Pepperdine students remember 9/11

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, September 11th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It:

GUMBEL: We understand that a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. We don’t know anything more than that.

Remembering 9/11. Twenty-three years ago today, nearly 3,000 people died in the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history.

EICHER: This morning, remembrance ceremonies are taking place in parks and fire stations and city halls across the country.

WORLD reporter Jenny Rough brings us this story.

JOHN BOSSLER: I was in 9/11, in the towers on my way to work when the first one hit.

JENNY ROUGH: John Bossler was underneath Tower One on the morning of September 11th, 2001. He was riding an escalator up from the deep-level subway stop at the World Trade Center.

He lived in New Jersey and commuted on the PATH train to his office in Manhattan.

JOHN BOSSLER: You’re 12 stories below, and you would take the escalators up through all the shops and everything, and then come out of Tower One and go to your office.

On that escalator ride, he felt movement.

JOHN BOSSLER: I knew something was wrong, you know, you could feel what was happening. And then when we got outside there was glass and stuff.

He reached for his phone to call his wife, Susan.

SUSAN BOSSLER: I was home with a 1- and 3-year-old. John called me and said, “I’m safe.” 

On the other side of the country, in Los Angeles, it was only 5:46 a.m. when the first plane hit. Ryan Sawtelle was sound asleep. He got a phone call too—from a friend.

RYAN SAWTELLE: And he said, “We're under attack. Wake up, we're under attack.” And I was like, we're under attack? What are you talking about?

Sawtelle was 18 years old and had just moved to California.

SAWTELLE: I didn’t have a television. I walked down to the All American Burger on Sunset Boulevard, and they had a big box television hanging up in the corner of the burger joint.

Like most people that day, his eyes stayed glued to the T.V.

SAWTELLE: And it was actually pretty incredible to see the individuals of different backgrounds that were coming through the All American Burger at the time, all having that sense of being one. You see a massive attack on your country and then everyone starts to congeal as a team.

It was a formative event in his life. But in the years that followed, Sawtelle felt the county began to lose that sense of patriotism and unity. And he wanted to do something about it. Plant flags for the victims.

SAWTELLE: The more that we become removed from the events of 9/11, the more complacent we become. And I feel like we needed to do something to remind us of how we were all one back after 9/11, but also as a standing place to come and heal and mourn as well as feel pride.

By then, he was a student at Pepperdine University. The campus has a majestic green lawn that overlooks the Pacific Ocean. He typed up a 12-page proposal and sent it to the university president, requesting permission to organize a display: 2,977 American flags planted in the large lawn to commemorate each innocent life lost. An additional 90 international flags to represent the countries whose citizens died in the attacks.

American and international flags represent lives lost. Photo by Jenny Rough

It took him over 18 months, but he raised $40,000 to pull it off.

Then came the physical labor: Sawtelle and a friend placed rebar in the lawn—a metal stand for each flag they planned to raise.

SAWTELLE: I remember probably about six straight weeks of putting in rebar. People were driving by and yelling at me, “Are you putting up sprinklers?”

On September 10th, 2008, the flags went up at sunset. People driving by no longer yelled questions.

AUDIO: [Car honking]

They honked in appreciation. Or pulled over for a closer look.

The university now holds its Waves of Flags display every September. Eight acres of stars and stripes blowing in the wind. Hung Le is the university’s senior vice chancellor and now oversees the display.

HUNG LE: These are full-sized flags, so you’re walking through a forest of flags.

The beauty is stunning. Tho’ walking among them can be overwhelming.

LE: It's not just a flag. This is a life. It represents a human life.

AUDIO [Volunteer handing out flags]

Volunteers raising the flags. Photo by Jenny Rough

Last Saturday, hundreds of university students volunteered to raise the flags.

VOLUNTEER: Here, I’ll take these. Thank you!

Few of today’s students remember September 11. Most hadn’t even been born. Like prospective student Tessa Maryott. She and her mom happened to swing by the campus for a college tour last weekend. They learned of the event and decided to help.

TESSA MARYOTT: Honestly, it hurts me to know how many people lost their lives and how many people lost their loved ones, but it also inspires me how many people are still so very eager to remember this day.

Ryan Sawtelle says he had no idea how meaningful the display would become. He’s met people in the field who tell him their story—people who tape funeral cards to the flagpoles.

SAWTELLE: People are still healing. I mean, it's still doing a lot of therapeutic good for a lot of people.

Like John Bossler, the man underneath Tower One that morning. He did finally get off Manhattan—by boat. And on that tragic day, he made it back home and into the arms of his wife. But many of his friends and colleagues did not.

JOHN BOSSLER: The way you would know who didn’t make it was the cars left at the train station.

September 11 changed the Bosslers’ lives.

John stayed in his industry but working in Manhattan proved too difficult. The Bosslers decided to move back to California. They volunteer at Waves of Flags every year.

AUDIO: [Volunteer planting a flag]

And they know of others … those whose loved ones died on 9/11 … who will soon visit the display.

JOHN BOSSLER: They make a sojourn here with their family every year because they want their kids to know and remember.

Bossler wonders about the cars driving by—

AUDIO: [Cars driving by]

—over 40,000 a day along that stretch of coastline.

JOHN BOSSLER: Some people stop. Some people just go. But you never know what it means to them. We don't know their stories. We don't know how 9/11 impacted them or not, or how they feel about it. But this remembrance allows them to think, and offer a place of solitude. Or to stop and spend time.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jenny Rough in Southern California.

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