GREENWOOD — It’s been nearly 24 years since the terrorist attacks on the morning of September 11, 2001, shook the nation and changed the life of the world.
Yet, it was on Sept. 12 that the world really changed, recalls Blaine Hicklin, a Lander University videographer, who was an eyewitness to the terrorist attacks and the aftermath of the disaster in New York City.
For Hicklin, who was living in New York after graduating from Lander in 1990, the morning began early. An employee at the Merrill Lynch Video Network, which was adjacent to the World Trade Center, Hicklin vividly remembers how beautiful the day was. “Almost anyone will tell you, it was a beautiful day … the first crisp morning since summer. The sky was a perfect shade of blue.”
Unfortunately, the serenity of the early morning didn’t last long. On his subway ride from Queens, which is east of Manhattan, Hicklin remembers feeling a jolt or bump as the subway ride was ending. It was probably about the time – 8:46 a.m. – when the first jet hit the World Trade Center’s North Tower.
As he was getting off the train, Hicklin said people standing at the exit leading to the World Trade Center mall appeared frozen, as if in shock. “I saw people running.”
His first thought was that there had been a bombing. He remembered a bomb exploded under the North Tower in 1993.
Then, he saw “trash blowing, and there were chunks of debris on the subway steps. I looked up at the subway exit and saw glinting objects against the sky. Then, I realized it was paper. With my eyes, I followed the paper trail to the World Trade Center.”
Conversations among people speculated that a plane had crashed into the building, and a line was beginning to form at pay phones in the area. “Not too many people had cell phones in those days, so people were lining up to make calls.”
Hicklin was one of the fortunate ones to be able to find a phone. When he called his parents in South Carolina, they didn’t answer. He called a friend and told him to let his parents know that he was OK.
Then, only a few minutes later, the second jet hit the South Tower. “At that point, we knew that this was an attack,” Hicklin said. “I’ll never forget the sound of the jet hitting the building.”
By then, people began fleeing the area. “In 10 minutes, you saw the best and the worst of humanity,” Hicklin said, recalling a businessman stopping to help a woman who had fallen in the street. “New York is not equipped to handle a mass exodus.”
As he made his way across Manhattan to leave the city, Hicklin heard the South Tower fall, and then the North Tower. “Even across the island, as far away as I was, you could hear the popping sound of it coming down.”
The challenge continued: How would he get home, a distance of about 12 miles? Public transportation had come to a halt. His only way out was on foot. He was nervous as he walked past the United Nations building and again as he walked over the 59th Street bridge, which connects Manhattan to Queens.
He wondered if the places along his route could be targeted by terrorists, too. As people walked along, he was reminded of a scene of refugees – people looking tired and scared, and some covered in dust. He was worried about a friend who was working on the 90th floor of one of the buildings. Later, he learned that she survived the attack.
Eventually, he made it to his apartment and listened to the news throughout the day and evening. In the early morning hours of Sept. 12, he awakened to the smell of smoke. “I thought the apartment was on fire,” he said.
Hicklin went out into the street, about 2 a.m., to find about 30 people dressed in pajamas looking curiously into the air. “Smoke from the World Trade Center was wafting across the street,” he said. “It lasted a few days.”
On 9/11, people’s reactions were “fight or flight,” said Hicklin. “It was on September 12, however, that the world changed. Life as we knew it had ended.”
In the days that followed, his church held services and prayer vigils. “It was a roller coaster emotionally,” he said, noting that he never thought of leaving New York at that time to return to South Carolina. “New York had become my home. We had such a sense of unity in the weeks and months that followed.”
Merrill Lynch moved its operations to Princeton, New Jersey. Hicklin went back to work, a three-hour commute to and from each day. That schedule continued until May 2002.
“I hadn’t known anything about trauma until September 11,” he said.
Ultimately, “people’s lives went on,” Hicklin said. “Difficult experiences make us different people, but bring us together, too.”
Yet, as he stood in Manhattan on the morning of the terrorist attacks, “I knew that this day would be imprinted on my soul for the rest of my life,” he said.
On the 23rd anniversary of Sept. 11 attacks, victims and first responders honored
BY: ASHLEY MURRAY - SEPTEMBER 11, 2024 8:31 PM
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris honored victims on the 23rd anniversary of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, when four hijacked commercial airliners crashed into New York City’s Twin Towers, a Pennsylvania field and the Pentagon, shocking the world and precipitating years of U.S. war targeting extremists.
