Residents remember 9/11
BY DAN PARKER SOUTH JETTY REPORTER

BUJAN

With the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, some Port Aransas residents reflected recently on their personal connections to the tragedy.

Port Aransan Charles Bujan had a son, Robbie, who was working in a building within a block or two of the twin towers when the planes struck the towers. Bujan and his wife, Sherri Bujan, were unable to get word for quite a while on whether Robbie had been hurt. Phone lines were jammed.

"Not being able to get hold of him, and me being a worry wart about my children, that just - it kind of blew my mind," Charles Bujan said.

It took a few hours, but the Bujans eventually learned that Robbie - an insurance company executive - was alright. Charles Bujan was elated that his son wasn't hurt, but he also was saddened that so many people died and that the city lost two of its strongest symbols.

"The Trade Center towers ... they kind of epitomize New York City," said Charles Bujan, who used to live in the Northeast. "I can't even imagine them not being there. I haven't been back since."

A Southwest Airlines flight attendant, Michelle Sowers of Port Aransas was scheduled to report for work on Sept. 11, 2001. But she never got a chance to get on her plane. After the terrorists After the terrorists struck, air traffic throughout the nation was grounded for several days.

SOWERS

Sowers was stuck in a motel in Burbank, Calif., for four days, along with dozens of other airline employees. She still remembers sitting with flight attendants and pilots from various airlines in the Holiday Inn lobby and watching the planes crash into the twin towers in instant replay on TV over and over again.

"You realize we're all doing the same job, and we're all in it together, and we just sat there as if we were just one company, and it was very traumatic for everyone," Sowers said.

Lela Henkel, who recently moved to Port Aransas from Austin, lived about one mile from the World Trade Center from 1997 to 2001. She was in grad school, taking classes in museum studies at the City University of New York at the time. She often visited the twin towers to attend lectures and showing visiting out-of-town friends and relatives around.

Because of a job opportunity, Henkel moved from New York to Florida about five days before the terrorist attacks leveled the Trade Center buildings.

Old Glory weeps U.S. flag, normally flown for national holidays from the tip of a crane at the Jerry McDonald ball field on Alister Street, flies under cloudy skies on Monday, Sept. 11, as residents paused to remember the day America was attacked.

"I knew a lot of people who were working were working there, and I had very close loved ones who were in the area, like at the (United Nations)," said Henkel, whose mother is Nancy Martens of Port Aransas. "But no one (I knew) was a victim who was killed or injured, thank God. They were running, like everyone else."

Lindsey Williams graduated from Port Aransas High School in 2000 and has lived in New York City for the past four months. She marveled at the magnitude of the security that blanketed Manhattan during the fifth anniversary of the attacks.

"You wouldn't believe the security," who works as a medical assistant at a New York City doctor's office. "All over downtown. Security guards and just hundreds of cop cars. Secret Service guys. It was just unreal."

HENKEL

The night before the anniversary, Williams was driving along FDR Drive in Manhattan when President Bush's motorcade passed her going the opposite way.

"His car had cops before and after him," she said. "They shut down the whole FDR, the main highway in Manhattan."

Watching the anniversary unfold in New York City was more intense than experiencing it in Texas.

"When you're so far away, in Texas, you don't really feel like it happened to you," Williams said. "When you're in (New York City), everyone takes it really personally. Everyone knows someone who was affected by it."

WILLIAMS