Psychologists have a term for them: flashbulb memories. They are just what the name implies. Still photographs from an experience in our past that can be queued up on demand and flipped through like they were taken yesterday. But not all memories are created equal.
Certain events occur in our lifetimes that generate such high levels of surprise and emotional arousal and are of such grave importance that our minds take detailed snapshots of the moments surrounding them. The memories are then vividly imprinted on the brain and become highly resistant to forgetting.
The greater the emotional impact, the higher the likelihood of total and detailed recall. Psychologists claim it developed as an evolutionary function, allowing the strong to survive while the weak – those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it – perished.
The memories that are laid down in these situations create an HD version of the complete picture: The context in which a person first heard the news, where they were, what they were doing and who or what delivered the news.
Flashbulb memories can be generated from personal experiences, but more often they are developed through a shared story. Depending on a person’s age, the last half century has produced what psychologists consider the big three: The assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Challenger disaster and 9/11.
In tragedies like these, Stuart Hall, a professor in the University of Montana’s Department of Psychology who specializes in neuropsychology, says it’s a one-two punch.
“The big part of it is that some events are so traumatic that they really prime the brain to lay something down. The other thing we know about establishing memories is that as certain pathways are used over and over again, they are essentially strengthened.
“An event happens and you go, Holy smoke, what’s going on? And your mind becomes immediately activated and the memory gets put down. Then you go out and talk to your coworkers and your friends the next two or three days and really keep those pathways activated.
“The power of the event itself and then the fallout afterwards as we continue to revisit it in our minds tends to strengthen those pathways and lays down a much more powerful and resistant memory.”
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September 11, 2001, dawned sunny in Missoula. After an overnight low of 41, the area was forecasted to have an afternoon high of 84 degrees.
At the University of Montana, the Department of Athletics was already deep into its fall routine of early-season football, volleyball and soccer.
The staff was a mixture of new and veteran coaches and administrators.
Wayne Hogan was beginning his seventh year as the Director of Athletics.
Joe Glenn was in his second season as football coach. His team opened the season with a 31-17 win at
Cal Poly and was coming off a 30-12 loss at Hawaii three days earlier. The Grizzlies were scheduled to host Idaho on Saturday, Sept. 15, in the team’s home opener.
Greg Sundberg was in his first year as assistant marketing director under Dan Hawley.
Nikki Best was in her second season coaching the Griz volleyball team. Her team was 3-4 and coming off a 3-0 victory over Georgia Southern at Kansas’s tournament the weekend before. The Grizzlies were scheduled to travel to Ann Arbor, Mich., on Thursday, Sept. 13, to face Virginia Tech, Central Michigan and Michigan at the Wolverines’ tournament.
Wayne Tinkle woke up Sept. 11 anxious to being a new chapter in his life. After a 12-year professional playing career spent mostly in Europe, Tinkle, a former Griz standout, was scheduled to be in the office for his first day as an assistant coach for Don Holst.
Betsy Duerksen was beginning her eighth season leading the Montana soccer team. The Grizzlies were 2-1 and had shut out Oregon, 1-0, at South Campus Stadium the previous Friday. They were scheduled to travel Thursday for matches Friday and Sunday at BYU and Utah.
Lady Griz coach Robin Selvig was beginning his 24th year and wringing his hands trying to figure out how he was going to replace Lauren Cooper and Linda Cummings when his team began practicing in mid-October.
Steve Hackney was beginning his 21st year as the department’s equipment manager.
Mark Plakorus, now the Montana soccer coach, was in his third season as an assistant coach at Air Force. The Falcons were 1-2-1 and had just played to a 0-0 double-overtime draw at Idaho State on Sunday, Sept. 9.
Each awoke that morning unaware that the world was about the change.
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Ten years ago Sunday, American Airlines Flight 11, bound from Boston to Los Angeles, was hijacked by five al-Qaeda terrorists while the plane was traveling over central New York. Using small knives and box cutters designed to look like lighters, the terrorists stormed the cockpit, killed the pilots and rerouted the plane due south.
