A defining moment: Culver alumni share their personal accounts of the Sept. 11 attacks

 

On Sept. 11, 2001, a sunny, clear Tuesday morning with bright blue skies turned into one of the darkest days in American history when 19 terrorists hijacked four airplanes, killing close to 3,000 people. At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center followed 17 minutes later by United Airlines Flight 175 hitting the South Tower. The nation was under attack.

Thirty-four minutes later, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, and the passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 forced their plane down in Pennsylvania, preventing yet another strike. By late morning, both Twin Towers had collapsed. Twenty-five years later, Culver alumni who were on the front lines share their stories.

The crash at the Pentagon was less than 100 yards from Lt. Col. Shawn Walsh’s desk

Lt. Col. Shawn Walsh ’80 settled into what he expected would be another typical day in Army logistics at the Pentagon.

He was sitting in his newly renovated office in the D-Ring of the Pentagon across from his longtime friend Bill Carrico, a retired Marine Corps warrant officer who worked in the Army’s water program. Minutes before 9 a.m., Lt. Col. Mike Foster burst in: “A plane just hit the World Trade Center!”

Walsh opened CNN.com on his computer and watched smoke pour from the North Tower, then saw the second plane crash into the South Tower.

Walsh felt uneasy, knowing the Pentagon, the military’s nerve center, was an obvious target.

“I peeked over the cubicle wall and said to Bill, ‘I’d rather be anywhere else than in this building today,’ ” he said.

Keeping with the Army’s mission-first mindset, Walsh continued working while keeping the news on his screen.

Two weeks earlier, Walsh had moved into the first wedge of the five Pentagon wedges that were being reinforced with Kevlar in the walls and blast-proof windows. While he was on the phone with the general’s administrative assistant arranging a meeting, a violent shock wave tore through the room. The blast-resistant window rippled like water and he heard the muffled sound of an explosion.

“It felt like the building had been lifted and dropped,” Walsh said. “I felt as if someone had punched me in the chest. It knocked the wind out of me.”

He turned to Carrico and yelled: “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

He later learned that the airplane had crashed less than 100 yards from his desk. If he had been in his old office he likely would have been killed.

Walsh and Carrico used an emergency stairwell and emerged outside to chaos — jet fuel, smoke and burning debris everywhere.

“My eyes and lungs are burning as I stood in the field right outside where the plane went in. People are stumbling out of the building, dazed, disoriented, just like I was,” he said.

A police officer asked Walsh to help him clear the bumper-to-bumper traffic on Washington Boulevard. Stunned commuters sat motionless in cars that had been hit by debris. Walsh and the officer banged on windows, urging them to move so emergency vehicles could get through.

Then a chilling message blasted over a loudspeaker: “Vacate the area immediately! Another plane is inbound!”

While waves of Pentagon workers fled, Walsh and the police officer kept working. The reported inbound plane was apparently the fourth hijacked aircraft, which ultimately crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Walsh and the police officer spent more than 90 minutes clearing the road before medevac helicopters started landing.

Walsh repeatedly asked to borrow cell phones to call his wife, Allison, but the cell networks were overloaded. As he began his journey home, he eventually spotted a pay phone. He had no money, everything he had was back in his cubicle, so he called collect.

“Allison,” he said. “I’m alive.”

By the time he got home after 5 p.m., he was greeted by his relieved wife and a living room full of concerned friends. Hugging his wife, he felt an overwhelming sense of being grateful to be home.

Calls from well-wishers and concerned friends continued throughout the night. One of the last calls came about 9 p.m. He was ordered to report back to the Pentagon to the Army Operations Center at 3:30 a.m. the next day.

After virtually no sleep, Walsh drove north on Interstate 95. The highway was eerily quiet. He arrived back to the smell of smoke and jet fuel.

“Every instinct told me to stay away,” he said.

He feared another hijacked aircraft would be coming to finish the job. But he had a job to do.

At the Pentagon, security personnel tried to stop Walsh from entering. He told the guards to either let him in or arrest him.

Inside, Col. Guy Beougher told Walsh to go out, assess the situation and prepare to brief senior Army leaders.

“I don’t know why they called me, but I had a mission, so I went out and did it to the best that I could,” he said.

Walsh returned to the wreckage site, where emergency crews and investigators were already working. An Army Mortuary Affairs conference had been taking place nearby. Some of the Army’s most experienced people handling human remains were at work when Walsh arrived. He was shown a Metro bus converted into a temporary morgue.

For two weeks, Walsh helped coordinate the respectful handling of remains and then months until each of the 184 people who died were identified.

