“It will be a pretty somber day.”
This thought by Margaret (Nubi) Zielinski seems to sum up the thoughts of most people as the anniversary of Sept. 11 looms ahead. Her office was located on the fifth floor of the B Ring - right next to where the plane came to a stop after crashing. She works for the Chief of Naval Operations, and she feels that they all survived because they were in one of the newly remodeled offices with reinforced walls and windows.
Although it’s been almost a year since the Sept. 11 disaster, Zielinski remembers everything in great detail.
“I was in a meeting, so I wasn’t even aware of what was going on. One of the captains in our office was looking at the TV and said, ‘Margaret, would you look at this?’ and with that, there was a crash.”
Somebody yelled, “Hit the deck!” Zielinski said that a lot of people did just that, but she ran and got her purse.
“The smoke was there instantaneously. The power went off, and it got very smoky,” she said. Then somebody said, “Let’s go!” They tried to get out the front door, but then there was a second explosion and the ceiling collapsed.
“The smoke was getting thicker,” said Zielinski, as members of her office staff starting going down the stairs. “In retrospect, I realized that the flames were right behind us.
“They were already bringing the wounded out. There were cries for ‘Medic, medic!’ We kept hearing people screaming and ambulances wailing. Nobody knew where they were going — the exit for South Parking had already been closed, so everybody had to find another way out. Remarkably it wasn’t chaotic.”
Zielinski said that she became separated from all the people in her office and was totally turned around.
“That was the worst part — getting outside. I kept thinking of my girls and telling myself that I have to get out of here,” she said.
She ended up exiting by the Metro, which is on the opposite side of the Pentagon from where she worked.
“I don’t mind telling you, I never had my legs shake so bad,” said Zielinski. “I never felt so good as when I saw the sunlight.”
THE WHOLE THING STILL made no sense. Since she still didn’t know about the Twin Towers being hit by planes, she thought it was a bomb that had exploded in the Pentagon. She stopped and asked a D.C. policeman what happened, and he told her that a plane had hit the Pentagon and that she’d better get out of there.
She walked to their office in Crystal City. “I had only been at the Pentagon for three months, so I just knew to go there,” said Zielinski, who then called her husband to tell him that she was OK and arranged for somebody to pick her children up from St. Mary’s.
Her office set up a command center, and Zielinski stayed to help. “By 4 o’clock, we had accounted for everybody,” she said. When she finally got home at 5:30, her family was hysterical.
For three days, Zielinski said that she felt like she had socks stuffed in her mouth - a reaction from the fumes that they all breathed.
Zielinski went into the Crystal City office the next day. A few weeks later, they let some of the people in to the Pentagon office to retrieve some items that were recoverable. They had to wear rubber suits to protect against the mold and contamination. Zielinski didn’t go with them — she didn’t see her office until she returned in March, to a newly remodeled office.
“It was creepy, everything was put back exactly the way it was — the carpeting, paint, etc. We were all nervous,” she said. As they walked through the halls, they saw mementos sent from people all over the world, such as the enormous banner signed by the people from the state of Alaska, which extends from the fifth deck.
“It made us feel pretty good,” she said.
Zielinski has attended several memorial services since 9/11, including the Navy memorial service. “It was so touching,” she said. She plans to attend the services being held at the Pentagon on Sept. 11 and may attend the service at Arlington Cemetery, as well.
“It’s going to be a rough week,” she said.
ANN SMITH, widow of Gary Smith, plans to attend some of the memorial services. Her husband was the chief of Army Retirement Services and was attending a meeting at the Pentagon the day the plane crashed.
“At first I dreaded it [attending the services], but thinking about it now as it gets closer, we’ll select a few. We couldn’t do them all, either emotionally or physically, but I do feel that it is an honor for us to do this for Gary,” she said.
Smith is very thankful for the support she’s received over the past year from both the military and her community.
“I’ve had an amazing amount of support because I have lived in this neighborhood so long,” she said. “It has surprised and overwhelmed me. Emotionally it’s hard to wrap your hands around it.”
She feels that the support she’s received from the Red Cross has been good. Like the others, she’s already received two “gifts” from the Red Cross. The third gift is being held up due to additional documentation required. “I guess it was because some people were dishonest,” she said.
She has received help from other sources but still plans to complete the paperwork to determine how much the Sept. 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001 would help her.
“I would just like to know that I can stay in my house and feel safe and secure,” she said.
Smith is especially thankful for her casualty-assistant person, Jim Hoffman. Unlike some other survivors, whose assistants have moved on to other duties, Hoffman remains there for Smith and her family. He was also a retired army officer and was one of several who asked for the honor of assisting the Smiths.
