The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington took their toll on the Northwestern community, causing the deaths of at least four alumni, many close calls for students and faculty and disrupted transportation for almost everyone returning to campus.
Four alumni are presumed dead in the attacks. Ted Hennessy, Kellogg ’93, was on board the second airplane to crash into the World Trade Center. Melissa Doi, Weinberg ’91, and Steven Glick, Weinberg ’82 and Kellogg ’89, were in the north tower when it collapsed. And Lt. Cmdr. Patrick Jude Murphy, Kellogg ’97, was in the Pentagon when it was hit.
No current NU students, professors, administrators or trustees died in the attacks, but many were in New York and Washington at the time and witnessed the events firsthand. They said their harrowing experiences will be with them for the rest of their lives.
No matter where they were, most NU students felt the impact of the travel problems caused by the attacks, as many students’ plans to come back to campus were thwarted.
NU responded to the alumni losses and sense of insecurity by banding together, offering interfaith prayer services and psychological counseling and rescheduling functions. On Monday, the university will hold an inter-religious memorial service and candlelight vigil at 5 p.m. on Deering Meadow.
The victims
Hennessy, 35, who was on American Airlines Flight 11, worked as a management consultant for Emergence LLC and lived in Belmont, Mass., with his wife, Melanie Salisbury, and two children, Rachel, 6, and Matthew, 3. He was flying from Boston to Los Angeles for business.
After graduating from Kellogg, Hennessy worked at a string of consulting jobs and was hired at Emergence three years ago.
Doi, 32, worked on the 83rd floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower, implementing banking systems for IQ Financial Systems.
While at NU, she majored in sociology and was a member of Delta Gamma.
Glick, 42, was at the World Trade Center on business for his job at First Boston. He lived in Greenwich, Conn., with his wife, Mari; son, Colin, 6; and daughter, Courtney, 4.
While an undergraduate at NU, Glick was a member of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity and was involved with the Interfraternity Council and Dance Marathon, according to Michelle Hogan, editor of the alumni relations magazine.
Murphy, 38, another Kellogg graduate, is still missing after American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. He completed Kellogg’s “The Managers’ Program” in 1997, Asst. Dean Richard Honack said.
He had served in the U.S. Naval Reserves for five years and was at the Pentagon for two weeks of active duty, his sister Kathleen Schweikart said.
‘I have to get out of here’
Weinberg senior James Wang was taking pictures in New York’s Chinatown when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. He said he heard “a really loud sound … and all the birds in the trees flew up.” He saw the building on fire and began running toward it.
“I was a moron, it was the exact opposite of what you should do,” he said.
As he ran toward the building, he saw people leaping from the hole made by the first plane.
“I saw this one lady jump out; she was wearing a white dress,” he said. “She had a white dress with really bright red and orange flames on her.”
Wang reached the bottom of the World Trade Center about seven minutes after the first plane hit, and he was taking pictures of the first building when the second plane struck.
“I didn’t see the plane, I just saw explosion,” he said. “Everything shook. The ground shook, the air shook. … Right above me metal shrapnel and glass were falling. It was so high up, I could see it, and it was taking a while to fall, and I thought, ‘What am I doing?'”
He turned around and ran into a nearby building, he said, but didn’t know where to go from there. A security guard led people into the basement, which was a dead-end, so they turned around and ran back to the first floor.
“I turned and booked it Uptown; I didn’t look back,” Wang said. “I never saw the two towers collapse. I think I heard them collapse, but my adrenaline was running so high, I could just think, ‘I have to get out of here.'”
Trustee Sherman Lewis, whose office in the World Financial Center is across the street from the World Trade Center, was driving to work when he saw the plane crash into the building. He turned around and went home, said Ronald Vanden Dorpel, vice president for university development.
Chairman of the Board Patrick Ryan’s company, Aon Corp., lost 200 employees, spokesman Stephen Ban said.
On the morning of the attacks, Ryan was flying in a private airplane from France to the United States. It was diverted to Newfoundland, Canada, Ban said. Ryan has been talking with family members of missing Aon employees this week and attending memorial services in New York, Ban said.