One day, while driving with his wife, the song “Overcome” by Live, with the lyrics: “Even now the world is bleeding,” triggered an emotional release after days of suppressed grief. It affected his wife one day while Walsh was watching her give their 1-year-old son Shamus ’18 a bath.

Days later Walsh learned the devastating news that his classmate from The Citadel, Joseph “Joe” Pycior Jr., had been killed in the attack. Walsh had unknowingly overseen his friend’s remains.

“I took comfort in knowing he had been handled with the same extreme dignity and respect as all the others,” Walsh said.

Following the end of recovery operations, Walsh moved into the Special Operations Cell, helping coordinate logistical support for troops deploying to Afghanistan. Soon after, he learned he had been selected to command a battalion as the United States went to war in Iraq.

Walsh served in the Army for 25-1/2 years, retiring as a colonel in 2009. It would take years for Walsh to fully appreciate that Sept. 11 was not simply an event he responded to, but a line that divided his career and life.

“My life may have taken a different trajectory, for all I know, but that was a defining moment, not only in my life, but our country and a lot of other people,” he said.

Note: This story is largely based on the first chapter of Shawn Walsh’s book, “Proud to Serve.” The book is expected for release on 9-11-2026, available on Amazon.

Fritz Shepperd left New York hours before planes struck, but was still at the center of a global crisis

Frederick “Fritz” Shepperd NB’70 moved to New York City in 2001 to lead a major project to bring Lufthansa German Airlines’ new North and South American headquarters and roughly 500 jobs to the city.

Throughout the 1990s, he had built a career in globalization strategy, founding the Quadral Group Ltd. The work brought him into partnership with the New York City Economic Development Corp. and the administration of Mayor Rudy Giuliani. On Sept. 10, 2001, in a Lower Manhattan conference room about two blocks from the World Trade Center, the final U.S. documents were signed. Shepperd sealed the contracts in a FedEx envelope and dropped them at the box in front of the Twin Towers.

Originally scheduled to fly out of New York shortly after 9 a.m. the next day, Shepperd moved his departure to 6:30 a.m., energized by the deal and eager to get home and get to work. He was leaving the Pittsburgh airport parking lot when he made a routine call to the Economic Development Corp. to let them know he had made it back safely. Suddenly he heard screams, crying, panic and the words: “A plane has hit the World Trade Center! We’re being evacuated! I’ll call you when we’re downstairs.”

Then, silence.

He had just heard the 9/11 terrorist attacks happen — live, from inside the chaos. At this time, Shepperd thought it was just a tragic accident, like the time an Army bomber crashed into the Empire State Building in 1945.

Like millions of Americans, Shepperd learned what was happening in real time. The radio played only music at first, then cut in with a brief announcement: a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Eventually the station stopped playing music and went to a full news report and he heard about the second plane. Then about a plane hitting the Pentagon. Then a plane crashed near Pittsburgh. But Shepperd had no cell service, so he had no way of telling anyone he was safe.

Everyone in his office was relieved when Shepperd arrived. Moments later they watched on TV as the second tower collapsed.

Feeling compelled to act, he instructed his maintenance team to buy every American flag at Lowe’s and mount one on each of his dozen or so rental properties by nightfall. The next morning, the photos of those properties flying the American flags appeared in the Times Reporter newspaper — a small but powerful symbol of the unity embracing the nation.

That night, the call he had been waiting for finally came. His contact at the Economic Development Corp. reported that the entire staff had survived, though they had been caught in the choking cloud of debris as the towers fell. Many had lost loved ones — spouses, fiancés, friends or firefighters they knew.

With more than a million square feet of office space destroyed, everyone was searching for office space. The EDC was working from tents with cell phones and fax machines. Shepperd didn’t know whether the signed documents he placed in the box in front of the Trade Center had been picked up and sent to Lufthansa. There also was a question of whether Giuliani, with all that happened, still wanted the project. Lufthansa received its response via letter on Sept. 26.

“Lufthansa’s commitment to the City at this time sends a powerful statement of support for our efforts to maintain the strength of our City in the wake of the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center,” Giuliani wrote. “I look forward to personally welcoming Lufthansa to its new headquarters in New York City and celebrating our partnership and our mutual commitment.”

But Lufthansa itself was in crisis. The Federal Aviation Administration grounded all civilian aircraft, more than 4,500 in flight at the time. It was the first such order given in American aviation history. In the weeks following the attacks, airlines faced a sudden collapse in passenger demand and severe financial strain. The Lufthansa board prepared to cancel the project.

