9/11 Remembrance: Local leaders remember 9/11

Just about everyone who was aware of the world around them on Sept. 11, 2001, remembers what they were doing when they heard that an airliner had crashed into upper floors of one tower, then another, of the World Trade Center, and then into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., launching the U.S. and allies into an ongoing struggle against terrorism that has continued since then.

Here are some accounts of what some area residents remember and what they think about what has happened since:

Police Captain

Roman Romero

Clovis Police Capt. Roman Romero, then a detective, was getting ready for work on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, he said, and he was watching the scene of smoke pouring from upper stories of the World Trade Center after an airliner had collided with the building.

When the second tower was hit, he said, “the reality hit, deep in my soul.”

This was a deliberate act, he realized. When he went to work, he said, he and fellow officers “watched it unfold.”

When the towers collapsed a few hours later, he said, he realized “there would be a lot of dead people.”

In 1984, he remembers being a member of the Clovis High School marching band, which that year was participated by invitation in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

The band stayed at the Marriott World Trade Center Hotel between the towers, and Romero said he remembers marveling at the size of the towers.

“I’d never seen anything that large before made of glass and steel,” he said. “I remember watching the buildings sway,” an optical illusion as one looked up and saw the building against the sky.

After the trade center towers collapsed, Romero said, he realized that hotel and towers, the whole complex, was no longer there.

“It was gone,” he said. “That whole area was gone.”

At the time, Romero was also a member of a U.S. Marine Corps tank battalion, and he called to learn if the unit would “go to work.” They were not called out immediately, though, he said.

He remembers feeling “rage,” adding, “I’m not sure that rage has subsided.”

He said that rage has reawakened with the U.S.’s recent withdrawal from Afghanistan.

He was especially concerned about women who may be facing severe restrictions and even brutality at the hands of the Taliban, the Muslim fundamentalist faction that now rules Afghanistan.

“Women who are 20 to 30 years old have never known the world in a different way,” he said, especially the “denigration” women knew under the Taliban before the U.S. drove the movement out of Afghanistan, beginning in 2001.

“I can’t say anything nice about the current administration,” he said.

Gary London

Witnessing the events of Sept. 11, 2001, would inspire Gary London of Clovis, then a student at Texas State Technical College, to drop out of college and join the military. London currently works at Cannon Air Force Base with a company on contract with the U.S. Air Force.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, London said, “I was walking into my Microsoft Office class and everybody was all sad. I asked, ‘Who died?’” They pointed at the TV screen, where images of smoke emerging from the Word Trade Center were showing. Then he heard about something happening at the Pentagon.

London said a friend of his was reacting very emotionally, and “then it hit me,” the full impact of what had occurred.

Students gathered for prayer and silence at the college and classes were canceled for the day, he said.

“I was horrified. I didn’t know what was happening,” he said, then “I got scared.” Then “anger set in,” he said.

A year later, London was in the Air Force.

He was stationed for a time in Uzbekistan, one of the nations that borders Afghanistan.

“I was gassing up airplanes,” he said. “They would go flying and doing their missions.”

London noted the challenges the war on terror has presented.

It has been especially challenging, he said, because instead of fighting a nation, “we have been trying to stamp out an ideology.”

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August, he said, was “a slap in the face” after the U.S. had maintained a presence there so long. U.S. involvement in Afghanistan began in 2001, shortly after Sept. 11.

“It seems like we kind of gave up,” he said.

State Sen. Pat Woods

New Mexico Sen. Pat Woods of Broadview said the events of Sept. 11, 2001, caught him as he was traveling from Fort Collins, Colorado, to Clovis, hauling a storage shed to Clovis on a trailer for his son.

Traffic just south of Denver was unusually light for that time of the morning, he noted, when the roads are usually choked with commuter traffic. He also noted that the big rigs had pulled off the road.

“I turned the radio to a station that normally played music,” Woods said, “and there was a guy on talking and he was dead serious.”

As he was listening, he said, the second plane struck the World Trade Center.

Despite advice to get off the road and seek shelter as more terrorist activity was expected, he said, he kept driving.

He had attended a Denver Broncos game the night before and he thought about how many would have died if terrorists had attacked the stadium.

“I wanted to get through the Raton Pass into open ranch land” and get home, he said. “I didn’t want to be in the city.”

Woods said a brother had been on a flight home to Atlanta, which was ordered to land immediately after the first plane struck the World Trade Center.

Woods said his brother and several others on that flight rented a car and drove 12 hours to Atlanta, “to be with their families.”

When Woods learned about the rough U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August, he said his first reaction was to retaliate.

Then, he said, he remembered how Soviet Russia fared in Afghanistan, withdrawing in 1995 after nearly a decade of battling with Islamic Mujahideen troops.

“If the other super-power” could not hold Afghanistan, he said, it was unlikely the U.S. could either, and maybe the U.S. should "stay out."

Robyne Beaubien

Robyne Beaubien, owner of Robyne Beaubien consulting in Clovis, stated in an email that on Sept. 11, 2001, “I was getting ready for work when my husband, who was watching the news, said a plane had flown into the World Trade Center.”

Like others, she wrote, “We were shocked. We watched the news until I had to go to work” at Clovis Community College.

“We all watched the morning unfold in our offices,” she wrote. “I remember feeling shocked, then horrified” at the events in Manhattan and the Pentagon played out.

“I’[m sure I didn’t get any work done that day,” she said.

She remembered that a moment of silence and prayer was conducted in the college’s common area before classes were canceled.

“Our children were sent home from school,” she said, “and we spent the day together.”

Since then, Beaubien stated, “I think that our country collectively has done a good job of remembering what happened on 9/11 and honoring those who died. People will always have opinions for or against political decisions, but at the end of the day the people most impacted are those who lost loved ones. They bear their grief every day.”