Fall and Rise

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  Lee and Eunice walked among the graduates15 at Boston University in May 2002 to accept Sue’s posthumous PhD, which her mentor completed on her behalf. The school established the Annual Sue Kim Hanson Lecture in Immunology. Lee and Eunice created undergraduate writing prizes and an author series in Peter’s name at Northeastern University. Peter, Sue, and Christine were remembered in their hometown of Groton, Massachusetts, at a memorial garden with a flagpole, lilac bushes, and three strong trees surrounding a bronze plaque on a boulder.

  A young classical composer named Carl Schroeder, who read about the Hansons, wrote a piece for orchestra called “Christine’s Lullaby.” People who heard it began to donate money, and soon these donations endowed a “pain-free” treatment room in the pediatrics department at the Boston Medical Center, where Sue had studied for her PhD. Butterflies painted on the walls paid tribute to the family, with tie-dyed wings for Peter.

  Lee and Eunice spoke to reporters and to groups. They kept their tidy home filled with photos and mementos of their family. Eunice wrote public letters to her lost family. “We miss you so much,”16 she wrote in one. “Peter, I still feel the terrible pain that went through my whole being when Dad, holding the phone, heard your last words. . . . The thought of the three of you in each other’s arms in that final moment will never leave me. They tell me that there could not have been any pain, but you knew what was happening. How could those murderers have looked at the innocent people on the plane, at little Christine, and so cruelly kill? How could their leaders, hidden and protected in a far-off land, laugh and joke about their lack of humanity?”

  Into their eighties, Lee and Eunice traveled repeatedly to Guantanamo Bay to represent Peter, Sue, and Christine during the run-up to the military prosecutions. When U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden, Eunice told a reporter she felt overcome by complicated feelings.17 “It was tears and mixed emotions that you shouldn’t be happy for a man’s death,” Eunice said. “Then we came to the reality that this man was responsible for the deaths of thousands of people across the world. I feel so great for the justice—we waited ten years for this.”

  Then Eunice added: “It’s not going to bring my kids back. . . . I don’t believe in the word ‘closure,’ because this is not a book.”

  During the 2006 trial of al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, a prosecutor asked Lee Hanson to express his family’s loss. “They took away our dreams,” Lee said as jurors wept. “They took away our future. . . . Peter and Sue were just so much, so good, and so alive, and they lived life and they loved people and they loved their families. And we’re going to miss all the celebrations. . . . All of those occasions when Christine would have graduated from kindergarten and from the first grade and so forth and so on. And I decided I was going to try to stick around long enough to make sure I got to her wedding someday. All those things are gone. And it is, it is so sad.”

  Peg Ogonowski, wife of Flight 11 pilot John Ogonowski, remained with American Airlines as a flight attendant until 2008. She flew less often after 9/11, but she didn’t want to give up her job entirely. Partly it was financial, as she raised their three daughters. But she had another reason: “I didn’t want terrorists telling me I had to leave my career.”18

  Peg remarried shortly before the tenth anniversary of the attacks, but she kept White Gate Farm. In the years after 9/11, Cambodian farmers continued to grow vegetables there. Seeing them working on the land that John loved, with the skills he had taught them, gave Peg solace.

  On September 11, as Andrea LeBlanc got ready for work in Rye, New Hampshire, a carpenter friend worked outside, building a new deck. The carpenter heard on the radio that a plane had hit the North Tower, so he called to Andrea and rushed inside to turn on the television. They watched as the second plane hit the South Tower.

  “Don’t be on that plane,” Andrea pleaded. “Don’t be on that plane.”

  As she coped with Bob’s death, Andrea LeBlanc grew convinced that the last thing he would have wanted was for anyone else to suffer, anywhere, in his name. She took what she acknowledged to be the unpopular position that the wrong response was more violence, and so became involved with like-minded people affected by the attacks who organized into an antiwar group called September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. The name came from a statement by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”

  As described in the pages of the group’s history, members believed that “the violence that took their loved ones’ lives19 could spin out of control, and fear could be manipulated by politicians and the media to justify foreign and domestic policies that would increase violence while decreasing U.S. citizens’ rights and liberties over the years to come.”

