The nation forever changed 18 years ago when 3,000 people were killed in New York City, at the Pentagon and in a field in rural Pennsylvania in terror attacks orchestrated by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Ever since then, the horror of it all replays like a bad movie on the anniversary and fresh wounds are reopened. Here, NewsOne remembers some of the unsung heroes who stood on the front lines during the attacks on 9/11.
1) The stories of 12 African-American firefighters — Leon W. Smith Jr., Shawn E. Powell, Vernon Cherry, Andre Fletcher, and Ronnie L Henderson; Gerard Jean Baptiste, Keithroy Maynard, William L. Henry Jr., Karl Joseph, and Tarel Coleman. Keith Glascoe and Vernon Richard — who gave their lives at the World Trade Center site to save others on 9/11 have gone largely untold. Craig Kelly, a former firefighter and a grief counselor who worked with the fallen heroes’ families, was compelled to chronicle the aftermath of their deaths and made his research into a documentary, “All Our Sons–Fallen Heroes of 9/11,” which was released in 2004.
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2) U.S. Marine Jason Thomas, who was 32 at the time, ran “toward Ground Zero” at the World Trade Center with only a flashlight and a shovel and made the decision to help as many people as he could. He ended up unearthing a pair of police officers who had been buried beneath 20 feet of debris. But then Thomas disappeared. No one knew of his identity until he was finally unmasked four years later.
3) Just way too young to understand the evils of the world, three bright lights were permanently dimmed on 9/11: Asia Cottom, Rodney Dickens and Bernard Curtis Brown II —all age 11 —were on Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon. The precocious youths had been handpicked to represent three middle schools in the Washington, D.C.-area and travel to the Channel Island National Marine Sanctuary near Santa Barbara, California, to participate in a National Geographic Society research project called “Sustainable Seas Expedition.” The children were accompanied by a teacher and two National Geographic representatives. Sadly, all of the passengers on that fateful flight would die.
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