Base.

Thirty-seven minutes after the second attack, the Federal Aviation Administration halted all flight operations at U.S. airports for the first time in history. Three minutes later, a commercial jet crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

At 10:10 a.m., a fourth hijacked airliner crashed near Shanksville, Pa., just 70 miles from where Gene grew up in Bellwood, Pa.

Although it has been eight years, time has not lifted the heavy veil of grief. He did not know any of the nearly 3,000 people who lost their lives that day, but he gets emotional every time he tries to talk about it.

A few years ago, a pilot gave him a patch with the emblem: “Sept. 11, 2001.”

“That is something I will keep forever to remind me of that terrible incident,” he said. “Shall we ever forget? Never! Never! Never! I think about all those men and women who got up to go to work that morning and never came home.

“But,” he said, “some people don’t even talk about 9/11 any more.”

He worries, as I do, there may come a time when Sept. 11 could be relegated to just another day.

On Memorial Day, people go to the lake and cook burgers in the backyard. Americans rarely pause to reflect on Pearl Harbor Day (Dec. 7) or D-Day (June 6).

Gene flies his flag on the front porch. He has considered putting up signs in his yard as reminders of 9/11.

Someday, he just might.

Two months after Sept. 11, Gene was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. That’s bad stuff. The doctors didn’t offer much hope. Now he’s cancer-free, and those same doctors call him their “diamond in the rough.”

He will soon see the birth of his first great-grandchild, due any day now. A bundle of joy will arrive in the midst of the saddest of anniversaries.

Life goes on, but he cannot forget.

Nor will he.