“He has been awesome. His persistence in helping me has helped me more than I can explain,” she said. “It’s so unfortunate that they [assistants] have gone away for some people.”
JACQUELINE LYNCH, widow of Terence M. Lynch, does not plan to attend any of the services. “They didn’t talk to us to discuss what was going on [with the services],” she said.
She feels that United Airlines, the Pentagon, her husband’s company and charitable organizations have all failed her.
“The families I’ve dealt with were treated very poorly,” she said. “It’s been a terrible year.”
She felt that mistakes were made from the very beginning. “They started rebuilding the Pentagon before telling the families. It was sacred ground for us. They should have waited until they had identified all the bodies and funerals were held.”
Lynch said that she then went up to Capitol Hill to request that they put a chapel in the newly remodeled space. It was one of the many times that she went up to Hill to testify.
She was there to complain about the Oct. 11 service. “They only wanted to allow four people per family to attend. Many of us still had family in town and had more people that wanted to go,” said Lynch. She said that she was told by a top official that “the Oct. 11 memorial wasn’t meant for the families of the loved ones.”
Lynch felt that her husband’s employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, dropped the ball. “I had to deal with 132 newspapers. They could have helped me get a press statement together,” she said, adding that the only thing she’s received from them thus far are six tickets to Six Flags, a check for $10,000 that came with no signature, and a letter from the CEO telling her what her benefits were. And even though they had said in a press statement that Terry was going to be promoted, Lynch said they wouldn’t provide a document stating that information. She needs that to determine his projected salary for the calculation of benefits from the Victim Compensation Fund.
Lynch said that she received the first two gifts from the Red Cross, but then they accused her of not being Terry’s wife and delayed the third sum. She feels that they didn’t get nearly as much as they deserved. “The whole thing stinks. Nobody will ever contribute [again] like people did for that,” she said.
On a positive note, Lynch said that Booz Allen did contribute toward the Terence M. Lynch Foundation, a fund set up to raise money for pediatric arthritis, a cause that both she and Terry were very involved in. Marshall High School, which has been partnered with Booz Allen since 1997, raised over $16,000 for Lynch and the other two Booz, Allen employees killed on Sept. 11.
She also got to meet Paul McCartney after the benefit concert. “What a great guy,” she said. Unfortunately, she said that a lot of families got left out of that and other events because they no longer had contact with their casualty-assistant officers.
“I’m very angry about what happened,” she said.
ANN SAMMARTINO, mother of John Sammartino, said that she and her family will be attending the services both at the Pentagon and at Arlington Cemetery. They will also go to the remembrance mass being held at Good Shepherd Catholic Church, where they are parishioners.
She reflected on their loss by saying, “It has been a very difficult and stressful year for our families without our son John. We have coped as best we could by being together as a family with John’s wife, Debbie Rooney, and daughter, Nicole Sammartino; his brother and his family; and his sister and her family.
“What has helped immeasurably has been our faith and our belief in the goodness that must be in abundance in this world. There have been many very wonderful people who have supported us throughout these times, and we’d like to thank them for their thoughtfulness and kindness.”
GREG COMMONS will not attend any of the services. He will be teaching at Carl Sandburg Middle School that day.
“I owe that to my students,” he said. Ironically, as a social studies teacher, Commons will be called on to explain to his students what happened on Sept. 11, and the events that took place during the past year.
While he doesn’t agree with the controversial lesson plan proposed by the AFT (American Federation of Teachers), which didn’t blame any one source, he said that was only one of many lesson plans. Commons was scheduled to meet with the other social studies teachers to address Fairfax County’s feelings toward teaching about Sept. 11.
“My intention is to have students in each of my six classes create a 6-by-6 panel and write about the positive things that have happened since Sept. 11,” said Commons. “Obviously we learn from history.”
Although Commons didn’t lose anybody on Sept. 11, he did lose his son, Matthew Allen Commons, on March 4, 2002. He was engaged in a rescue mission in Afghanistan when he was killed in action.
He wouldn’t have been there had it not been for Sept. 11. When asked if they were entitled to money from the victim fund, Commons said that he wasn’t sure, and said that he had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, he felt that Matthew knew he was risking his life by being part of the military, but on the other hand, if they were entitled to it, he would take advantage of it.
While Commons has not been included in the Pentagon services, he and his family did attend a ceremony at Fort Bragg, N.C., when the army added the names of Matthew and the other rangers killed to its Memorial Wall.
“It was very touching,” he said.
They didn’t attend the ceremony in Boulder City, N.M., when the local VFW building was renamed for Matthew, but they did receive the clippings from the local newspapers.
“It was a tough afternoon reading the clippings,” said Commons. “I wish it would go away.”