At 6:46 a.m. in Missoula, Flight 11 was flown into Building 1 of the World Trade Center in New York City, striking the tower between the 93rd and 99th floors of the 110-story building.
Within three minutes, national morning news shows were on the story.
CNN had a live shot of the smoking building at 6:49 a.m., and by 6:51 a.m. the studio hosts had Sean Murtagh, CNN’s vice president of finance, who was working in his office at CNN’s New York bureau in lower Manhattan, on the phone to describe what he was seeing.
Fox News, also on the story within minutes, speculated that perhaps it had been a small commuter plane whose pilot had been blinded by the bright morning sun or possibly been led on a fatal course by a malfunctioning electronic navigation system.
In their search for immediate answers, none of the news shows brought up the possibility that the worst case scenario – a deliberate attack – had just occurred.
Before 7 a.m., one show was able to arrange a phone interview with an eyewitness who had seen the plane hit the building, but she could not speak to the specifics of the size or type of plane it had been.
Another show, with a shot of black smoke streaming out of Building 1’s top 17 floors, spoke with an expert who discussed the difficulties of fighting the fire while also limiting damage to the bottom 90 floors.
New York’s WABC scrolled across the bottom of the screen, “Michael Jordan hints at comeback.”
That same morning, United Airlines Flight 175, also bound from Boston to Los Angeles, was overtaken by five terrorists while the plane was in airspace over northern New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania.
At 7:03 a.m., while every network was broadcasting a live shot of the north tower, Flight 175 struck the south tower between the 77th and 85th floors, slicing in one side of the building and shooting a huge fire ball out the opposite side.
It came just 17 minutes after the first strike.
On New York’s Fox 5 “NY Good Day,” the impact led to a few seconds of on-air silence before one of the show’s hosts said, “Oh, my God, that’sanother one. Now it’s obvious, I think, that we have a terror attack.”
On New York’s WB 11 morning news broadcast, someone said, “This does not look like an accident at this point. You hate to say the words, but what comes to mind right now is ‘terrorist attack.’ ”
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Greg Sundberg: It was one of those weird coincidences. I usually never watch TV in the morning. But for some reason I had a bowl of cereal and turned on the Today Show.
(By that time) the first plane had hit the first tower. I figured it was an accident, but even that would have been a huge happening.
I’ll never forget the second plane hitting. The news shows immediately began saying this was no coincidence, that the country was under attack. At that point everything just goes out the window, where you’re at, what you’re doing.
Mark Plakorus: I was going into work a little bit late, because I had to drop something off at a car dealership where I was getting a new car. I was driving on the interstate on my way up to the Academy and my roommate called me.
He said, “Have you heard? Something happened in New York, and it’s all over the TV. Some kind of explosion at the World Trade Center.”
No sooner did I get off the phone with him than I got a call from the head coach who was already on base. He said, “You’ve got an hour to get on base, because they are going to lock it down.”
I said, “What the heck happened?”
He said, “I can’t tell you right now. Just get here.”
Wayne Tinkle: I remember being really eager to get to the office and get my first day going. I woke up before six o’clock, took a shower and had a little something to eat, then clicked on the TV and saw the footage from the first tower.
My first thoughts were, Boy, was it foggy? Did a little Cessna get lost? It wasn’t long before the second tower was hit. Then all of a sudden you start to realize it was a terrorist act.
Nikki Best: I had the flu, and I was home sleeping on the couch when (my husband and assistant coach) Dave called and said, “Nikki, I know you’re sick, but you need to wake up and turn on the TV. Something terrible has happened.”
When I turned the news on, the one tower was smoking, and it wasn’t long before the second plane hit the second tower. I remember it so clearly. It was awful to wake up to that.
I remember thinking that this was going to be a major event in our country’s history.
Robin Selvig: I always have the TV on in the morning to check the stock market, then it came on that an airplane had gone into the World Trade Center. I thought it was probably going to come out that it was a small plane and that it had been hazy.
Then it all started playing out, and it was like, Whoa.
