A crowd of more than a hundred first responders and other 9/11 mourners from Chicago stood still Saturday morning at Daley Plaza, in a solemn observance of the exact time the first hijacked plane hit the World Trade Center 20 years ago.
The Chicago police and fire departments’ pipes and drums band had just finished playing in front of two firetrucks that had their ladders pulled out to form an arch. No one said a word.
Then the clock struck 7:46 a.m., and CFD Battalion Chief John “Jake” Jakubec began ringing a bell to commemorate the moment the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil began. Recruits from the police and fire academies took off their caps before a lone trumpeter teased out somber notes.
“I stand before you today with a heavy heart,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in her remarks. “Twenty years on, it’s still hard to think about that terrible day. … Stability and life as we knew it, figuratively and literally, crumbled as the towers fell. When the dust settled, we were left with a deep wound to our individual and collective hearts and psyche. A wound that will never fully disappear.”
In total, the four plane crashes at the twin towers, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killed nearly 3,000 people and redefined the landscape of America for the next two decades, including the yearslong military occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The latter of those conflicts ended last month in a hasty withdrawal, marred by a terrorist suicide bombing that killed 13 Americans and 169 Afghans.
Inside Soldier Field later Saturday morning, a thick river of first responders from the Chicago area along with their families and supporters snaked up and down the bleachers of the stadium. A firefighter from Aurora Township rested at the top after carrying a large American Flag on his journey.
He was one of hundreds of people partaking in the Chicago 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb to benefit the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation by walking the equivalent of 110 stories to pay homage to the first responders who climbed the World Trade Center 20 years ago.
As Margie Salamanca finished her descent and walked out the gates of Soldier Field, she recalled how fearful she was on 9/11, not knowing who attacked America and why.
“(Two decades) went by in a blink of an eye, but like anything in life, it goes by in the blink of an eye,” Salamanca, a 57-year-old from Alsip, said. “You remember it like it was yesterday, so it doesn’t really feel like 20 years.”
One of Saturday’s speakers earlier at Daley Plaza was McKinley Park native and retired U.S. Army veteran Jose Carlos Vega, who was one of the troops in Iraq — and a survivor of 9/11.
Vega described his daily commute into Manhattan that he planned to the minute so he would arrive in the office by 9 a.m. But after getting rushed out of the subway that morning, he walked outside to a sky full of papers fluttering down. His eyes traced the source to a burning World Trade Center.
“There are things I bore witness to that horrific day that I choose not to share,” Vega said. “I found myself walking backwards throughout the city, routinely turning around to look at the World Trade Center still in flames, and I found it hypnotizing and horrific at the same time.”
Later that morning, he found out two planes had hit the building, and that the twin towers had fallen. That’s when he knew, he said, that the country was at war.
“The following days, maybe even weeks, I remained in a fog,” Vega said. “I was in a constant state of shock. And I started looking more into joining the military and more specifically the Army. Everyone thought I was just crazy, that I was just talking, until I wasn’t. The memory of those brave first responders running toward that building could not escape my mind.”
Lightfoot’s speech also touched on the anti-Muslim racism that scourged America in the years after 9/11 and has yet to be eradicated. She invoked the recent challenges of the coronavirus pandemic in urging the city and nation to come together.
“In our city, we simply cannot have any hate toward anyone and call ourselves Americans, call ourselves exceptional,” Lightfoot said. “That ideal will never be true and strong if we allow ourselves to be torn apart by hatred. We must stand together as a country, as a city, united together, recognizing the beauty of who we are.”
Joseph Mackey, 60, biked from West Town to Daley Plaza after hearing about the ceremony on TV. The veteran from the U.S. Army who served in West Germany during the ‘80s wanted to commemorate the moment he felt his sense of safety within American borders was forever shattered.
Mackey had been working at a factory around O’Hare International Airport at the time, and he felt a deep unease the morning of 9/11 when he noticed the absence of planes roaring above him. He spent the rest of the day glued to the news.
“It’ll never be the same,” Mackey said. “It’s wishful thinking. Thank God I’m American and I’m alive.”
At Saturday’s gatherings of grieving Chicagoans, there was also an unmistakable undercurrent of pride in the country. Luis Jimenez, a 54-year-old who traveled from Bridgeport to Daley Plaza, said he has faith the U.S., with all its imperfections, will fulfill its role as “the greatest experiment in the universe” to welcome all cultures.
“It’s hard to believe that 20 years have gone by,” his wife, Julie Jimenez, 52, said. “We can’t forget our history. Whether good or bad, we still have to remember what it was.”
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Chicago grieves 9/11 on 20th anniversary: ‘A wound that will never fully disappear’ - Chicago Tribune
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