Most everyone in America old enough to remember Sept. 11, 2001, has a story about that day, and just like with other significant events in history, most all can remember just where they were and what was going on in their lives when they heard the news. To commemorate this weekend’s tenth anniversary of that tragic day, here are a few remembrances from some folks in Madison County.
Susan Fisher, of Carlton
“I was working as a labor and delivery nurse in 2001,” Fisher said. “I was scheduled to work that day and heard about the first plane as I was driving to work. As the news unfolded the day became more and more surreal. Laboring women were watching the news (glued to the TV as everyone was). The families of these expectant moms were watching TV in the birthing rooms and I heard more than one family member thoughtlessly say, ‘what a terrible day to be born.’ I eventually started asking the families to turn off the TVs. It broke my heart that the pleasure of welcoming these new babies into the world was dampened by the grim reality of that day and that their birthdays would be forever linked to one of the most horrible events in US history.”
Commission chairman
Anthony Dove
Dove was working on a construction job on Mitchell Bridge Road in Athens when he heard the news.
“I was grading around a house when my brother-in-law drove up and asked if I’d heard about what was going on in New York – that planes had been flown into buildings,” he said. “We started thinking that we might be under some sort of attack, so I called my wife at home and asked her to pick up the girls from school.”
Dove said no one knew the scope of what was happening at the time, and he just wanted to know his family was in one place.
“After a while, we just quit work and all went home,” he said. “You’ll definitely always remember where you were when that happened.”
He said his oldest daughter, Jenna, later asked what she could do to help people involved in the attack.
“She sat out in front of Hull Sanford Elementary and took up ‘Pennies for Patriots,’ for the American Red Cross,” he said, adding that she raised several hundred dollars for her efforts.
Sandra Phillips
“I was teaching fifth grade at Ila Elementary when I heard the news,” Phillips said. “It was probably one of the most disturbing days of my life. It was shock, horror, and fear all combined into one. I was actually afraid for the safety of our country, especially after hearing that the Pentagon had been hit. Everyone wondered when it would end, what would be hit next. I feel like God gave me the strength to carry on that day in class.”
Planning and zoning administrator Linda Fortson
“I was driving to Royston that morning to get a hair cut,” Fortson said. “I heard it on the radio, that a plane had gone through the twin towers. My son, David, was in Marine boot camp on Parris Island and family members were calling me to find out if David had already graduated and been released into the service. I was hysterical by the time I got to Royston, worried about my son.”
She said everyone in the salon was upset and watching TV. “They just kept showing it over and over again,” she said.
Fortson said she couldn’t contact David in boot camp, and it would be a week before he found out exactly what had happened — in a letter from his mother.
“He said they were exercising outside that day and knew something had happened when all the sirens on the base went off,” she said. They were taken inside, but no one explained the situation. Fortson said she saved all the newspapers and magazines about the tragedy she could get to keep for him. David graduated from boot camp a few weeks later – Sept. 23, 2001.
David Camp, Madison County 911 director
“It was a beautiful day. I was back there in my office. And the dispatchers called and said a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. So I walked back to the radio room and sure enough, there it was on the TV. We were thinking ‘How could a plane hit the World Trade Center on such a clear day?’ It’s almost impossible. We just kept watching. And of course, the second plane hit and we knew then what had happened. I called my wife and said ‘You need to turn the TV on. We’ve been attacked.’”
Camp said the 9-1-1 office had planned open house for the public for Sept. 23 of that year.
“We had put flyers all around, advertised it,” said Camp. “We were going to have a fire truck and a public safety day. Because we were relatively new at the time. We started June 1, 1999. There were start up problems. So we had worked through a majority of those. We felt we could bring the taxpayers in and show them what they had paid for. But we shut that down and didn’t feel like it was the time.”
Camp said there weren’t many calls to 9-1-1 on 9/11. He said calls came later.
“After that we’d get calls about suspicious packages and powders, things like that,” said Camp. “It was new to everybody how to respond. It changed the country, changed the way we thought about things.”
Elizabeth Prata, of Comer
“I was in my newspaper office (in Maine),” she said. “Tuesday is a big paper day, we go to print Wednesday morning. I rented the office from my friend who lived in a big farmhouse, and she called me from her living room. She said quietly but with fervor, ‘come here now.’”
The first plane had just hit the North Tower in New York. Prata said she and her friend watched TV with their eyes open, breathing shallowly and with arms at their sides… until the second plane hit. “Our eyes locked together and we knew without saying a word that this was an attack,” she said. “We also knew that nothing would ever be the same. We watched until another plane hit the Pentagon. It felt like the world was coming to an end, it really did. We thought the world was ending. A knot was in my stomach and coherent thoughts refused to form in my head.”
Later in the day, Prata said they decided the most patriotic thing they could do to support the Constitution that day was to get the paper out. “The terrorists were not going to stop the presses,” she said. “They were not going to stop freedom from ringing out. And that is what we did.”
Kelly Pilgrim Cassidy
“I was doing cancer research at the Medical University of South Carolina and I remember everyone crowded into the waiting rooms for days,” Cassidy said. “Patients, doctors, techs, nurses, etc. ….all crowded around those little mounted TVs in the corner watching the news. It was before Smart Phones and getting the news on the go…so all the barriers were broken down and everyone was in the same room focusing on that little TV.”
Max and Betty Sartain
The Sartains were actually visiting Washington D.C. on Sept. 11 with the Northeast Georgia United Methodist Women’s group for a seminar. They were visiting U.S. Representative Charlie Norwood’s office when they heard about the attack on the World Trade Center.
And they were standing on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol when they heard the Pentagon had been hit.
“We’ve often wondered if we’d have died that day if the other plane hadn’t crashed in Pennsylvania, since it may have been heading for the Capitol,” Mrs. Sartain said.
Mr. Sartain said he would never forget the van loaded with men with machine guns that circled the Capitol building as they stood there.
“It was scary,” he said. “And it was strange to see Washington at a standstill with no traffic.”
He took a picture of the smoke rising from the Pentagon.
Since the city was on lockdown, they went and stayed with friends in their hotel until that afternoon, when the monorail began running again. “I don’t think I breathed a sigh of relief until we got back to our hotel away from Washington,” Mrs. Sartain said. “Needless to say, we drove home the next day.”
