Remembering 9/11: 25 years later

MANKATO, Minn. (KEYC) - On Friday, Sept. 11, it will be the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington D.C., the Blue Earth County Historical Society said that the attacks and their legacy had a huge impact on culture for the past two decades.

Heather Herran, with the Blue Earth County Historical Society said that in Mankato there were massive blood drives to show support, university student events and wall to wall news coverage on tv and from the local paper for almost three months afterwards.

“This was really my generation’s big national collective memory,” Herran said.

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks there was large bipartisan push in state and federal government to make sure it never happened again.

Herran said that came with an increase in security at airports and government buildings, and during the beginning of the War on Terror, she said there was massive boost in support for the military.

As that cultural moment has faded, the historical society said there are now many young adults who were not even alive to remember it.

“We’re now getting interns who weren’t even born when it happened,” Herran said.

Joe Trauger, a Mankato native who now lives in Washington D.C. said he was working for the American Hospital Association in D.C. at the time, and it’s a day he’ll never forget.

Trauger remembers heading into work across the 14th Street Bridge near the Pentagon around 9:30 that morning and soon after hearing the news that the facility had been hit by one of the hijacked planes.

Parents and siblings back in Mankato had trouble getting ahold of Trauger until he got home later that day to answer his landline.

“I ended up leaving, going home at about 1:30 p.m. in the afternoon and there was not a vehicle on the road. And of course, they had been putting out the fire at the Pentagon and the way that I went home was basically across the 14th Street Bridge to the GW Parkway, heading south the Mount Vernon where I live now and lived then. And the smoke was this acrid everything smoke, if you can imagine, wood, stone, electric, metal, it was just a smell I would never forget,” Trauger said.

Months after Trauger said he was inspired to go back into working in politics as an aide in the legislature for House Majority Leader Dick Armey, where he was around for the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.

During that time he said things were tense in the capitol.

“One of the sort of follow-on effects was all of the security procedures that went into place at the airports and of course the capitol got locked down quite a bit more,” Trauger said.

Trauger worked in a witness on capitol hill for the next few years and during that time he said it was notable how much bipartisan support there was in responding to the attacks.

“Obviously bipartisanship doesn’t last forever and it wanes, but I think there was an effort to sort of realign our government to meet the threat that day. I don’t think there was any small irony that Dick Armey who was the majority leader, who was known as a small government conservative, is responsible for putting together what is now a pretty sizable government agency,” Trauger said.

25 years later he said there are a lot of lessons from that day he has tried to pass on to his daughters.

“One of the most important ones is making sure people don’t lose sight of what happened that day and how vulnerable we can be,” Trauger said.

It’s why he hopes families will make sure to keep their kids educated about the history of events like these so that it can never be forgotten.

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