Biden and Harris honored the nearly 2,977 lives lost that day visiting all three sites Wednesday. In New York City they sat among leaders past and present, including former President Donald Trump and his running mate Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, during the annual reading of the names of those who died when the Twin Towers collapsed.
Harris and Trump shook hands at the ceremony just hours after their contentious presidential debate Tuesday night, during which they blamed each other for the deadly 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan two decades after the United States invaded in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks.
Biden and Harris then traveled to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, to lay a wreath at a memorial near the field where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed.
They also brought pizza and beer to local volunteer firefighters.
Both walked to a sandstone boulder in the field that marks the point of impact, according to reporters traveling with the president and vice president.
Trump also visited the memorial and crash site in Shanksville on Wednesday, according to press who were present.
Biden and Harris closed the day by laying a wreath at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, where 184 people were killed when a hijacked jet targeted the hub of U.S. defense operations.
“On this day 23 years ago, terrorists believed they could break our will and bring us to our knees. They were wrong. They will always be wrong,” Biden said in a statement. “In the darkest of hours, we found light. And in the face of fear, we came together — to defend our country, and to help one another. That is why terrorists targeted us in the first place: our freedom, our democracy, our unity.”
“They failed. But we must remain vigilant. Today, our longest war is finally over. But our commitment to preventing another attack on our people never will be,” he continued.
Both the president and Harris hailed the Obama administration’s 2011 U.S. killing of Osama bin Laden, a known terrorist who antagonized the U.S. for years before directing his al-Qaida network to carry out the 9/11 attacks.
“(A)nd two years ago, President Biden ordered an operation that killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s deputy,” Harris said in a statement. “We remain vigilant against any terrorist threat directed at the United States or the American people and we continue to disrupt terrorist networks wherever we find them.”
Tributes from Congress
Congressional leaders paid tribute to the victims as well Wednesday.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York attended the morning ceremony at Ground Zero in Manhattan.
“Today and every day, we remember and honor the sacrifice, resiliency, and the bravery of New Yorkers, our first responders, the families of those who were taken from us, and Americans across the country,” Schumer posted on X Wednesday. “We will #NeverForget the souls we lost on 9/11 and in the years since.”
In remarks on the Senate floor, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell honored the 9/11 victims and also criticized the Biden administration for the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. He also attacked Harris for comments she made on the debate stage Tuesday.
“The Biden-Harris Administration pretends the war on terrorism is over,” the Kentucky Republican said. “The vice president, herself, claimed last night that ‘there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone (for) the first time this century.’”
“This, of course, would be news to the U.S. service members who conducted operations against ISIS in Iraq last week, and to the sailors intercepting Houthi rockets in the Red Sea, and to the families of service members killed and injured in the attack on Tower 22 near Jordan’s border with Syria earlier this year,” McConnell said, referencing Iran-backed militant attacks on shipping vessels and a U.S. Air Force and Army base in the northernmost tip of Jordan.
Both U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries marked the anniversary by laying a wreath at the 9/11 memorial in the U.S. Capitol that honors the passengers and crew of Flight 93.
“The 9/11 terrorists sought to destroy America, but they were no match for the indomitable American spirit. On this solemn day, we honor the lives of those lost and remember the strength and courage of our first responders who ran towards danger, not from it. We will never forget their extraordinary sacrifice,” Johnson of Louisiana said in a statement.
Jeffries, a New York Democrat, called attention to emergency workers who developed chronic health issues following their duties at the Manhattan crash site.
“Hundreds of first responders selflessly and bravely answered the call and ran towards danger. They risked their own safety to rescue whoever they could find. Due to the toxic exposures, they endured at Ground Zero, many went on to contract severe or terminal long-term illnesses,” Jeffries said in a statement, spotlighting the more than two dozen New York firefighters who died this year from their 9/11-related diseases.
“Our commitment to our courageous first responders is ironclad and must endure. House Democrats will always stand up for the heroes who gave everything on that tragic day,” Jeffries said, blasting Republicans who in 2019 stalled, and some who voted against, a government medical fund for the responders. “We will never forget their sacrifice.”
Ashley Murray covers the nation’s capital as a senior reporter for States Newsroom. Her coverage areas include domestic policy and appropriations.
SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