Joe Glenn: I had just driven out of my driveway and gotten no farther than the corner when it came on the radio. I immediately called my wife and said she needed to turn the TV on and see what’s going on.
As I drove to work, she talked me through what was happening. You couldn’t believe what you were hearing. It was just complete shock.
Betsy Duerksen: I was walking my kids to school. We met up with our neighbors, and they were the ones that told us about it on the walk to school.
We took the kids to school, then came home and watched the news.
Steve Hackney: We were working in the equipment room, and someone said there was something on the TV that we needed to see.
I think our country has kind of become inured to big events, so we were all kind of like, Huh, somebody bombed the building.
Then they started showing the video of the second plane flying into the building, and it’s just shock when you realize that they were basically suicide flights. Then, for me, it went straight to anger, the thought that somebody would pull something like that.
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American Airlines Flight 77, bound from Washington to Los Angeles, took off that morning, flew as far west as the southern part of Ohio, then did a 180-degree turn and flew back toward the nation’s capital. At 7:37 a.m., with terrorists at the controls, Flight 77 struck the Pentagon in Arlington, Va.
At 7:56 a.m., with every network covering the story with live video of the burning buildings, the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed upon itself in a huge cloud of dust, 53 minutes after being struck.
At 8:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 93, bound from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco, crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pa.
The plane made it as far as airspace over northeast Ohio before four terrorists gained control and changed to a southeasterly course for what was believed to be an attack on either the Capitol or the White House. The plane crashed after a passenger uprising, 150 miles from Washington D.C.
At 8:28 a.m., with most of America now watching, the north tower of the World Trade Center collapsed upon itself, an hour and 42 minutes after being hit.
CNN’s Aaron Brown, reporting live from a rooftop in upper Manhattan, with the scene playing out in the near distance, witnessed the second tower collapse and said, “Good lord. There are no words. This is a horrific moment.”
In a span of less than two hours, nearly three thousand people had been killed, but early estimates were in the tens of thousands.
The attacks were done and the destruction mostly complete, but at the time no one knew it. Shock from what had just occurred was mixed with the kind of terror that comes from the uncertainty of not knowing what could still be to come.
Fear of the unknown settled over America. As did anger. The terrorists had struck at the totems of America’s strength: The site of her financial power and the site of her military might.
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Wayne Hogan: By the time I got to the office that morning, it was full-scale panic mode. Everybody was in shock, and nobody really knew what to do. There was a considerable amount of fear at that time, because folks were thinking that something like this could never happen.
We just sat stone-faced and watched it unfold in front of us. I don’t think any of us had any thoughts about athletics or anything else to do with work. It was something I certainly had no experience going through. None of us had.
I remember Marie Porter, our senior women’s administrator at that time, she was very strong and helped people come together. All the veterans in the department played a big role in keeping everybody on an even keel to get through those first few hours, because nobody knew what the final result would be.
Betsy Duerksen: I went into work, and everybody was trying to figure out what happened. I mean, do you continue doing your job?
Joe Glenn: You wonder what’s going to happen. What’s going to become of all of this? You didn’t know who did this or why they did this. And then you think, are we going to go to war, and with who?
You’re trying to go about your business, but you can’t not follow what’s going on.
Robin Selvig: I stayed at home and watched it unfold for a while, then I went into the office. Nobody knew what was really going on because there were so many ongoing stories. You were just tied to it.
I remember thinking, Do I know anyone in New York or someone who might be traveling there?
As things went on, I think most people had a number of emotions. You had anger when you heard it was likely a terrorist attack, then total helplessness. You wanted to do something, but there was nothing you could do.
Once it became clear people murdered people, you start thinking about revenge. I like to follow history and the wars that have defined our world, and I remember thinking, Whoa, is this going to be the start of something?
Nikki Best: I called Dave and told him, There’s no way we’re flying these kids to Michigan. That was even before we’d heard that they had shut down all air travel.
We just decided there was no way we could do that to the players’ families. Their parents would have been worried sick about them.
Steve Hackney: I think there was a general feeling of, This can’t be happening in our country. You just can’t grasp something of that magnitude. Your mind just can’t wrap around it.
