WASHINGTON--Firefighters and rescue workers weren't the only heroes of 9/11.
The pilots and crew members of the hijacked jets were every bit as heroic, their colleagues say, but have never gotten due recognition.
Yesterday, several American Airlines flight attendants and the author of a new book about the industry's recovery from the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, met to call attention to those they say were the day's first heroes.
They met in the Pentagon's center concourse to sign and mail pre-ordered copies of "Reclaiming the Sky: 9/11 and the Untold Story of the Men and Women Who Kept America Flying."
The book focuses on airline employees who lost their lives that day, and devotes a chapter to Ken and Jennifer Lewis of Culpeper. The Lewises, a husband and wife, were attendants on American Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon.
"I think people forget that the pilots and the flight attendants were the first people attacked, and the first people who fought back," said American Airlines retiree Toni Knisley of La Plata, Md. "They were the first ones who went to war that day."
Knisley was an administrator for American on Sept. 11, and she recalls talking by phone with attendant Michele Heidenberger just before Flight 77 took off.
She soon received word that flight attendant Renee May had phoned her parents from the plane and reported that the flight had been hijacked.
The rest of the day was horrible and chaotic for everyone in the airline industry, Knisley recalled yesterday. She spent the day in a secure room at Dulles International Airport making and receiving some of the worst phone calls of her life.
Late that night, long after all air traffic had been grounded throughout the country, she stood outside on the Dulles tarmac. It was eerie, she said, "the most deadly silence."
Still in shock from the attacks and still grieving their lost colleagues, airline personnel nevertheless had to steel themselves to fly again, said American Airlines flight attendant Debbie Roland of Fauquier County.
The book, she said, is "an opportunity for us to have a voice and let the public know what we were going through."
Colleagues memorialized each of the Flight 77 attendants in a way that seemed appropriate for their interests.
The memorial for the Lewises is a garden with a bench inscribed "Kennifer" in a section of Culpeper's Yowell Park.
Also on hand yesterday was Jim Carlton of Spotsylvania County, a former American Airlines ramp agent who for 247 workdays after the attacks--one day for each of the air passengers and crew members on the four hijacked flights--greeted arriving and departing American flights at Dulles with a flag salute. Carlton now works for Stafford Regional Airport.
Author Tom Murphy of Seattle said writing "Reclaiming the Sky" was part of a personal quest for healing.
Murphy runs a business that helps train airline workers in service aspects of their jobs, and on the morning of Sept. 11 he'd been scheduled to attend a business meeting in the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
The meeting was canceled, and at about 8:40 that morning he was on a flight leaving New York. He remembers seeing the twin towers gleaming in the sunlight.
At 8:46 a.m., the first plane hit the North Tower.
Two years later, Murphy started interviewing airline employees in Boston, New York and Washington to learn how they had managed to be resilient and return to work after the attacks.
He said he will donate his own profits from "Reclaiming the Sky" to several charities that help American and United Airlines employees and memorialize pilots and crew of the four hijacked flights. He's also formed a Web site, reclaimingthesky.com, to remember airline heroes of 9/11.
To reach LAURA MOYER:
Email: lmoyer@freelancestar.com