By ALIN HETT
Hays Post
Twenty-five years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks changed America, people in Hays still remember the ordinary moments before they realized something was terribly wrong.
A college class, a job briefing, Dogs headed to the groomer, Tuesday morning trivia with Mom and a beautiful September morning in Hays.
None of it seemed significant at the time.
Then a plane struck the World Trade Center.
Across Hays, ordinary routines stopped as televisions and radios carried images and reports from New York City. Confusion turned to horror 17 minutes after the first impact when a second hijacked plane struck the other tower, making clear to millions watching that what was unfolding, was no accident.
That morning, 19 al-Qaida terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes in a coordinated attack on the United States. Two planes struck the World Trade Center towers in New York City, while a third crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.
Passengers and crew aboard the fourth aircraft, United Airlines Flight 93, learned of the other attacks and fought back against the hijackers. The plane crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing everyone aboard but preventing the hijackers from reaching their intended target in Washington, D.C.
Almost 3,000 people were killed.
For several people who remain prominent in the Hays community today, the details of Sept. 11, 2001, remain remarkably vivid, even 25 years later.
A young firefighter watches Hays change
Darin Myers, current Ellis County fire chief and county administrator, had been a Hays firefighter for about six months at the time.
He was also a Fort Hays State University student and was sitting in an English class when news of the attacks reached campus.
Class was dismissed.
Myers went home and spent the remainder of the day watching the events unfold.
“Obviously, when that day happened, you didn't really get the full extent of it,” Myers said.
In the days that followed, however, Myers remembers seeing Hays change.
American flags seemed to be everywhere. People rallied around firefighters, law enforcement officers, emergency medical personnel, military members and the families of those killed.
“The tragedy brought together America, and I think that was the biggest piece of it to me, is seeing everybody get together,” Myers said. “Not the war, just people helping people. It didn't matter who it was.”
For Myers, the deaths of hundreds of firefighters carried particular weight.
His grandfather had served with the Hays Fire Department from 1966 to 1996, and Myers had followed him into the profession. He had barely begun his own firefighting career when 343 New York City firefighters were killed responding to the attacks.
The consequences of 9/11 would eventually reach another part of Myers' life.
Myers was also serving in the military. As the United States entered a new era of military operations following the attacks, he was later activated and spent about a year in the Middle East from 2003 to 2004.
Twenty-five years later, Myers said the consequences remain.
First responders who worked at Ground Zero continue to suffer and die from illnesses associated with their exposure to toxic dust and debris.
“It's 25 years past, but we still have the impact from it today,” Myers said.
Later this month, Myers' life will come full circle when he travels to the New York area for firefighter training. He plans to visit the National September 11 Memorial & Museum while there.
“Very, very humbling going out there,” Myers said. “It's not just the firefighters. We lost a lot of medics, a lot of law enforcement officers and thousands of people.”
A job briefing comes to a halt
Neal Younger, Ellis County commissioner, was supervising five Midwest Energy employees that Tuesday morning.
A television was routinely kept on so crews could monitor the weather as they planned their work.
Younger was conducting a job briefing, discussing locations and potential hazards, when something appeared on the television that none of them had planned for.
Several employees in the room were military reservists.
Their reaction was immediate.
“Shoot it down, shoot it down,” Younger remembers them saying.
Younger remembers his eyes filling with tears.
“My tear meter went up,” Younger said. “I had tears in my eyes that day.”
The crew's plans for the day were put on hold. Rather than heading into the field, they largely remained at the shop and prepared jobs for the following day while trying to process what they had witnessed.
Twenty-five years later, Younger said remembering those killed remains important because the loss stretched far beyond the nearly 3,000 people who died that day.
“There are individuals that have families there, and it just goes up and down the tree of all people that have lost something,” Younger said. “It's something that they will not ever forget, and they shouldn't.”
An airport falls silent
Travis Jenkins, current TSA agent at Hays Regional Airport, began Sept. 11 on his way to class at Fort Hays State University.
When he arrived, he learned classes had been canceled and students were being directed to the Memorial Union. There, Jenkins joined others watching the breaking news on the union's large screen.
Then he had to go to work.
Jenkins was an agent for Great Lakes Airlines at Hays Regional Airport.
What he found there was silence.
