In partnership with The University of Alabama, the Shelby Institute, the Blackburn Institute, the Student Government Association and Veterans and Military Affairs, hosted a 9/11 tribute talk Thursday in the Student Center Theatre.
The event was titled “9/11: Voices From Inside the Pentagon” and featured Lt. Cols. Daune Gunn and Chris Shannon, two military veterans who were in the Pentagon during the attack. Gunn and Shannon discussed their experiences that day and how it has affected them emotionally.
“There has never been a time in my time in the Air Force where an instructor walks out in the classroom, stops a class and says, ‘Hey, we’ve got something going on here,’” Shannon said. He went on to say that the instructor put the footage of the plane hitting the second tower of the World Trade Center on the TV screen in the classroom. For Shannon, the moment seemed like something out of a movie.
Gunn said he had only been working at the Pentagon for three weeks when 9/11 happened.
“9/11 started out as a normal day until about 9 a.m.,” Gunn said. “Then, as a lot of people like to say, the world changed in a matter of seconds. Over the next hour and 50 minutes or so, we would go from a world of peace to a world of war.”
Similar to Gunn, Shannon also felt the way of the country changed from peaceful to tumultuous. “9/11 became one of those days where all of us, family and country, felt like it was under attack,” he said.
Gunn expressed how he and his peers thought the first plane hitting the tower was an accident.
“It was one of those where you have heard, and it’s well documented, that small planes had hit the towers before, but the first one we’re going, ‘Maybe that’s an accident’. The second one, game on. Something is changing in the world,” Gunn said.
Gunn and Shannon did not know they shared the experience of the 9/11 Pentagon attack until over a decade later. Shannon had come to visit Gunn after the latter finished teaching his college class; they both taught at Troy University at the time.
“He’d been in my office a bunch of times and he looks and he goes, ‘DG, where’d you get that picture from?’” Gunn said.
The picture Shannon was referring to was a framed photo of the Pentagon burning.
“The only way you could get that picture was you had to prove that you were physically in the Pentagon on 9/11. He and I both had the same picture,” Gunn said.
Not only were they at the Pentagon at the same time on that day, but they also sat in the same room.
“I think that’s the power of understanding how small the world is,” Shannon said.
Zoi Moon, a Blackburn Institute member and a systems thinking major in New College, said that remembering 9/11 should not just be about remembering the historical significance of the event.
“I think it’s important for us to not just look at it as a historical event and a book, but as an event that still affects even the youth and the way we’re going through the airport and how we interact with one another has an impact on the relations of how polarized we are today,” Moon said. “Being able to recognize people who have actually went through this and were there to see what was happening and speak about how they were impacted and learn and hear from them.”
Sadaris Williams, the director for the Center for Service and Leadership, said that the memorials dedicated to 9/11 and the services for the veterans and first responders who were affected by that day are necessary.
“I feel like it’s needed. I think that acts of service is what we are, what we need in this country what we always gear ourselves towards,” Williams said.
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