Ban estimated that about 1,350 employees and visitors were in Aon’s office when the hijacked United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center. Aon’s offices were on the 92nd and 98th through 105th floors.
Counting their blessings
The blast might have claimed the life of incoming Weinberg freshman Caroline Davis’ father, were he not at a conference in California.
“We were just glad my dad was not sitting at his desk, because now it doesn’t exist,” Davis said.
She had been visiting her father, Brig. Gen. Andrew Davis, for the weekend in Washington, where he works at the Pentagon as director of public affairs for the U.S. Marines.
Caroline Davis, her mother and 11-year-old sister live in Evanston, where her father also works as associate director of NU’s Media Management Center. He left Monday night for a conference, and the rest of the family planned to return to Evanston on Tuesday.
At Davis’ apartment, one block from his office in the Pentagon, the family felt the whole building shake. Of the more than 100 military personnel killed at the Pentagon, none were Davis’ colleagues. The Marines’ offices are on the fifth floor, and although Davis said the blast three floors below knocked employees out of their chairs, they were able to leave without getting hurt.
Her father heard the news at 4 a.m. on the West Coast, checking his e-mail and watching CNN like millions of other Americans. Although he had a priority military aircraft to take him to Washington, he still labeled his return home a “20-hour hitchhiking odyssey.”
He boarded a military jet at Miramar Air Force Base and flew to Missouri’s Whiteman Air Force Base, where the jet’s brakes failed and the plane rolled 12,000 feet on the runway before it stopped. He then boarded an Air Force cargo jet headed for Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. From there, he rented a car and drove two-and-a-half hours to Washington.
After an hour-and-a-half of sleep, he had one of two operations and intelligence briefings for the day at 11 a.m. And he finally reunited with his family, the first people he thought of when he heard the news.
“It was a good hug,” said his wife, Margaret Bergan Davis. “I’m very glad that our family could be together.”
First steps on campus
Airport and airline cancellations caused huge delays in travel in the days following the attacks. Administrators gave leeway to freshmen, who originally were supposed to arrive Sept. 14, so they could arrive anytime during New Student Week and reschedule appointments and placement tests.
NU officials said that by Sunday, more than 400 of NU’s 2,050 incoming students had not arrived on campus, but by Tuesday more than 90 percent of freshmen had arrived, which Vice President for University Relations Alan Cubbage said was about normal for that time.
When students finally arrived, many had horror stories from their treks to Evanston.
Amanda Pister, a Weinberg freshman from Seattle, was left at home alone last week and had to make her own arrangements to get to school.
Since Pister’s parents were on a cruise, her older brother was supposed to help her move in to NU. But after going to see old college friends in Boston, his flight scheduled
the same day as the attacks was grounded.
Pister then sat at home, seeking any plane or train that might get her to NU. Although she had been scheduled to leave Thursday morning, she didn’t leave until 3 a.m. Sunday.
Her troubles, however, did not stop there. Once at NU, Pister had no idea how to move in.
“The RAs were the opposite of helpful,” she said.
Pister phoned all the resident assistants listed in the lobby at Jones Fine and Performing Arts Residential College, but none were home.
When Pister did find an RA to help her get her keys, he didn’t give her a few necessary items, such as her temporary WildCARD or e-mail password.
The return to NU
Immediately after the attacks, NU officials announced that interfaith prayer services would be held at Alice Millar Chapel for those grieving. The prayer services will continue indefinitely at noon Monday through Saturday.
Counseling and Psychological Services has offered 4 p.m. daily discussion groups at Norris University Center for all members of the NU community. The groups will continue at least through Sept. 30.
Rabbi Dov Hillel Klein said the scale of Tuesday’s attacks has touched students deeply.
“It’s a wake-up call to educate people on tolerance, how to respect each other and how to get the message of love out there,” Klein said. “We really need to figure out a way for people to reach out to each other. And we’re going to need to do a lot of healing.
“If we don’t normalize our life, the terrorists will win.”
The Daily’s Daniel Schack, Becky Bowman, Meghan Gordon and Ellen Carpenter contributed to this report.