Jenkins said the federal government grounded commercial aviation across the United States, leaving aircraft already sitting on the ramp in Hays exactly where they were. Jenkins also said no diverted aircraft came into Hays.
“Basically there was nothing going on,” Jenkins said. “There were no flights leaving or coming or anything for a couple days.”
When flights eventually resumed, the airport looked different.
Jenkins remembers National Guard members being present for essentially every flight as security tightened in the aftermath of the attacks.
The transformation of American aviation ultimately became part of Jenkins' own career.
Twenty-five years after working for Great Lakes Airlines on the day the nation's aircraft were grounded, Jenkins still works at Hays Regional Airport, now for the Transportation Security Administration, an agency created in the aftermath of 9/11.
Breaking the news to Hays
While many people in Hays were desperately searching for information, Mike Holliday, Eagle Media co-host of the Bull Morning Show, found himself responsible for delivering it.
Holliday was in his second year co-hosting the show and was preparing for something much lighter that Tuesday morning.
Mom's Tuesday Trivia.
His mother was on the phone for the trivia, as she still is for the Tuesday morning segment today.
The studio computer's homepage was set to CNN.com. At about 8 a.m., Holliday glanced at the screen and saw smoke coming from the World Trade Center.
His first assumption was an accident.
Then came word that the second tower had been struck.
“I knew we were under a terrorist attack,” Holliday said.
Holliday was live on the air.
There was no prepared statement or script explaining what was happening. Information was scarce, and Holliday suddenly had to balance the morning show with telling thousands of listeners across the area what he was learning.
“I was literally on the air speaking to listeners about what I was seeing, kind of from my perspective,” Holliday said. “Very, very eerie, and that whole day was just almost surreal as I remember it.”
Holliday had delivered difficult news before, including deaths, but never anything approaching an attack on the United States.
“It was the first experience with something that serious, a terroristic attack on America,” Holliday said. “Something I will just never forget.”
Twenty-five years of broadcasting have followed.
Mom's Tuesday Trivia is still on the air.
Holliday said nothing he has announced since has compared to that experience.
“I can't even imagine anything being any more serious than unveiling to our listeners what was going on in New York that day,” he said. “Everything else pales by comparison.”
Breaking news becomes the lesson
Eagle Media's own Becky Kiser and longtime Hays Post reporter, was standing in a television news production classroom at Fort Hays State University as a teacher.
The Learning Channel was playing in the background of the control room when the normal programming was interrupted.
The room stopped.
“Is this legit?” Kiser remembers students asking.
“There were just jaws dropping,” she said.
Kiser and her students watched as the disaster continued to unfold, with even national journalists struggling to explain what was happening.
“The news industry didn't know,” Kiser said. “They were just describing what they were seeing.”
Kiser quickly realized something else.
The students sitting around her, most between 18 and 22 years old, were experiencing a moment they would likely recount for the rest of their lives.
“I remember thinking this is the moment in their lives they're going to remember for the rest of their life,” Kiser said. “Where was I when this happened?”
Instead of ending class, the events transformed it.
The students had a television newscast scheduled for later that day. Their planned rundown suddenly took a back seat to one of the largest breaking news stories in American history.
They incorporated the information available at the time into their newscast and later interviewed other students around campus about where they had been when they learned of the attacks.
“It was a shock,” Kiser said. “Just a real shock.”
Kiser remembers another detail from that morning.
It was beautiful outside.
The early fall air had a slight crispness to it. The sun was shining, the wind was calm and FHSU was near the beginning of another semester.
By the time Kiser drove home around 6 p.m., Hays looked different.
She said long lines had formed at gas stations because no one knew whether another attack was coming or what would happen next. Kiser remembers wondering whether she should get in line herself as people rushed to fill their tanks.
One thought crossed her mind.
“We're facing a new reality now,” Kiser said.
The feeling of invincibility
Barbara Wasinger, R-Hays, and former Hays city commissioner, was taking her dogs to be groomed when she first heard the news on the radio that a plane had struck the World Trade Center.
Like millions of Americans hearing the first reports, Wasinger thought something had gone terribly wrong.
Perhaps the pilot had suffered a medical emergency.
She returned home, turned on the television and called upstairs to her husband to tell him the terrible news.
Then she watched the second plane hit and the possibility of an accident disappeared.
