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FORT HUACHUCA — It was a clear, comfortable pre-Indian summer day, seven years ago today in Washington, D.C.
The sky was blue, the humidity low and the early morning temperature a little crisp when Melissa Sturgeon left her Alexandria, Va., home for her job at the Pentagon.
Then a lieutenant colonel, Sturgeon said the day before, after long hours of work, she and others in her third floor E Ring office had finished working on part of the Army’s budget, which she described as a long, tedious job as a member of the Army’s program analyst and evaluation team, determining how much money would be spent on any number of programs.
Before heading for her office, she first went to the Pentagon Athletic Center for a swim.
 Col. Melissa Sturgeon |
“I was going to go to the office a little later than usual, especially since the (work) day before had been long,” said Stugeon, who is now a colonel and Fort Huachuca’s garrison commander.
After her swim, she and others watched TV reports at the center coming out of New York City about airplanes crashing into the twin towers.
“I saw a (replay) of a plane going into one of the towers,” Sturgeon said.
Her boss also was watching. During a short conversation between the two, he asked her, as an intelligence officer, if she thought it was just an accident.
Her response: no way.
“The crashes had to be deliberate,” Sturgeon said.
But like many others at the fitness center and in the North Parking Lot where she walked to her car to leave her swim suit, the consensus was it was just an attack on New York City.
And, like many others, some of whom were listening to their car radios in the parking lot, there was no thought that Washington was a target.
Sturgeon and a sergeant first class were walking across the area heading to one of the many Pentagon “wedges,” a series of different office complexes, talking about what had happened in New York.
Little did they know terrorism would soon reach the nation’s capital.
Looking into the distance, she and the NCO saw a plane flying low, “beneath tree level near the South Parking Lot.”
Their initial reaction was that it wasn’t on the regular flight path for the Ronald Reagan Airport, which is also called National Airport, which isn’t far from the Pentagon.
Suddenly there was the sound of an explosion and a large black plume of smoke began to rise “and you could smell the jet fuel,” Sturgeon said.
“Car alarms were going off,” she added.
In no time, people started streaming out of the Pentagon, coming out of the doors. She and the NCO were headed to enter the building.
“There was no panic. Everyone headed for the rally point,” she said.
The once beautiful morning became surreal, as smoke filled the Pentagon and wafted into the morning air blocking out the once blue sky, she said.
The design and construction of the building allowed for smoke to spread throughout the structure, as corridors acted as conduits.
To this day, Sturgeon wonders why the terrorists didn’t strike the Capitol or White House first. Reports indicate another commercial airliner that crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pa., when passengers took over the plane from the terrorists, was supposed to go into the White House.
But, then again, the Pentagon was a logical choice because 27,000 people worked in the building and it was the seat of the nation’s military, the colonel said.
Since her office area was on the far side of the Pentagon, she did not get to see the impact point until much later.
When the colonel finally did see the sight, she said there was an indication the “plane first hit the ground and sort of slid into the building.”
Fate played a hand in ensuring Sturgeon was not in the area where the plane struck, hitting the outer ring and going into the third of five rings that are part of the structure. There were a number of empty wedges — the Pentagon was going through a major renovation — one of which was where her office was to relocate.
Boxes had already been packed and arrangements were made to move the part of the third ring that was struck by the plane’s impact.
Emergency vehicles began to arrive, and people were told to leave the area and, if possible, to go to a hospital and donate blood, which she did.
Some people could not get to the cars in the South Parking Lot, and Sturgeon and others became their rides home.
In the meantime, her parents, who lived in Winterhaven in Sierra Vista, were trying to reach her, and she was trying to reach them. When they connected, she assured her parents she was fine.
The main roads, interstates and other highways, were closed to all but emergency traffic, and Sturgeon said those in charge of making decisions that day did an excellent job.
Many Pentagon functions were temporarily moved to other federal facilities, including her office that reset up in Crystal City, Va.
Although the staff of the office she worked at thought their financial work was over, it wasn’t as new money priorities had to be developed and some programs that had been cut were re-established.
Once she went back to the Pentagon, there was a different atmosphere.
“We were working in a building where soldiers were on the roof with Stingers (ground to air missiles),” Sturgeon said.
What makes her proud was the determination of the people of Washington, D.C., and surrounding areas, were not going to let the terrorists destroy the United States.
“The day after the attack there were American flags flying anywhere one could be put up,” Sturgeon said.
And the people living in and around the nation’s capital went out of their way to reach out to the military, knowing “we were going to go to war,” she said, adding, that knowledge was there even before the United States went into Afghanistan and Iraq.
Eventually, she would find herself in Iraq.
One day in a store, and while wearing her uniform, two people even argued over who was going to buy her groceries, the colonel commented.
People in the Pentagon who worked together became closer, spending time with each other beyond the work day, which usually was not the norm, Sturgeon said.
For those who saw, went through and survived the terrorists’ attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, “It was our Pearl Harbor.”
Herald/Review senior reporter Bill Hess can be reached at 515-4615 or by e-mail at bill.hess@svherald.com.
TheBisbeeKid wrote on Sep 12, 2008 12:39 PM:
I had met and known two soldiers who perished in the Pentagon attack (LTG Timothy Maude & SGM Larry Strickland). We suffered great losses on that day. "