Airmen reflect on Sept. 11

  • Published
  • By Matthew R. Weir
  • 1st Fighter Wing Public Affairs
LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va. (AFPN) --  Four years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Airmen here still think back to that day as they prepare to deploy for, or continue to support, the global war on terrorism, remembering exactly where they were, what they were doing and what they thought the next few years would be like serving in the military.

Ralph Champion is a civilian employee at Langley, but during the Sept. 11 attacks he was a technical sergeant attending the noncommissioned officer academy at Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla.

That morning he was preparing to give a speech about the emotions evoked after a plane crash -- then he heard the news about the World Trade Center.

“I was shocked,” he said. “A building that size could not be hit by accident. Someone had to have done it on purpose. I don’t think the word ‘terrorism’ jumped out at me, but I knew someone had done this intentionally.”

Airman 1st Class Cindy Dill works in the Air Combat Command Regional Supply Squadron. In 2001, she was just Cindy, a girl from a small Alabama town. She first heard about the attacks on the radio, but she had to drive to a friend’s house to see the television coverage.

“We thought we were under attack,” she said. “It was a scary thought.” Especially since she was already scheduled to attend Air Force basic training within a few months.

“I was scared at first because I didn’t want to join and go (to war) and die at 19,” Airman Dill said. “But I knew that joining the Air Force would be the best thing going for me in my life.”

Capt. Sarah Linthicum trains Langley medical personnel in the 1st Aerospace Medicine Squadron. The morning of Sept. 11, she had just fallen asleep after finishing the night shift. Her husband woke her to tell what happened.

“I knew whatever he was about to tell me must be important,” she said. “It wasn’t like him to run down the hall and wake me up. We were stationed at Travis AFB in California. You could tell that something had happened from the level of activity on base, but because it didn’t affect the community at large, everything seemed so surreal.”

Today, all three Airmen, and many others just like them, share the same thought -- “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”