“I ran up and told my husband, ‘There's been a terrorist attack’, Wasinger said. “There are two planes, one in each of the World Trade Centers.”
For Wasinger, the attack brought back memories from years earlier when she visited East Berlin while in college. Seeing life on the other side of the Iron Curtain had impressed upon her the importance of democracy and the freedoms Americans enjoyed.
Now she was watching those feelings of security disappear.
“We really felt like we were invincible,” Wasinger said.
She brought a portable television into her office so everyone could follow the developing news.
The previous night had been her husband's surprise birthday party. Someone had suggested she hold the celebration Sept. 11 because he would never expect it. Wasinger chose the night before instead, which turned out to be the best action possible.
As she watched the attacks unfold, she remembers thinking how thankful she was that she had.
For Wasinger, the attacks demonstrated that events thousands of miles away could reach into everyday life in Hays.
“We're not impervious to what's going on in the world,” she said.
A quarter-century later, Wasinger said remembering what happened is particularly important for generations who were either too young to remember 9/11 or had not yet been born.
“The hard part about people not being alive or not remembering 9/11 is that history repeats itself when people aren't paying attention to what has happened before,” Wasinger said. “That concerns me to this day.”
25 years later, the sacrifice remains
Don Scheibler, Hays police chief, was assigned to the Ellis County Drug Enforcement Unit during the Sept. 11 attacks and was preparing to go to court that morning.
Scheibler remembers the unusual detail of wearing a suit and tie that morning. Most days working drug enforcement, he said, he wore blue jeans and T-shirts.
He was downstairs watching television as the events unfolded. Like many Americans, Scheibler initially viewed the first strike as a terrible accident.
Then the second plane hit.
“The first one, you know, it seemed like a tragedy,” Scheibler said. “Then the second one happened, and we knew we were under attack at that time.”
The attacks quickly affected law enforcement in Hays. As aircraft across the country were grounded, Scheibler said he remembers patrol officers from the Hays Police Department were assigned to provide security at Hays Regional Airport for incoming and outgoing flights.
He also remembers the confusion of that day, but even more vividly, he remembers watching firefighters and police officers respond in New York City.
“You just knew nobody was going to survive that,” Scheibler said of watching the towers collapse. “You watch all those firefighters and all those police officers run to the scene, and they died trying to help people.”
Scheibler said the attacks changed the way Americans thought about security, including something as routine as boarding an airplane. He also remembers the sense of unity that followed the attacks.
“It felt like we’d been attacked, but it also felt like you were very, very proud to be an American,” Scheibler said. “You felt the whole world come together.”
A quarter-century later, Scheibler said the passage of time has done little to diminish the importance of remembering the first responders who ran toward the danger that morning.
“This country has continued to remember the sacrifices of those firefighters and those police officers,” Scheibler said. “They continue to honor their legacy.”
Scheibler said that remembrance extends beyond those who died on Sept. 11 to the first responders who spent weeks working at Ground Zero and later died from illnesses linked to their service.
“It’s important to remember the sacrifices, not only those that died that day, but those that went down there and spent weeks down there digging,” Scheibler said.
For Scheibler, 25 years have passed remarkably quickly.
“I can’t believe it’s been 25 years,” he said. “In some ways, it seems like it was just a couple days ago.”
Yet what remains with him most is the courage of the first responders who headed into the towers while others were trying to escape.
“Those guys didn’t hesitate,” Scheibler said. “Those firefighters didn’t hesitate. They started up those stairs. They knew those people needed help.”
Scheibler said the city of Hays will once again climb stairs in their memory during the annual 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb that is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 12, at Lewis Field Stadium at Fort Hays State University.
Since that Tuesday morning, the young firefighter now leads Ellis County's fire service.
The Midwest Energy employee now is one of three commissioners looking over Ellis County.
The airline agent who watched American aviation stop in its tracks, now works for TSA.
The radio host who suddenly found himself reporting an attack on the country is still behind the microphone.
The journalism students who learned breaking news in real time have long since left that classroom and gone on to live their life.
The former Hays city commissioner is now a Kansas State Representative.
The Drug Enforcement Unit member now leads the Hays Police Department as Chief.
Hays changed.
America changed.
Twenty-five years have passed since that Tuesday morning, yet the memory and impact of 9/11 will never fade away.