  As Andrea put it: “It was obvious pretty quickly20 that we would be bombing Afghanistan, and I felt so bad for those people. What happened to those young men, what terrible things had shaped them into people who were willing to kill innocent people? . . . Something bad has to happen, whether it’s environment or genetics or society, and I think we bear some responsibility as a nation for our foreign policy. That’s one of the scary things right now: Are the decisions being made radicalizing more people?”

  Repairs to the collapsed section of the Pentagon, dubbed the Phoenix Project, proceeded at a breakneck pace. Three thousand construction workers set a one-year completion deadline for themselves, independent of the $700 million contract. Among the hardhats working around the clock was Michael Flocco, a sheet metal worker whose only child, twenty-one-year-old Petty Officer Matthew Flocco, died in the Pentagon attack. New safety features in the rebuilt 400,000-square-foot Wedge One included bright exit signs placed on walls and doors inches above the floor, so they’d be visible to someone crawling through dense smoke.

  At a ceremony on September 11, 2002, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declared: “We’re here today21 to honor those who died in this place and to rededicate ourselves to the cause for which they gave their lives, the cause of human liberty.”

  Later in his speech, Rumsfeld said: “The road ahead is long. But while we have not yet achieved victory, we know in one important sense that the terrorists who attacked us have already been defeated. They were defeated before the first shot was fired in Afghanistan. They were defeated because they failed utterly to achieve their objectives. The terrorists wanted September 11 to be a day when innocence died. Instead it was a day when heroes were born.”

  One hundred twenty-five people22 were killed in the attack on the Pentagon, in addition to the fifty-nine passengers and crew members and five hijackers aboard Flight 77. Seventy of the Pentagon dead were civilians. Ninety-two Pentagon victims died on the first floor, thirty-one on the second floor, and two on the third floor. Among the dead were Lieutenant Colonel Karen Wagner and Chief Warrant Officer William Ruth, apparently of smoke inhalation, in the office where they’d huddled with Major John Thurman, who lived.

  Remains of five Pentagon victims were never found, four from inside the building: Retired Army Colonel Ronald Golinski, a civilian Pentagon worker; Navy Petty Officer First Class Ronald Henanway, who left behind a three-year-old son and a one-year-old daughter; James T. Lynch, a civilian worker for the Navy known for passing out candies in the Pentagon hallways; and Rhonda Rasmussen, a civilian worker for the Army and the mother of four. The fifth was the youngest person aboard Flight 77: three-year-old Dana Falkenberg, curly-haired and princess-loving, who died with her parents and her big sister on their way to Australia.

  Among the items found in the wreckage was the laminated prayer card Pilot Chic Burlingame carried everywhere, scorched by fire but with his mother’s photograph intact beside the poet’s words: “I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there, I did not die.”23

  His sister, Debra Burlingame, became an outspoken conservative activist, a board member of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, and cofounder of 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong
America. Her group’s mission:24 “We support the U.S. military and endorse the doctrine of pre-emption, supported by the 9/11 Commission’s statement on terrorist threats: ‘Once the danger has fully materialized, evident to all, mobilizing action is easier—but it then may be too late.’”

  Debra Burlingame was an outspoken opponent of a plan to build an Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero. That proposal was dropped in 2011, replaced by plans25 for a forty-three-story condominium with fifty apartments, a three-story Islamic museum, and no mosque.

  The badly burned woman comforted by Father Stephen McGraw was Antoinette “Toni” Sherman, a thirty-five-year-old Army budget analyst. She died six days after the attack, the final Pentagon casualty and the only person to die after reaching a hospital. When he learned her full identity, Father McGraw wrote Antoinette’s parents a letter, passing along her love. The man whom Father McGraw granted absolution, a civilian accountant named Juan Cruz-Santiago, suffered terribly from his burns and endured multiple surgeries, but he survived.

