By J1 Reporter Lilly Prenger

Twenty-five years later, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 continue to linger in the minds of American citizens – including those too young to have lived through it. The new generation of Americans has grown up with flags at half mast, airports full of metal detectors, and countless stories and reminders of that day. Still, there’s so much that remains impossible to wrap heads around – how can you explain something so indescribable to a group of people who never lived through it? 

Doug Wolf wasn’t sure what kind of a perspective he could offer on the events of Sept. 11. He had a distant connection with a passenger on United Airlines Flight 93, and had coworkers in New York City on that day, but still felt that his personal account wasn’t impactful enough to fully explain the national crisis to students struggling to understand. 

Wolf, a traveling salesperson for the company Pfizer Healthcare, was on the road the morning of 9/11. “My buddy called me and said, ‘Hey, you might want to gas up your vehicle,” he recalled. “When I got to McCook, the line was all the way down the block for gas.” Wolf ended up waiting at the gas station for over two hours, learning of the events through the radio and phone calls with his daughter.

Little did he know, an employee of his same company had boarded United Flight 93 that morning, originally headed to San Francisco. Joseph DeLuca, 52, was a business systems specialist at Pfizer Consumer Healthcare (National Park Service). He was headed to a vacation in Napa Valley when his plane was hijacked by terrorists and redirected on a path to Washington D.C. The passengers of this flight, however, had heard about the previous attacks on the World Trade Center through phone calls with family members on the ground. When they realized that their plane was a part of the same terrorism plot, the passengers aboard stormed the cockpit and prevented the hijackers from reaching the US Capitol. United Flight 93 ultimately crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, killing all aboard, including DeLuca.

While Wolf was in a different department and didn’t know DeLuca personally, the effect that the 9/11 attacks had on Pfizer were felt throughout the entire company. In addition to losing an employee on Flight 93, Pfizer’s headquarters was located in New York City on East 42nd Street, fifteen minutes away from the World Trade Center. One of Wolf’s colleagues was working in the building on Sept. 11 and was able to watch the disaster unfold from an upper story window: “I can’t tell you what floor, but he was up pretty high, so he looked out and could see it really quick.”

In addition, the attacks on the Twin Towers had a surreal quality for Wolf, as he and his family had visited Manhattan less than four months before the attacks to celebrate his daughter’s high school graduation. The family had taken a photograph featuring the World Trade Center in the background, unaware that in less than half a year the two skyscrapers would be reduced to piles of rubble and plumes of smoke.

Wolf believes that young people should care about 9/11 not only because of the lives lost, but because of the way the people of the United States came together. “It made everybody think about their country, love their country, and appreciate the freedom that we have… It was a very patriotic time when everybody rallied together and appreciated all the policemen, the firemen, the public service that chipped in in New York. It really made you strengthen your love for America across the whole country.” 

Perhaps the best way for new generations to understand 9/11 is through stories like these – no matter how seemingly small of an experience, or no matter how far away from New York City on that day, everyone is connected to what happened. Regardless of coming before or after, everyone carries the responsibility of remembering.

Never Forget.

Resource Consulted: https://www.nps.gov/people/josephdeluca.htm