If You Have a Story, Tell It: Pentagon Responder Reflects on 9/11

Twenty-five years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Carl Ey still remembers returning from a routine dentist appointment and seeing coworkers staring across the Potomac River toward the Pentagon.

Some were crying as they watched the Pentagon across the Potomac. Ey recalled hearing the words, “We’re under attack.”

Soon after, Ey was at the Pentagon himself, helping establish the communications needed by military personnel and other responders working at the damaged building. A quarter-century later, he is sharing those memories with a generation that increasingly knows Sept. 11, 2001, as history rather than personal experience.

His message is simple: Keep telling the stories.

“If you have a story, tell it, please,” Ey said.

Ey, who now lives in Ohio and has property in the region, was an Army major when the attacks occurred. He had an early dental appointment near Walter Reed that morning and called his mother afterward, as he routinely did.

“She says, ‘Are you okay?’” Ey recalled. “And I’m like, ‘Yeah, with the routine appointment, Mom.’”

She wasn’t asking about the dentist.

She told him to turn on the radio. The World Trade Center had been struck.

Ey hurried back to Fort McNair in Southwest Washington, D.C. When he pulled behind his office near a loading dock, he found civilian coworkers and service members looking across the Potomac.

The Pentagon had been hit.

Ey was soon sent there as part of the military response. Communications would be critical because a larger recovery operation was preparing to move into the building.

What he saw when he arrived remains clear in his memory.

Ey described the impact area as a “black hole.” Fires continued to flare inside the damaged area, and he remembered seeing pieces of the aircraft scattered around the scene, but nothing resembling an intact wing or fuselage.

The lack of large, recognizable aircraft pieces has fueled conspiracy theories over the years. Ey rejects those claims based on what he witnessed firsthand.

“Here’s somebody who was standing on the lawn,” he said. “It was a plane.”

The Pentagon itself created another problem for responders.

Its heavy construction made radio communication difficult. Ey said the FM radios normally carried by military personnel could not reliably penetrate parts of the building, requiring responders to use a different frequency band.

Communication was particularly important because the Pentagon had become both a disaster site and a crime scene. Military personnel, the FBI, firefighters, and other responders needed a way to coordinate as recovery teams moved in and out of dangerous areas.

“We all had to be on one frequency for safety to go in and out of that hole to recover the deceased,” Ey said.

His work at the Pentagon did not end after Sept. 11.

Ey was serving as operations officer for the Army Signal Activity in the Military District of Washington. He remained heavily involved at the Pentagon for about eight weeks, helping establish communications networks and supporting recovery, medical, mortuary, and chaplain operations.

But when Ey reflects on that period today, he also remembers Sept. 12.

In the days and months after the attacks, he recalled a level of unity that seemed to cross political and social divisions.

“Didn’t matter Republican, Democrat. Black, white, gay, straight, everybody was American,” Ey said.

Ey said he believes people with different political views can disagree while still maintaining friendships and relationships within their communities.

He recalled living in a Northern Virginia neighborhood where political yard signs made it easy to know that neighbors held different views. Yet when residents gathered for block parties, they found plenty of other things to talk about.

For Ey, remembering those connections matters more than letting political disagreements define a relationship.

That idea of remembering — both the attacks and what followed them — has become more important as the years pass.

Ey experienced that generational change firsthand when he returned to graduate school at Ohio State University’s John Glenn College.

At 54, he was the oldest student in a class filled largely with people in their 20s.

A professor learned that Ey had served in the military and asked whether he had any connection to Sept. 11. When Ey explained that he had been at the Pentagon, the professor asked him to spend about five minutes discussing his experience with the class.

Five minutes became about 45.

“They weren’t born yet,” Ey said.

The realization struck him.

The students knew about 9/11, but they had no personal memory of watching the attacks unfold. They learned about it in school, online, and through stories others told.

They asked Ey about the recovery operation, mental health effects on service members, and conspiracy theories surrounding the attack.

Ey said the questions were legitimate and gave him an opportunity to explain what he had witnessed.

The discussion also showed him why firsthand accounts matter.

“They knew about it,” he said, but hearing from someone who had actually stood at the Pentagon offered another level of understanding.

That lesson has become personal at home, too.

Ey has a 10-year-old daughter who now learns about Sept. 11 in school. She sometimes comes home and tells her father what she learned.

He listens and then adds details from his own experience.

“I want her to know,” Ey said.

That approach reflects a family connection.

Ey said his father was a prisoner of war during World War II. When Ey studied the war in elementary and junior high school, he would return home and tell his father what teachers had taught him.

His father would listen and sometimes tell him the lesson was “pretty close,” then fill in details from firsthand experience.

Now Ey finds himself doing much the same thing with his daughter.

“I’m a walking history book for her in this regard,” he said.

He knows some parts of the story are difficult to explain to a 10-year-old, but he believes preserving those memories matters.

The passage of 25 years has made that challenge increasingly clear.

People born several years after the attacks are now adults. Students sitting in classrooms today may have no immediate family memory of the day.

Ey said the anniversary has given him opportunities to speak with people about what happened, and he has been struck by how clearly those who lived through the attacks still remember the day.

Many can tell him exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news.

“They haven’t forgotten,” Ey said. “They’re just not talking about it.”

He believes talking about it makes “never forget” more than a phrase repeated at memorial ceremonies.

For Ey, that does not mean only remembering the destruction. It also means discussing the work of those who responded, the effect the attacks had on service members and families, and the sense of shared purpose he remembers in the aftermath.

His military career later took him to other parts of the world, and those experiences reinforced his belief in the importance of understanding events beyond America’s borders.

He also believes younger people can benefit from hearing directly from veterans about military service. As fewer Americans have close family members or neighbors who served, those personal connections can become harder to find.

Ey eventually retired as a lieutenant colonel. Yet one morning from his military career remains different from all the others.

On Sept. 11, 2001, he left home expecting a dentist appointment and an ordinary workday.

Hours later, he was helping respond to an attack on the Pentagon.

Twenty-five years later, he knows he cannot make younger generations remember a day they never experienced.

What he can do is tell them what happened.

And he hopes others who carry their own memories will do the same.

“Thanks for helping me tell my story and keeping the story alive,” Ey said. “It’s important.”

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