25 years later, remembering – and teaching about – 9/11

Twenty-five years ago this Friday, for some, feels just like yesterday.

On that September morning, Dublin firefighter Matthew Cutler and another firefighter were off duty and cutting yards. On their way to their next job, they heard about American Airlines Flight 11 hitting the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. and United Airlines Flight 175 crashing into the South Tower at 9:03 a.m.

“Someone on the radio was talking about how the U.S. needs to make some other country a parking lot,” Cutler said. “We went to the Shamrock Fire Station to find out what had happened. There were a lot of things running through my mind. I had never experienced the United States being attacked in such a way.” 

Lynda Prymula, who now lives in Rentz, recalls that day because she was not too far from the Pentagon. She was working on the 14th floor in a building in Alexandria, Virginia. They had been watching the TV and saw the live reports of what was happening in New York. 

Around 9:37 a.m., their building shook.

“We knew something was not right,” Prymula said. “We could see the smoke. You couldn’t comprehend in your mind that a plane actually went into the building.” 

Terrorists had crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. 

“Our building shook when the plane hit,” Prymula said.  

Not long after, Prymula and her co-workers were told to evacuate their building. She traveled to her sister’s house, who lived approximately a mile away, and it took one hour to get there.

“Everybody was evacuating and were on the streets driving,” she said.

Prymula’s godfather had been on his way to the Pentagon that morning.

“He had to turn around and go back and get something that morning,” she said. “He later told me that he would have been in the general area where the plane hit.”

Later, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, at 10:03 a.m. It was later learned that passengers fought back against terrorist to regain the plane. In New York, the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m. and the North Tower went down at 10:28 a.m.

Cutler, who is now Dublin’s fire chief, did not know any of the firefighters or other first responders who responded to the scenes and tried to help victims.

“Whether you are a first responder or just a citizen, everyone can relate to something that happened on that day,” Cutler said. “Some survived and some did not. There were common citizens who were just going to work and were attacked. Then the first responders went and tried to help. A lot of them didn’t make it.”

Cutler currently has firefighters who were either small children or had not been born yet on Sept. 11, 2001. He has two firefighters at the Northside Station who were 3 and 6 years old and one at the Southside Station who had not been born.

The city holds a 9/11 memorial program each year. Friday’s service begins around 8:30 a.m. at the Public Safety Memorial at 320 South Jefferson St. 

“Our mission has changed now for 9/11 because we used to say ‘Never Forget,’” Cutler said. “Now we are having to tell the stories for the ones who are not old enough to remember or weren’t even born. I encouraged them to watch the documentaries. Every time I do, it takes me back in time to where I was and how I felt that day. It changed a lot of things.”  

Prymula talked to her children about 9/11. They have also seen and learned by watching the news. Her best friend from high school had a daughter born on Sept. 11, 2002.

“She was worried at first,” Prymula said. “Then she thought that every 9/11 she can look on the bright side in that she can celebrate her daughter and it shows that life continues.”

Prymula believes it is important to remember what happened in America 25 years ago this Friday.

“I think it is good that we talk about things that happened in history,” Prymula said. 

“We have to understand the bad things in life so that we don’t repeat it.”