Joan Platz has made numerous trips to Washington since the Pentagon 9/11 Memorial opened in 2008. For years, she has wanted to walk through its quiet grounds. She has wanted to see and touch the granite and steel benches that honor the 184 people killed on that grim day 25 years ago when a hijacked American Airlines plane slammed into Pentagon.
But until earlier this week, Platz could never quite bring herself to visit.
Like many of the more than 23,000 people estimated to have been inside the building when it was hit, the attack has stayed deep within her. For those who worked there, the Pentagon was where they spent more time than anywhere but home. And in a matter of seconds, part of it was in rubble, ablaze and spewing smoke.
The victims that day weren’t just names and ages; they were friends and colleagues or familiar faces in the building’s endless hallways. Revisiting, even 25 years later, isn’t as simple as just stopping by.
On Monday, as Platz and her husband pulled their recreational vehicle into the parking lot next to the memorial site, it was with a sense of heaviness and solemnity. The mood stood in contrast to the bright early-morning sunshine. Puffy popcorn clouds dotted the blue, blue sky.
There was only one other visitor at the site as Platz walked through the entrance. She wandered in silence, stopping to read names of victims on the benches. Later she would stop and sit down at the bench honoring Capt. Robert Dolan. She didn’t know Dolan well, but they had been classmates at the U.S. Naval Academy. Last weekend the class celebrated its 45th reunion.
The Pentagon loomed over Platz’s left shoulder as she sat on the bench and talked about what brought her back here.
“I guess after the September 11th attack, I just compartmentalized it, put it in the back of my head because we had a job to do,” Platz said. “We had work to do, and I didn’t really think about these beautiful people as much as I should have. And I knew when I came here, I was going to have to face that.”
“It was finally time,” she said.
Then
On Sept. 11, 2001, Platz was a 42-year-old Navy commander who had been assigned to the Pentagon just five months earlier. A U.S. Naval Academy graduate in 1981, the second class at the academy that included women, she had 20 years of experience as a naval aviator flying CH-53E helicopters.
Platz served in Bahrain during the Gulf War and was also posted to Italy and Indonesia. Before her Pentagon assignment, she studied at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.
On the morning of the attack, Platz was preparing for a budget meeting with colleagues when they learned a plane had hit the World Trade Center. The group of aviators turned on the television, still not sure what had happened, wondering aloud how a pilot could fly a plane into a building on such a clear day.
“And then we watched the second airplane hit and the room went dead silent, and we all went back to our desks and started calling off all of our meetings,” Platz said.
That was 9:03 a.m. They knew the country was under attack.
Thirty four minutes later, the ground shook violently beneath her feet on the fifth floor of C Ring in the Pentagon’s southwest-facing section.
“It felt like an earthquake and then there was just a huge ball of fire,” she remembered. “It knocked me over and then we knew we had to get out.”
As she recalled the events, the memorial site around her remained mostly empty and quiet. Birds chirped in the dozens of crepe myrtle trees planted nearby. The peace was interrupted occasionally by jets roaring in and out of Reagan National Airport less than two miles away.
“It’s so odd to hear the airplanes going overhead,” she said.
Twenty-five years later, the memories of that day flood back: the buckling floor, the sound of part of the building collapsing, the burning jet fuel.
“As I’m sitting here, I can still smell that smell,” she said. “It took me days to get it out of my skin.”
She was not injured in the attack and her immediate focus that morning was connecting with her team at their offices in Crystal City and telling them to get out of that building. She had them set up a phone tree so they could contact and account for everyone.
Phone service was spotty but she got through to her sister in Alaska, waking her up to say she was okay. She was also able to reach her 12-year-old son’s school and leave him a message.
Platz said the only time she became emotional that day was when she returned home and saw her son.
Then the next day, like so many other Pentagon employees, military and civilian, she went back to work.
Now
The 9/11 attack has shaped Platz in ways she is still ascertaining. Twenty-five years is a long time and it’s no time at all. For Platz, the day still feels very recent.
“This was so significant and so monumental that it’s like it was today,” she said. “It doesn’t feel like that time has passed when you talk about this. This just happened.”
She retired as a captain in 2007 and recently became a grandmother. A quarter-century after the attacks on America, she said she worries about its direction.
“I feel very strongly about this great country. I had the honor of serving overseas and was so proud to serve and to represent this great nation,” she said. “And I hope that we will stop trying to bully other nations and threatening them and get back to world peace and living together and acknowledging how beautiful the partnership is that we have with other nations.”
She recalled the unity the country felt in the weeks and months after 9/11 and thinks about how that has evaporated over the years. She wonders if a better world awaits the country’s children and grandchildren.
Over the years, Platz has been asked to speak at Veterans Day events. She said she always begins by quoting one of the original proclamations for Armistice Day. She began to recite it from memory:
“The recurring anniversary of this day shall be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace and good will and understanding between nations,” she said.
“I think that’s the best way we could honor these people is to participate in exercises that perpetuate peace. And I fear we’re not doing that right now,” she said.
Above her a plane descended slowly past the Pentagon on its final approach into Reagan.
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