  For rescuing Jerry Henson26 at his Pentagon desk, Lieutenant Commander Dave Tarantino, MD, and Captain Dave Thomas each received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for Heroism, as did SEAL Craig Powell. Lieutenant General Paul Carlton Jr. received an equivalent honor from the Air Force called the Airman’s Medal. The awards were among the military’s highest honors for noncombat heroism, but that didn’t sit right with Jerry. He thought his rescuers deserved the Navy Cross or the Air Force Cross, for extraordinary valor in combat.

  Dave Tarantino lent his medal to the Smithsonian Institution, which also collected Dave Thomas’s ruined uniform and the tarantino nametag he’d snatched from his new friend’s shirt. At a Smithsonian press conference, Dave Tarantino deflected praise: “I think hopefully the exhibit will show, and history will show, that it was a setback, but it was not a defeat. Even that day, people started responding. Jerry didn’t give up. He could have easily given up in there, and he didn’t.”

  Dave Thomas returned to work on September 12. With his team, he reworked the strategy and policy report they’d spent seventeen months writing, to reflect the post-9/11 reality. They completed the new report within weeks, to meet the original deadline. He called his best friend Bob Dolan’s cellphone for days, but Bob never answered. An FBI agent found Bob’s Naval Academy ring in the wreckage; a mortuary crew found some remains. Dave Thomas accompanied them for a burial at sea. He thought about Bob every day and never again wore his own academy ring. With Bob gone, it lost its meaning.

  Dave Thomas rose to rear admiral and served as commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo and the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the military prison that held alleged 9/11 plotters and al-Qaeda combatants. Before he retired from the Navy in 2013, Dave Thomas served as the senior surface warfare officer in the Atlantic Fleet, where two ships, the USS New York and the USS Arlington, honored the sites of 9/11 attacks. In October 2016, Dave Thomas escorted Bob’s widow, Lisa, down the aisle at the wedding of Lisa and Bob’s son. At Lisa’s request, Dave wore Bob’s ceremonial sword.

  When the United States went to war after 9/11, Dave Tarantino organized humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan and later Iraq, where he spent ten months as a U.S. adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Health. During the next decade, he served as the first director of global health in the Office of the Secretary of Defense; spent a year as director of public health for Navy and Marine forces in Okinawa and the Pacific; and became director of medical programs for the Marine Corps, among other jobs devoted to helping others. Throughout, Dave Tarantino gave time and energy to the Yellow Ribbon Fund, a nonprofit devoted to the needs of injured service members and their families.

  After retiring from the Navy in 2015, he spent a year traveling the world with a global humanitarian organization then became a senior adviser to the Department of Homeland Security, focused on strategy and health issues at the border. He and his wife, Margie, had twin daughters. Life outside the military gave him more time with them.

  When Petty Officer Charles Lewis emerged from the wreckage, he reported that Jack Punches hadn’t been there when the plane hit. While Jerry Henson spoke on the phone to cancel his hotel reservation, Jack slipped out to be among the men and women of the Navy Command Center, watching the big TVs to monitor the attack on New York. Jack died as he lived, in the thick of things, shoulder to shoulder with the young sailors he loved almost as much as his own family. Somewhere nearby must have been Bob Dolan, the Navy captain whom Dave Thomas had hoped to save.

  Janice Punches27 had Jack buried in a private cemetery near her house; she wanted access to Jack’s grave anytime she liked. She never remarried. Their daughter, Jennifer, married her boyfriend, Mike; they named their son Jack. Jack and Janice’s son, Jeremy, named his firstborn Jackson. It hurt to think about how much the original Jack would have loved his grandchildren.

  Twenty years old when his father died, Jeremy Punches returned to school and received a master’s degree in defense studies from George Mason University. He went to work as a counterterrorism analyst for the CIA, a job he took out of a fierce determination to prevent other families from knowing such loss. Jennifer Punches kept Jack’s sense of humor but lost her taste for birthday carrot cake. Even after it grew rancid, she refused to throw away the jug of milk from which she’d poured her father’s last glassful. “It never heals,” she’d say. “You just get better at putting the Band-Aid on.”