In a call with Thomas Winkelmann, head of North America Lufthansa, Shepperd offered counsel: “You will always know what happened on Sept. 11. But you will also remember when New York City asked for help — how you responded.”

A little over an hour passed, then the call came. “Frederick, we are laying off people and canceling all capital investment projects ... except New York. Go back to New York and help those who helped us!”

Shepperd boarded the first flight back from Pittsburgh to LaGuardia, one of only two passengers onboard.

“It was a strange feeling, but I had a real responsibility to be there,” he said.

Smoke was still rising from where the towers had stood. His Manhattan apartment was covered in gray dust. The city was in a daze. Posters were everywhere with photos of people missing or lost. Most read the same: “Have you seen this person?”

Eventually, he was able to meet with the EDC team. He expected the meeting to last an hour. He was there for six hours. Each person he met with wanted to tell him their story of how they survived, who else survived and who they lost. One woman had the fireman’s helmet of her deceased fiancé on her credenza. Her ex-husband, also a firefighter, was one of the last firefighters pulled out of the blast alive.

“I was the first person outside of New York that they could talk to,” he said. “I valued that greatly. I was honored to help.”

Eventually, the industry’s instability forced the project’s cancellation and Shepperd realized his business also had been wiped out by the attacks. But he kept moving forward and eventually was able to rebuild Quadral Group.

“One foot in front of the other,” he said. “There was no way to know the way forward. I just had to rely on myself.”

Years later, he visited the new World Trade Center and its museum. Surrounded by photographs, twisted steel, and the fire engine remains, the memories surged back. The emotional weight hit him so hard he fainted.

Looking back now, he looks at those days with what he calls “quiet, humble pride.” In the worst crisis imaginable, he discovered what he was capable of. He believes Culver prepared him for exactly that — leadership, service and resilience.

“We did what we did for the team, to work for something beyond yourself,” he said. “It’s your duty to respond in the right way.”

 

Don Fox leaned on what he learned at Culver to help lead his team to safety

Don Fox ’75, deputy general counsel of the Air Force with an office in the Pentagon, got a phone call from his wife, Tracy, telling him an airplane had just crashed into the World Trade Center.

“You need to turn on the television,” his wife said.

Fox did. By then, the second plane had struck the South Tower. About a half dozen of the civilian staff gathered in Fox’s office to see the reporting. They thought no matter what they were saying on the news, there was no way this could be an accident.

“It appeared to us it was a terrorist attack,” Fox said.

Someone questioned why nearby Ronald Reagan Airport was still open because the Pentagon is on the flight path. Moments later the Pentagon lurched with the force of what Fox said felt like a “minor earthquake.” A muffled explosion followed a couple of seconds later.

“We were a ways away, but it was one of those ‘grab-the-desk shakings,’ ” said Fox, now a senior instructor and the Richard W. Freeman Chair of Leadership Education at Culver Academies. “Someone said, ‘We’ve been hit.’ ”

They were in the C ring, or middle, of the Pentagon. They were able to go to the B ring to look out the window. There they saw huge clouds of black smoke rising from the building’s southwest side.

“There were no alarms. No announcements. It occurs to me no one is going to come and get us. No one is going to come tell us what to do. Because the people who could have told us were responding to that scene,” Fox said. “That meant that as the guy in charge of the office, I was going to have to figure it out.”

Fox’s thoughts turned back to his time at Culver as a platoon leader in Battery A “where my sole responsibility was the guys in my platoon, their well-being and whether they thrived or not.”

Now Fox is standing in his office with everyone looking at him to lead. He was the only one in the group who had served in active duty in the military, and he had never been in combat.

“So, I said, ‘OK, here’s the plan,’ ” he said.

He told everyone to take only what they needed: keys, a photo of their children, but nothing more. They would meet at the front door of their office suite in two minutes.

The Pentagon’s computer networks and phones were dead. But because Fox was a senior executive he had been issued a BlackBerry. He fired off a short message to everyone in his contact list, including his wife: the building had been hit by an explosion, everyone in his office was safe and they were evacuating.

He told his staff to head to the River Entrance, away from the smoke. There were thousands of people pouring out in what Fox described as “organized chaos.”

Those with security or crowd control experience ran toward the fire. Others stepped in where needed. Fox still vividly remembers a three-star general, who would go on to lead U.S. Space Command, standing in the roadway directing traffic “like a pro.”

“He must’ve been an MP at some point,” Fox said. “He had it down.”

Unsure what was happening elsewhere, Fox and his staff still did not know the Twin Towers had collapsed; they walked toward the Potomac River. They joined hundreds of other evacuees in the LBJ Memorial Grove, a shaded park between the Pentagon and the water.