It’s human nature to always want to have answers for everything, but it was just fear and anger because you did not know exactly what was transpiring.
Wayne Tinkle: When I got into work, all the TVs were on in the department, and people were just blown away by the atrocity. The fact that this was happening on our home land, it just led to an unbelievable couple of hours.
It led to more mingling of coaches in different offices than I’ve ever seen. People stopping in and asking, “Can you believe this?” and “What’s the latest?”
People were looking for answers, but they also just wanted to be with someone. It was kind of a camaraderie. Everyone was looking in on one another, making sure everyone was all right and dealing with it.
Mark Plakorus: I pulled up to the (Academy), and the line of cars waiting to get on (base) was probably half a mile long, because they had already gone into a higher state of readiness. They had dogs out sniffing every car.
The Academy is a high-priority asset for the Air Force, as all the service academies are for the military, so basically they shut it down. No one was even allowed to go outside. Classes were cancelled, and all the cadets were confined to their barracks.
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At 7:29 a.m., President Bush made a short speech to the nation at Booker Elementary School in Florida that opened with, “Today we’ve had a national tragedy.” He then led the nation in a moment of silence.
After his television appearance, he was flown to Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, La., then to the Strategic Command Center bunker near Omaha, Neb.
At 7:45 a.m. U.S. airspace was shut down, with all aircraft then in flight ordered to land at the nearest airport. By 10:15 a.m. all airspace over the U.S. was clear of commercial and private flights.
Air travel would remain shut down until Sept. 14.
Major buildings across the U.S. – the Sears Tower in Chicago, the United Nations in New York – were emptied, and New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani ordered an evacuation of lower Manhattan.
At 3:20 p.m., the World Trade Center’s Building 7 collapsed. After it fell, America was quiet.
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Joe Glenn: That afternoon at practice we did the only thing we could do: We prayed. We took a knee, bowed our heads, and I asked the team to pray for our country and pray for our leaders, that they would guide us in the right direction and get us through this.
Our guys were very aware of what was going on, so we talked about how fortunate we are. But there was a fog over everyone. It wasn’t business as usual.
Wayne Tinkle: At our workouts, Don Holst gathered the players together and said, Hey, let’s learn from this. Be thankful for the family you have here on the team and back home. There is a lot of sadness out there, so let’s pull together and have each other’s backs.
We had 18 to 22 year olds asking why this happened. We were just getting educated ourselves as a coaching staff at the same time and trying to provide what we could for the players.
Betsy Duerksen: In our routine, Monday was our day off, then Tuesday is the first day of practice preparing for a Friday game, so we had a meeting as a team that afternoon.
Being females they wanted to talk. Nobody knew what to do. Do you go on with your life as usual? Should we even practice that day?
As college kids, their response was that they actively wanted to do something. We did train, but I remember feeling weird that we were actually continuing on with our day.
Mark Plakorus: You’re just sitting around wondering what’s going to happen. There was even talk at the Academy of no more athletics, of canceling the season. There were a lot of questions about what was going to happen.
For the kids, I think it really hit home that they were in the military. It was their choice to be at the Academy, and what that meant was that their lives were going to be much, much different than a typical college student.
Nikki Best: We didn’t practice that afternoon, but we did meet. We sat down with the team and talked about the day and made sure they had all talked to their parents.
Most of our players came from tight families. At a time like that, when you’re not able to get together with family, the players became each other’s family. I think everyone’s parents were grateful their daughters had family here to be with.
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At 6:30 p.m. President Bush gave a powerful seven-minute address to the nation on live television from the White House Oval Office.
He announced, “I’ve directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and bring them to justice.”
In what would later be called the Bush Doctrine, he continued, “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”
The Washington Post later reported that before going to sleep that night, President Bush wrote in his diary, “The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today. We think it’s Osama bin Laden.”
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Wayne Tinkle: It was an educational evening. (Our three kids) wanted to know what was going on and how something like that could happen in our country. They just couldn’t understand at the ages they were.