  Jerry Henson spent four days in the hospital, coughing up clumps of black crud, then recovered at home. Dave Tarantino and Dave Thomas came to the Hensons’ house for an emotional reunion and to meet Jerry’s family. Weeks later, Jerry returned to work at the Pentagon, where he stayed until his retirement in 2004. He never stopped missing his friend and officemate Jack Punches.

  Now and then, at a Virginia pool club where his daughters swam, Dave Tarantino ran into Jerry Henson’s daughter Kelly and his granddaughter Kit, who was born seven years after 9/11 and became the light of Jerry’s life. In his eighties, Jerry was slowed by Parkinson’s disease, and his wife, Kathy, wondered whether the blows he had taken to the head played a role. Jerry woke every day knowing how close he’d come to death on a beautiful September morning. He knew that he might have been burned or buried alive if Dave Thomas hadn’t spotted him and Dave Tarantino hadn’t crawled through smoke and fire to perform his heroic leg-press. He knew that he might never have met his granddaughter.

  When Jerry thought about all that, the former combat aviator, a man who gave a lifetime of service to his country and boundless love to his family, choked up. When words returned, Jerry’s voice grew thick as he wondered softly: “How do you thank someone for saving your life?” Jerry Henson lived for more than sixteen years after 9/11. He died at age eighty-one in April 2018 and was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

  For rescuing civilian Lois Stevens and leading survivors from the Army personnel offices on the Pentagon’s second floor, Lieutenant Colonel Marilyn Wills was awarded the Soldier’s Medal,28 the Army’s highest honor for noncombat heroism. For her burns and other injuries, she received a Purple Heart. Soldier’s Medals and Purple Hearts also went to Lieutenant Colonel Robert Grunewald, Colonel Phil McNair, Specialist Michael Petrovich, and Sergeant Major Tony Rose. Major Regina Grant received a Purple Heart. Martha Carden, Lois Stevens, Betty Maxfield, Dalisay Olaes, and John Yates each received the civilian Defense of Freedom Medal.

  After several days in the hospital and more recuperation at home, Marilyn returned to work. She learned that her friend and cubiclemate Marian Serva was one of twenty-nine people—military members, civilians, and contractors—killed inside or near the second-floor quarters of the Army personnel office. Also among the dead was the department’s commanding officer, General Timothy Maude, the highest-ranking 9/11 casualty at the Pentagon, who’d earned a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, a Distinguished Service Medal, and other commendations during a thirty-five-year career. Maude died al
ongside eight officers and civilians in his offices on the outer E Ring, almost directly above where Flight 77 entered the building. One of them was Max Beilke, who had survived two wars and was the last American combat soldier to leave Vietnam. Also among the dead was Odessa Morris, who’d gone to the ladies’ room while waiting for Tracy Webb and Dalisay Olaes to get coffee. Another twenty-seven Army personnel department employees were injured.

  For Marilyn, the Pentagon was never the same after the loss of her friends and colleagues, above all Marian. She’d also be haunted by the death of Major Dwayne Williams, who was seated in her chair, watching Marian’s television, when Flight 77 hit.

  After 9/11, Marilyn attended the Industrial College of the Armed Forces at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., for a master’s degree. Promoted to colonel, Marilyn arrived in Afghanistan for a yearlong tour on the day that Osama bin Laden was killed. After thirty years of service, she retired from the military in 2013. Her daughters grown, Marilyn launched a new career as a third-grade teacher.

  Parents searched her name on Google and discovered her 9/11 heroism, then sent their children to school with questions. Marilyn decided it was time for show and tell. In early 2017, she led two classes of third-grade students and a surplus of adult chaperones on a field trip to the Pentagon. She showed them the window she had helped to pry open. Marilyn steeled herself and told them about her friend Marian Serva.

  Army personnel security officer John Yates wouldn’t remember much until a couple of days later, when his wife, Ellen, woke him in his hospital bed to tell him he had visitors. John was on a ventilator, the pain of his burns dulled by morphine, but he’d never forget the sight of President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush standing at his bedside. As they prepared to leave, George Bush placed a hand on John’s arm. John looked up from his bed and saw tears in the president’s eyes.