Twenty-Five Years Later: Remembering September 11

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For those who lived through that day on September 11, 2001, the passage of time has not erased the details:

• where you were
• who you were with
• what you saw
• the moment you understood that the world had changed

At Thayer Leadership, those experiences are deeply personal. Many members of our faculty were serving in the U.S. Army on September 11, and the attacks would shape the course of their service for years to come. For some, the impact was immediate.

Leadership in the Immediate Aftermath

Colonel (Ret.) Sean Hannah, Ph.D., a member of Thayer’s faculty since its inception, was sitting at his desk inside the Pentagon that morning. News had already arrived that planes had struck the World Trade Center when, at 9:37 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon.

In the aftermath of the attack, he was reassigned to help rebuild Resource Services-Washington, the organization that had suffered the Pentagon’s highest casualty rate. Hannah stepped into the role of a leader who had been killed, joining survivors who were grieving colleagues while simultaneously confronting an enormous organizational responsibility. The team was responsible for a multibillion-dollar budget operation, and many employees suddenly had to assume responsibilities two or three levels above their previous roles.

Their work offers a profound reminder of what leadership can require in a crisis.

Hannah described what he witnessed in the survivors as a combination of “resolve, honor, and duty.” Yet he was equally clear about something that can sometimes be lost when stories of resilience are retold: the pain remained. The ability to continue serving did not erase the human cost of what had happened.

That distinction matters.

September 11 should not be reduced to a leadership case study. It was first and foremost a human tragedy. One that took nearly 3,000 lives and left families, friends, colleagues, communities, and nations forever changed.

But in the actions of people who confronted that tragedy, we can also see something important about leadership:

A Generation of Service

For many members of the Thayer Leadership faculty, the impact of September 11 continued through the decades of military service that followed.

Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Charles Faint, DBA, has written of the intense operational tempo that followed September 11 and the leadership experiences he accumulated in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.

Colonel (Ret.) Joe Vongs led an intelligence company during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, returned to Iraq as an embedded intelligence trainer in 2007, and later deployed an intelligence battalion to Afghanistan.

Major General (Ret.) Keith Thurgood, Ph.D., served in senior leadership roles supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Colonel (Ret.) Patricia George’s Army career included deployments to both Baghdad and Afghanistan.

Thayer Co-President and faculty member Dan Rice had previously completed his active-duty Army service, but later voluntarily returned to military service with the New York National Guard and deployed to Iraq as an infantry officer. He was wounded there in 2005 and received the Purple Heart.

Together, however, they illustrate the reach of that day across an entire generation of leaders.

Their responsibilities changed. Their organizations changed. Their missions changed. And many found themselves leading in environments defined by uncertainty, complexity, personal risk, and consequences that could not be neatly separated from the people carrying them out.

What Crisis Reveals About Leadership

At Thayer, we often speak about closing the gap between knowing about leadership and acting like a leader when it counts. We believe that leaders build leaders, that character is foundational, and that leadership is developed over a lifetime of study, experience, reflection, and practice.

The experiences of September 11 reinforce why that preparation matters:

• A crisis rarely provides time to begin developing trust. Leaders must have built it beforehand.
• A crisis is not the moment to discover whether people understand the mission. Shared understanding must already exist.
• A crisis does not suddenly create character. It reveals the values, habits, relationships, and sense of responsibility that have been developed long before the moment arrives.

The survivors COL Hannah worked alongside at the Pentagon demonstrated another essential truth: leadership does not always come from the person with the most senior title. When circumstances changed in an instant, people stepped into responsibilities they had never expected to carry. They acted because others depended on them.

Responsibility of Remembrance

A quarter century creates distance, but it also creates responsibility.

As firsthand memories of September 11 gradually become history, those who remember the day have an opportunity to tell its stories. Not only stories of destruction, but of service, sacrifice, courage, compassion, and people caring for one another under extraordinary circumstances.

At Thayer Leadership, we are privileged to learn from leaders whose lives and service were profoundly shaped by that day and by everything that followed. Their experiences remind us that leadership is ultimately about far more than authority or accomplishment. It is about the choices we make when other people are counting on us.

Twenty-five years later, we remember those whose lives were taken on September 11, 2001. We remember the families and colleagues who carried their loss forward. We honor the first responders, service members, civilians, and countless others who answered calls to serve.

We carry forward a responsibility of our own: to develop leaders of character who are prepared to serve others, especially in the moments when leadership matters most.