Jocelyn must have been 10 years old, and she was asking, How could somebody take so many lives? How could they take their own life and destroy so many others?
We had a pretty in-depth conversation about religious beliefs and hatred against others and how there are some fanatics out there who are willing to give up their own lives in order to destroy thousands and thousands of others for what they think is a cause.
Then you have to reiterate what you believe to be true about human life and caring for others and why you should put others before yourself. And if more people thought along those lines what a better world we would live in.
Kids today are being made aware of so many horrific things at a lot earlier age than when I grew up. It’s unfortunate.
Robin Selvig: I remember that evening one of my sons talking about wanting to get involved somehow, because I think that’s your reaction to something like this. You want to help.
There was a real sense of togetherness. There are no political affiliations at a time like that. It’s a shame that it takes something like that to bring Americans together.
Tragedy puts things in perspective real quick and you realize how unimportant the everyday things you worry about are. I mean, how dumb is it to worry about winning a basketball game?
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Wednesday brought a unique set of challenges to nearly every American, each of whom woke up wondering if the world would ever be like it had been just 24 hours before.
For Montana’s administrators and for those coaches who were in season, they faced a dilemma common to every athletic department in the country.What about the games?
The Big East and ACC early on announced their decision not to play football that weekend.
The SEC was the first college or professional league to decide to go ahead with its scheduled games that weekend. Then league commissioner Roy Kremer said he based his decision on a “strong feeling (from the SEC presidents, athletic directors and TV partners) that we should continue the games, because you didn't want to give in to the terrorists. You don’t want them to destroy your way of life.”
It’s certain the SEC’s TV partners didn’t want a disruption to their lucrative way of life. They had No. 8 Tennessee scheduled to face No. 2 Florida that Saturday at The Swamp in Gainesville.
By Thursday, the NFL and Major League Baseball announced they wouldn’t play their scheduled games at least through the weekend.
After getting excoriated by the public and media for its initial decision, the SEC reversed its plan and also put its games on hold.
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Wayne Hogan: I think it was at least 24 hours before there was any clear thinking that went on. On Wednesday, when the dust began to settle, so to speak, we knew we had some really critical decisions to make.
We talked to the coaches about allowing the student-athletes to have their space. Everyone needed to deal with this in their own way, and we needed to be mindful of that. We didn’t want to rush to get back into competition or practice until the kids were ready to deal with it.
We had a lot of veteran coaches at the time, quality people that understood that the kids came first. They were pillars, and that was important because that’s who the kids were turning to for their counsel.
I can’t say enough about how that part of it was handled.
Betsy Duerksen: The biggest question was whether we would play on the weekend or not. I just waited for (Wayne) to tell me what to do. It was nice to have someone else making the decision.
Personally I wanted to play, mostly from an attitude of wanting to fight back. I didn’t want the terrorists to ruin our way of life, but I understood the people who said we shouldn’t play out of respect for those who died.
Mark Plakorus: We were allowed to go out and practice (Wednesday), but we were told there would be a visible security presence around the Academy.
We could look around and see the armored personnel carriers that were surrounding the fields. There was no commercial aircraft allowed to fly, but we could hear the F16s that were patrolling above the Academy. It was an eerie feeling.
Wayne Hogan: I think it became pretty clear by late Wednesday, early Thursday that sports were going to take a hiatus. Major League Baseball stopped playing games, and the NFL came forward with cancelation of games.
We were all trying to react to the immediacy of everything. Certainly we knew that in the scheme of things there weren’t going to be sports for a while.
We had a football game scheduled against Idaho, and I remember being on the phone with (Idaho AD Mike Bohn), working through the situation. We were able to reschedule the game for later in the year.
Betsy Duerksen: We heard that there was a University of Portland soccer player whose mom had been on one of the planes. Our team got together and made a care package for her and made her a big card.
That at least gave our kids a way to do something when you otherwise feel so helpless.
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Major League Baseball was the first league to begin playing games again on Monday, Sept. 17. The NFL returned Sunday, Sept. 23. College football returned ten days after 9/11, when South Carolina and Mississippi State played the first Division I football game since the terrorist attacks.
