Ten years ago, 11-year-old Bernard Curtis Brown Jr. was packing his bags for a school trip to Southern California.
American Airlines flight attendant Michele Heidenberger had just celebrated her 57th birthday with her family before making the same West Coast trip.
And at the Pentagon, Angie Houtz, 27, was just getting settled in her new office on the west side of the building.
It was Sept. 11, 2001, the last day of each of their lives. Brown, Heidenberger and Houtz were three of the 184 people who perished when terrorist hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 out of Washington Dulles International Airport and crashed it into the west side of the Pentagon.
Those left behind to pick up the pieces say the 10th anniversary of that attack on Sunday doesn't change anything.
"It's just another day dealing with the loss of a loved one," said Tom Heidenberger, Michele's husband.
Jim Laychak, whose brother Dave was a Pentagon employee, said 10 years was no different from nine or eight.
"The anniversary always does bring everything back though," he said.
That Tuesday morning was one of confusion followed by despair for friends and families as they followed the news of the attacks and then learned their loved ones' fate.
Clementine Homesley, who was principal of Leckie Elementary School where Brown attended, said she heard the plane crash that morning but thought the noise came from a loud construction project on Interstate 295.
Then Gwendolyn Faulkner called from the National Geographic Society, which was sponsoring the Brown's trip.
"She wanted to know if I was sitting down," said Homesley, who at the time thought Brown was halfway to California.
"I screamed -- that was my worst nightmare, the farthest thing from my mind," she said. "I needed to collect myself. I ran into my office; I totally emotionally lost it."
Stacey Baugh, Houtz's college roommate and best friend, said she wasn't sure where Houtz's office had been moved a week before. On the morning of Sept. 12, Baugh went to work, unable to stay home and worry, when her husband called to tell her the news.
"I can't even begin to tell you what he said," Baugh said. "I do remember putting my head down. And then going home."
Heidenberger was watching the footage of the World Trade Center attacks in New York when a friend from American Airlines called. It was 9:05 a.m., just after American Airlines Flight 77 was hijacked.
"They said something's happened with Michele's plane," Heidenberger said.
Her plane hit the Pentagon 32 minutes later.
Over the years, those left behind have coped by memorializing their friends and family. Heidenberger and Laychak helped establish the Pentagon Memorial located at the site of the crash. Scholarships were set up in the names of many victims, including Houtz and Brown.
Baugh took over sponsoring a girl in El Salvador that Houtz had begun sponsoring through Compassion International a month before.
Baugh now has two children, both born after 9/11. But her best friend is still a part of their lives.
"The movie 'Grease' was on TV this weekend and [my son] said, 'That's Auntie Angie's favorite movie,'" Baugh said. "He's six, he's never met her. But we talk about her all the time."
lfarmer@washingtonexaminer.com
This piece is a part of the Washington Examiner's special series The Legacy of 9/11.
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The Legacy of 9/11
America changed in a day
9/11 triggered revolutionary changes in America's military Still mourning at Ground Zero A sense of loss at the Pentagon A small town with a big heart |
