As Portage gathered Friday morning for a 25th anniversary 9/11 remembrance ceremony, Mayor Austin Bonta and Assistant Police Chief Ted Uzelac urged attendees to remember what Sept. 12, 2001, was like as well.
“I hope we always keep alive in our memory not just Sept. 11 but also the spirit of Sept.12, because Sept. 12 is also what happened that day,” Bonta said.
Bonta said a high school student recently asked him if the sense of unity and community felt in Portage in the wake of the devastating Aug. 11 storm is what the nation was like in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York’s Twin Towers, the Pentagon and the plane that passengers and flight attendants caused to crash in Pennsylvania, short of its intended target.
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“I told him yes, but more,” Bonta said.
The nation joined together to mourn and offer help not only to the victims and their families but also to each other.
“Somewhere between the attacks and the unity, somebody cut somebody off in traffic again,” and the unity and compassion faded, Bonta said.
Young people who perhaps weren’t even born on 9/11 need to be told of not only the attacks but also the response to them so that feeling doesn’t fade from the national consciousness, Bonta said.
“We don’t have to hate each other when we disagree,” Uzelac said.
“If we remember the loss, we miss the deeper truth of that day,” he said.
“Sept. 11 revealed something powerful about the American character: our capacity for selfless service and the ability to unite when it matters most,” Uzelac said.
“Firefighters, police officers and office workers risked their lives to help their neighbors, their coworkers and those they served. Flight attendants and passengers on United 93 organized, voted and charged the cockpit knowing the odds. Military personnel at the Pentagon pulled the wounded from the rubble, and ordinary citizens became first responders in the streets of lower Manhattan. Most importantly, though, our nation united,” he said.
“These were not superheroes; these were men and women who had made a quiet decision on that day. The call came, and they answered it,” Uzelac said. “Many of them paid the ultimate price. Others carried the physical and emotional scars for the rest of their lives. All of them showed us what service looks like when it costs something real.”
Unity came “for a brief and beautiful time,” he said. Flags appeared on porches that had never flown them, lines formed at blood banks, donations poured into relief funds, and people of every background stood together at candlelight vigils and interfaith services.
“We did not suddenly agree on every political question. We simply recognized that something larger than our disagreements was under attack and that defending it required us to stand side by side,” Uzelac said.
“Unity is not the absence of disagreement. It is the decision to treat one another as fellow Americans even when we see the world differently. It is the refusal to allow fear, anger or disagreement to make strangers of the people who share our land,” he said.
“Let’s remember that the strength of this nation has never rested in its power or its wealth, but in the willingness of ordinary people to do hard things for one another when things get tough,” Uzelac said.
Myers Elementary School Principal Jon Evers brought a student from every class at the school to plant pinwheels on the lawn at Portage High School, where the 9/11 observance was held.
“A pinwheel spins when the wind moves it. Each individual pinwheel is small, but when we put many of them together, they create something beautiful,” he said.
“Our pinwheels represent peace, unity, remembrance and hope,” Evers said.
He was in ninth-grade biology class when the first plane hit the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001. They didn’t have the television on then, but it was afterward. “We did get to see it after the first plane hit,” he said. “It’s something you’ll never forget.”
Bonta was in fifth grade on Sept. 11, 2001, attending Mass at Nativity of Our Savior. The priest mentioned the attacks in his homily. Bonta’s teacher was from New York City. The class watched the news on television the rest of the school day after lunch, he said.
Uzelac was at the police station when the attacks happened. At home that day for lunch, he told his wife that it was the start of something big. “I know it is, Ted,” she told him. “When are you leaving?”
Uzelac was in the Reserves and left the police force to deploy to Mosul, Iraq, where he helped provide security for the election there.
“I watched people carry one another to the polls,” he said, to get that purple stain on their finger to signify that they had voted.
“Watching these people vote with the passion they had was just incredible,” he said.
In Iraq, Uzelac ran into now-retired Portage firefighter Chuck Litzkow, who had deployed with a National Guard unit out of Battle Creek, Michigan, to get to Iraq as quickly as possible. “I would always rather fight over there than on our soil,” Litzkow said.
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Fire Chief Chris Crail was a probationary firefighter then, holding a second full-time job with LaPorte County EMS.
“I immediately started thinking about Portage and its proximity to Chicago,” where high-rise architecture was created and many potential targets are located.
“It puts your career into perspective to think this is a potential, Crail said.
Retired Fire Chief Randy Wilkening was a lieutenant at the then-new fire station on Swanson Road. “It seemed like the world stopped that day,” he said.
Mayor Doug Olson talked to division chiefs about an emergency plan for that day. “The city was eerily quiet that day,” Wilkening said.
Fears about increasing gas prices caused lines from the Speedway station at Swanson Road and U.S. 6 to stretch north to well beyond the fire station, he said.
“That was a crazy time in the city,” Wilkening said. “That was a day like no other.”
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.