All were held with emotional patriotic tributes replacing the standard pregame protocols.
After rescheduling the Idaho game for Nov. 24, Montana hosted Western Washington on Sept. 22 in its new home opener.
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Wayne Hogan: First and foremost we talked about allowing the student-athletes to be a part of the ceremony. I felt it was important because that would be closure for them in some ways. Kind of a public way to wash it away to a certain extent and begin to live life in a normal state.
Greg Sundberg: A lot of (the protocol) was driven by the NCAA. It was nice to have some uniformity in what everyone was doing.
Our biggest focus was to let it ride out with a lot of quiet time.
Wayne Hogan: It was very emotional. There were a lot of tears that day during the pregame ceremony, a lot of embracing and a lot of feeling. One of the most emotional days I can ever remember.
Joe Glenn: It was somber. It was 11 days later, but people were still not over everything that had happened.
Greg Sundberg: Everybody was unified, wearing their red, white and blue. You don’t want to have things like that happen to draw people together, but it did.
The pregame was like no other. You could have heard a pin drop during the moment of silence and National Anthem.
Wayne Hogan: Right up until kickoff, I’ve never seen that level of emotion in people and a coming together like that. Missoula is a very caring place. People care about one another like no other place I’ve been.
And in Montana you’re either related to somebody, or you know somebody who’s related to somebody. The tie that binds all those fans together made it even more special.
It was really the first chance people had to see each other. A lot of people had been sequestered in their homes for that period of time, so it was a chance for everybody to come out and be together.
Greg Sundberg: When the game started, it took some time to get Washington-Grizzly back to where it usually is.
I think the best thing was to get back into it. People needed something they were used to doing on a Saturday to start healing.
Wayne Hogan: When we put the ball on the tee and kicked off, we saw a lot of spirit come out. I think the crowd wanted to put that awful scene behind them and for once in the last 10 days enjoy life again, even if it was for just a couple of hours.
I think that was the first day that people said, We’re going to come back. We’re going to play these games and return our lives to some sense of normalcy.
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Before a crowd of 18,398, John Edwards passed for 277 yards and Yohance Humphery ran for 105 and Montana shut out Western Washington 30-0. The victory started a 14-game winning streak that culminated with the program’s second national championship in December.
Montana’s football game came a day after the Air Force soccer team hosted Georgia State at the Academy soccer stadium on Friday, Sept. 21. The game, won by the Falcons 4-2, was played under a far different set of circumstances.
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Mark Plakorus: When they decided we were going to be able to play the season out, they had proposed the idea of us playing road games the rest of the season.
Then they determined we could play home games, but the games would not be allowed to be attended by anyone who was not a military person assigned to the Academy.
So it was just us, the referees and the visiting team. For the most part the stadium was empty.
For the teams coming in, every person on the traveling party on the bus had to have their complete name, their social security number, their address, their driver’s license, their driver’s license number.
At the gate, the Academy’s security forces got on, checked every player and made sure everything matched perfectly, and bomb-sniffing dogs checked all the bags.
The bus got escorted to the field, and security escorted the team into the locker room and back out to the field. After the game the team was escorted off the field, and the bus was escorted off Academy grounds.
It was just a shocking realization that this is the world we live in now.
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Less than a month after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan in Operation Enduring Freedom, with the goal of dismantling the al-Qaeda terrorist organization and its use of Afghanistan as a base of operations.
In March 2003 Operation Iraqi Freedom commenced, and by April Baghdad had fallen and Saddam Hussein’s government had dissolved.
On May 1, 2003, President Bush gave a nationally televised address aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, with a banner claiming “Mission Accomplished” stretched out across the superstructure.
And yet the war continues.
In early September 2006, as the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approached, deaths of U.S. service members fighting the war on terror surpassed the deaths from 9/11. The number is currently 4,902.
On May 1, 2011, Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan by a team of Navy SEALs and his body buried at sea.
In the U.S., life goes on.
