Two decades later, airline crew members vow to keep memories alive of 2001 terrorist attacks

Even 20 years later, American Airlines pilot and first officer Cyndi Dawson said there were no plans to make history for the annual public event at the 9/11 Flight Crew Memorial in Grapevine.

The COVID-19 pandemic dampened the anniversary celebration last year. This year the organizers are planning a gloomy memorial Saturday for the 33 pilots and flight attendants who were killed in four hijacked aircraft on September 11, 2001.

Two of the planes that day were owned by American Airlines, based in Fort Worth.

“We vowed in hindsight that we would never forget what happened and that it would not be forgotten because of us,” said Dawson.

The Saturday event includes a march by uniformed flight crew members from Grapevine’s Liberty Park to the 9/11 Crew Memorial on 2 Texan Trail. The march is scheduled to begin at 7:05 a.m., the same time the first flight crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center – nearly 2,000 miles away.

North Texas became the memorial’s unlikely home 13 years ago after fundraising for six years to celebrate the deaths of flight attendants and pilots among the thousands who died in the 2001 terrorist attacks. A dedicated team raised money for the statue for seven years, with pilots and flight attendants helping a young girl.

The location was chosen, Dawson said, because it is near American Airlines’ headquarters in Fort Worth, near the headquarters of the Allied Pilot Association and the Association of Professional Flight Attendants Unions, and because of support from the city of Grapevine.

The dead included 17 American Airlines crew members, including the very first victims, flight attendants Karen Martin and Barbara Arestegui, who were stabbed by terrorists when American Airlines Flight 11 left Boston.

The memorial also contains statues honoring police and firefighters who died while working on the terrorist attack sites.

Dawson said she hopes to keep the memory of the lost crew members alive and relevant in the minds of young pilots and flight attendants, many of whom have no first-person memories of the attacks.

“In the aftermath, it appears that the flight crews have been forgotten,” she said. “When you go to a memorial, you always recognize the first responders, not the pilots and flight attendants.”

Dawson, a DFW-based Boeing 777 pilot, was among those who flew that day. Her flight was diverted to Will Rogers International Airport in Oklahoma City without her knowing what was happening in New York.

She remembers opening the door and seeing workers cry when a sobbing gate agent rushed over to her and said, “Those were both American Airlines planes.”

American Airlines Flight 11 was the first aircraft to crash into the World Trade Center buildings, followed a few minutes later by American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon.

United Airlines Flight 175 was hijacked and flown into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. United Flight 93 was hijacked, but passengers and crew fell into the cockpit, likely crashing the plane in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

“It was so sad that these big planes that united the world were used in an attack,” said Dawson.

American Airlines Captain Beverley Bass, who flew from DFW International Airport to Paris on September 11, 2001, will be one of the speakers at the event. She had to divert to Gander, Newfoundland, due to the closure of US airspace. Bass was among the 7,000 crew and passengers who were suddenly refugees in the small Canadian town, an ordeal told in the musical Come From Away.

The Saturday event will also include a World War II aircraft transfer. The event will be streamed live on the City of Grapevine Facebook page.

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