Face-to-face with horror

Two Liberty students share their stories of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks

Thomas Johnson sat at his desk in the United States Department of Defense headquarters in Washington D.C. on the morning of September 11, 2001 his son, sophomore Tim Johnson, recalled.

Senior Sarah Casmass remembered her father Rick Casmass had commuted from Long Island, New York into New York City for a meeting in the business district the same morning.

Tim Johnson and Sarah Casmass both shared the stories of their fathers, both Liberty graduates, and their memories of Sept.11, 2001.

Thomas Johnson reported to work as usual, a civilian working in the Pentagon as a project manager at the time, stationed in the outer ring — office number 2E541.

“We were watching what was happening in New York on TV like everyone else,” Thomas Johnson said in an email. “I worked in an office with a number of gentleman who were retired Special Forces, and we wondered if this was the prelude to attacks across the country.”

As his department watched the chaos unfolding in New York, he felt the building shake.

“I got up from up my desk to go to speak to our admin/secretary (who was a pregnant Air Force sergeant),” Thomas Johnson wrote.

After a tremendous concussion, the next thing I know I’m lying on the ground with a piece of modular furniture wall lying on top of me.

It’s important for me to say for those in deference to those who went through much worse that my office was relatively safe as soon as the pilot decided where he was crashing the aircraft — although it was only 90 feet away, it went right past and under us.”

The Pentagon had been hit by the hijacked plane, Flight 77, around 9:40 a.m., according to 911research.wtc7.net. The Boeing 757 hit the building at 345 mph and killed all aboard the plane as well as workers in the Pentagon — 189 in total, according to pentagon.spacelist.org.

Smoke filled Thomas Johnson’s office. He said the retired Special Forces were commanding their co-workers to take cover under desks for fear of an inferno breaking out.

Huddled under a desk, Thomas Johnson grabbed a phone and called home.

“My wife answered,” Thomas Johnson said. “(I) told her that we had been hit, I was alive, and that (I was) getting out, and then hung up.”

Thomas Johnson was still not safe though, so the co-workers collaborated in an attempt to exit the building. “Our normal fire evacuation route was an inferno,” Thomas Johnson wrote. “As you can imagine, it was chaos.”

After help from security workers, Thomas Johnson’s office staff exited near the gym and Pentagon Day Care.

“The Day Care was staffed sufficiently for normal operations, but it was not staffed to evacuate under such a crisis,” Thomas Johnson wrote. “We, and many others who had been fleeing … joined in to help and started escorting small groups of children away from the building.

After we evacuated all the kids to a safe area, we did our best to keep up the children’s spirit as we watched the building burn in the distance.”

Tim Johnson, meanwhile, sat at home, almost four years old at the time. He said his first vivid memory was of this day.

“I remember it was Fox News … and I just see the Pentagon (on the television) and smoke started coming out (of the building),” Tim Johnson said.

Sarah Casmass — a first grader at the time — remembered Sept. 11 in a different light.

“We were in class, and all of the sudden my teacher screamed,” Sarah Casmass said.

The school bell rang “almost like a firedrill,” Sarah Casmass said, and the teachers and administrators gathered everyone together to take the buses home.

As soon as Sarah Casmass and her older brother came home, her mom took off. Later she found out that her mother stayed with her sister-in-law while they waited for contact from Rick Casmass.

Sarah Casmass said she saw pictures of the towers on the television screen at home, but she though it might have been some awful movie.

All the while, Rick Casmass was safe — Sarah Casmass later learned.

Earlier that September morning, Rick Casmass drove to work — two hours from Long Island — into the city. Sarah said her father usually took the train, but that day he drove. Afterward, he was glad he did.

“For whatever reason, my dad drove to the city that day, and he worked in Rockefeller Center, and he had a meeting,” Sarah Casmass said. “I can’t remember if it was nearby or in one of the Twin Tower buildings, …. (but) he had this feeling of ‘I’m not gonna go.’”

He turned around to head home, and as he left the city the first tower was hit.

At 8:45 a.m., the World Trade Center shattered after being attacked by a hijacked American Airlines flight, according to history.com.

Eighteen minutes later the second plane hit the adjacent twin tower.

“(My dad) said it was just insane because … the subway system just shut down, the train, everything like that, and people were just running on foot,” Sarah Casmass said.

Rick Casmass could have been amidst the chaos, but instead he was on his way back to Long Island and along the way, he saw a family friend running away from the business district. He and his friend made it safely.

Rockefeller Center, where Rick Casmass worked at the time, was located only five miles away from the World Trade Center, and Sarah Casmass said she is thankful her dad turned around to go home.

“Had he gone in (to work) … I definitely don’t think that between falling rubble and ash, and the chaos, I don’t even think he would have made it out,” Sarah Casmass said.

For Sarah Casmass though, she said she reflects on the amount of people lost, and the “sweeping devastation” that hit the city.

“When (Sept. 11) comes around, I think about classmates and friends that I know that lost their parents,” Sarah Casmass said. “And to think my dad was there and wasn’t affected. … He knows, we all know, (it was) the absolute undeniable hand of the Lord of his life and on our family. And it doesn’t really seem fair … when I had some many classmates and so many people that I know that were affected by it.”

While these two Liberty students were directly affected within their immediate family, Ben Gutierrez, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs reflected on how Liberty University reacted.

In a video posted by Convey Church Media and Communication on YouTube, Gutierrez said students and faculty were called into the Vines Center to pray.

“We were all scared and afraid,” Gutierrez said. “Through that event, our trust in God grew more. … If you trust in him, he can bring hope, he can bring beauty through the ashes, and there will be a time when you can rejoice again.”

Amidst the horrific memory of the event, fifteen years later, some like Thomas Johnson can now see past the pain of the event and take some good away from the tradgedy.

“While I may have once viewed 9/11 and the resulting wars only through the eyes of an American citizen, I now strive to see them only through the viewpoint of a citizen of the Kingdom,” Thomas Johnson wrote.

“The gospel of Jesus is the only thing that will bring peace to the world. The people of God have a responsibility to bring the hope to the entire world … by heading throughout the world to share the good news.”

Tiller is the social media editor.