“A lot of people gravitated there,” Fox said. “It gave us some time to figure out what to do.”

Most of the people knew they weren’t going to be able to get to their cars. So they decided to see if the Metro was still running. They hiked along the tracks to the Arlington Cemetery station, where the station agent let them use employee-only facilities.

“I told the staff: Go home. Don’t even think about coming back until I call you,” he said.

They boarded nearly empty trains. Fox got off at the National Institutes of Health and walked about a mile home.

“It was empty. It was eerie,” he said. He arrived in Bethesda to find his wife and children, who were in fourth grade and sixth grade, playing badminton in the backyard. It wasn’t until that night, after dinner, that Fox finally learned a plane had hit the Pentagon, that the Twin Towers had collapsed and a fourth plane had crashed in Pennsylvania.

A brief exchange with his wife followed about returning to work the next day. She insisted he shouldn’t go. Fox said as a senior executive he had to be there to help make key decisions. He reported for work.

The Pentagon burned for another five days. By the week’s end, four of the five sides of the Pentagon were uninhabitable because of the smoke and soot. Offices from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Department of Defense crowded into the one remaining usable wedge and other places away from the Pentagon.

Parking itself became a crisis; hundreds of cars were inaccessible. Fox negotiated with the Pentagon City Mall to convert its parking deck into temporary employee parking.

“It was problem solving, nonstop, just to get day-to-day operations back going,” he said.

Fox knew people who died that day. One was Ernie Wilcher, who was retired from the Army General Counsel’s Office and working as an associate with Booz Allen Hamilton. Wilcher happened to be attending a meeting in the newly renovated wedge where the plane struck.

“It was one of those fate things,” Fox said.

Fox said the experience was life-changing for him.

“I don’t think small things bother me quite as much after that, at least I like to think so,” Fox said. “I think it’s no coincidence that my top VIA (Values in Action) strength is gratitude. I could have had a meeting over there that morning.”

As the 25th anniversary of the attacks approaches, Fox says he’s ever more aware that for students under 30, 9/11 is as distant as Pearl Harbor was to his generation.

“But both events profoundly changed the world,” he said.

A day of terror led to a wedding that became an island of joy

Mark Jaudes NB’63 had begun the drive to his office in Dallas when he got a call from his wife telling him to come home immediately.

Their oldest son, Will, had just started a new position at Lehman Brothers in Manhattan, directly across from the World Trade Center towers, an area he walked through every morning on his way to work. By midmorning, those offices were obliterated.

 

With cell service down, the family had no way to know whether Will was safe.

“We were without any way to reach him,” Jaudes said. “In such a helpless state, we were intuitively drawn to our church.”

When they arrived, the chapel was nearly full. Many others were there for the same reason: loved ones in New York whose fates were unknown. Names were read aloud and prayed for one by one.

Sometime after noon, the call the family had desperately waited for finally came. Will was alive, having walked back to his Midtown apartment, one of the few places still equipped with a functioning landline.

Months later, father and son retraced Will’s steps from that day. He emerged from the subway a block away from the towers and saw the damaged buildings. As firefighters expanded safety perimeters around the area, Will found himself only a block or two beyond the deadly cloud of debris when the first tower fell.

The emotional turbulence of the week collided with a long-planned family celebration: Will’s sister’s wedding in Dallas.

With airports closed and rental cars unavailable, a family friend offered a car, but it was in Philadelphia. Will got there and picked up several other stranded wedding guests on the way to Texas.

“The wedding Saturday night was the only joyful event that weekend,” Jaudes said. “We felt like we were in a time machine, exempt from the reality of what had occurred.”

The ceremony became an island of joy amid national tragedy — “an intensely joyful wedding,” he said. “A weekend like no other.”

All these years later, the family remains grateful. “Still thankful to this day for the prayers from so many,” Jaudes said.

Culver alumni react to the tragedy

Culver Academies saw alumni military enrollment surge nearly 50 percent in the decade after 9/11 compared with the decade before. From 2002–2011, 134 Culver alumni joined, compared with 90 from 1991–2000.

John McKinley ’95 was among those who joined. After graduating from Ohio State University in December 2000, he had planned to work in the family business, even as classmates like Brent Bombach ’95 pursued military careers at the Naval Academy.

“Once 9/11 happened I realized that was my calling,” he said. “I know I would have regretted not joining because it was our generation’s fight. 9/11 was the spark that pushed me to join the Marines and all these years later I have no regrets.”