Wayne Hogan is the Associate Director of Athletics for Public Relations at Georgia Tech, Joe Glenn is retired and living in Phoenix and Greg Sundberg is in his seventh year as Executive Director of the Grizzly Scholarship Association.
Dave and Nikki Best live in Missoula with their daughter Brooke. They own their own executive recruiting business.
Wayne Tinkle is beginning his sixth season this winter as Montana’s men’s basketball coach, Robin Selvig is starting his 34th season with the Lady Griz.
Betsy Duerksen lives in San Clemente, Calif., with her husband, Aaron, and their three kids, Justice, Lake and Liam. Duerksen coaches Liam’s U11 team for the United Futbol Club.
Mark Plakorus is in his first season coaching the Montana soccer team, Steve Hackney is retired and living outside of Lolo, Mont.
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Wayne Hogan: I hope we haven’t forgotten. I think people in general tend to go back to their normal lives, because time heals and covers up a lot of things. I just hope we don’t become too casual.
Greg Sundberg: Even though it happened 2,000 miles away, it hit all the way over here in Montana. I don’t think anyone who was alive for 9/11 will ever forget.
But I think in this day and age, with the fast-paced lives that we live, it’s good to take a step back and reflect. In my own life I find myself honoring the flag and national anthem a little more (prior to sporting events) because I’m grateful for the chance to be able to watch these young men and women participate in sports and have fun.
Joe Glenn: There are a lot of sick people out there who want to kill in the name of God. I don’t get it. That’s not the God I know. People are at war with you just because they don’t like your style of life.
I think it’s something that’s going to go on forever. We’re going to have to fight those people who dislike us basically for who we are.
But if you want to fight terrorism, I think there are better ways to do it than the way we’re doing it. We have paid a tremendous price, not only in dollar signs but in human lives. Let’s bring our boys home.
I’m going on the record right now that the next president I’m voting for is going to get us out of Afghanistan and Iraq, I know that.
Wayne Tinkle: I think it’s made us all aware. We can have these things in place, but we’re still vulnerable if somebody is demented enough to put a plan in place like that. We’re supposed to be the Land of the Free, but I don’t think we can live quite as freely as we did pre-9/11.
What still gets to me when I look back is how many lives were destroyed. It’s not just the lives that were lost. It affects aunts and uncles, grandmas and grandpas, little kids who lost their daddies. There are a lot of people who don’t have their loved ones anymore.
Our national coaches association the year after 9/11, as sort of a unification, requested that each institution wear our nation’s flag on their jerseys, not only to honor those who were lost but also in support of our armed forces.
We still wear one, just a simple way of honoring those who were lost and as a way to keep the candle burning for those still out there fighting for our freedom.
Betsy Duerksen: Lasting impact? There is an ongoing war, right? We’ve got young people fighting in a war that seems unending because of 9/11, and lives continue to be lost.
I’ve got three kids, and I think kids today have a feeling of uncertainty about the safety of their world.
Robin Selvig: You want to heal, but it’s not something you should forget or the country should forget.
The whole terrorism thing is so senseless. It’s hard to grasp for rational people. I try to put myself in other people’s shoes to try to understand where they are coming from, and that’s a hard one.
For some people, that’s justifiable in their minds. It’s been going on through history, we just haven’t been touched by it much on our soil.
The question I still have is, How can they hate us so much? I think we’re good people, and I think people in general are good, so how can one group hate so much?
I’m trying to understand it. That’s the ultimate way to solve this, because we’re not going to kill each other off.
I had no answers back then, and I still don’t.
Mark Plakorus: We just live in a different world now. Even 10 years later I’ll never forget that day and how it changed our country and everything about us. No matter how much everyone wants peace, there are not always peaceful people out there.
One thing I think is neat nowadays is the attention that gets paid to military personnel, firefighters and policemen for the service they give to our country. These people sacrifice their lives at times and live their lives in a different way so that we can enjoy the freedoms we have.
To me that’s what America is about. That’s what freedom is about. I’m thankful to those people who continue to give their lives and sacrifice their lifestyles so that we can continue what we get to do every single day.
Montana Sports Information -- GoGriz.com
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