25th anniversary of the 2001 terror attacks — Reflecting on a day that changed everything, Part 1
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This retrospective is a combination of new and previous reporting from The Catholic Missourian.
An incredibly mild, sunny day met the Benedictine Sisters of Our Lady of Peace Monastery in Columbia, as work finished up on the pond in their new peace garden.
Benedictine Sister JoAnn Schmidt, now deceased, and Our Lady of Lourdes parishioner Dr. Burton Schauf DVM had begun filling the pond with water when they heard the news.
Hijacked jetliners had been deliberately flown into both towers of the World Trade Center in New York and into the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C.
Another hijacked jet with 33 passengers and four crew members had crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
It was Sept. 11, 2001 — 25 years ago.
Nearly 3,000 people died that day from the planes’ impact, resulting fires and eventual collapse of both 110-story World Trade Center towers.
It was the deadliest act of terror in U.S. history. Life in this nation would never be the same.
“Strangely enough, that’s the day the water in the peace pond began flowing,” said Benedictine Sister Mary Jo Polak, formerly of Our Lady of Peace Monastery and currently a member of Sacred Heart Monastery in Yankton, South Dakota.
“Peace everywhere”
Father Fred Elskamp, who in 2001 was pastor of Cathedral of St. Joseph Parish in Jefferson City, presided at a prayer service attended mostly by students of St. Joseph Cathedral School.
“Fear is okay,” he told the children. “We have to admit that we are afraid of things, and we need to face facts that there are things to be afraid of. There is evil in the world. There is sin in the world.
“If God can make us holy, then we are delivered from evil,” he said. “Evil is real. Evil happens again. But good things always happen. God is in charge. God’s mercy is God’s gift.”
Fr. Elskamp quoted a Christmas message from Pope St. John XXIII: “There will be no peace anywhere in the world unless it is a reflection of the inner peace that lives in our hearts.”
“God isn’t finished helping all the people who are suffering directly or indirectly from this tragedy,” the priest told the children. “We pray for peace — peace everywhere — including in our hearts. May we put on the mind of Christ and live in peace.”
“Out of Your way”
Deacon Raymond Purvis was giving a talk about the Diaconate to adults attending Sixth Grade Vocation Day in 2012 in the Cathedral of St. Joseph.
He shared a prayer first prayed by Franciscan Father Mychal Judge, longtime chaplain of the New York Fire Department: “Lord, take me where you want me to go; let me meet who you want me to meet; tell me what you want me to say, and keep me out of your way.”
Deacon Anthony Mammoliti, who was stationed at Fort Leonard Wood at the time, listened intently.
“I was there when Father died,” he told the group.
Deacon Mammoliti was just finishing up his night shift as an ambulance medic the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when a radio call went out for all available units to report to the World Trade Center.
“Everyone was rushing to the scene,” he recalled.
As a U.S. Army reservist, he had been trained to work in mass-casualty situations.
“The Army teaches you Rule No. 1: Soldiers die; and Rule No. 2: Medics can’t change Rule No. 1,” Deacon Mammoliti noted. “You go in with that mindset, to see who you can treat and who you can comfort as they go from this life to the next. And that’s not easy.”
First responders were rushing up the stairwells, against a torrent of humanity. Flaming debris was falling into the plaza. The noise was deafening.
“Here we were in the midst of this huge, catastrophic event,” the deacon recalled. “And despite all the chaos, this unusual serenity came over me. God was reassuring me that he had given me the talent to help these people, to give them reassurance, and that’s what I was doing.”
That’s how he describes how God used those moments of unspeakable horror to beckon him to something greater.
“It was absolutely the turning point in my spiritual life,” he said. “I was a medic. I was treating people left and right. And then I came to realize that God wanted me to do something more. He allowed me to survive this event for a particular reason.”
“Through a dark valley”
At that same time, God also was asking Liza Hernandez Jungmeyer for more than she had been giving Him.
Attending a conference in the hotel next to the Twin Towers, she felt the ground convulse as American Airlines Flight 11 collided with the North Tower.
Within two hours, she was gasping for air and calling on the Lord to save her as two of the most massive structures ever built fell in on themselves.
She is now convinced more than ever that God took hold of her during those harrowing moments and began directing her to proclaim His love, “always, anytime, anywhere.”
“Tragedy befalls us all, whichever side you are in the tragic event, the victim or the perpetrator,” she noted. “God’s love will reach you. Inevitably, only God’s love can heal us all.”
What Mrs. Jungmeyer experienced that dark day helped her affirm the sanctity of all human life, even that of people who have committed atrocious crimes.
“Everyone must be given a chance to change, to let God redeem them,” she said. “I know, because God gave me another chance.”
She grew up in the Philippines, an overwhelmingly Catholic country in Southeast Asia, went to Catholic schools and was very close to God.
But by 2001, she had moved to the United States and became very focused on career advancement. Her relationship with God had begun to suffer.
She didn’t get much sleep the night before the attacks.
“It was eerie,” she recalled. “Looking back, I felt some evil surrounding the area. There was just such a feeling of death.”
After the first of the hijacked planes hit its target, everyone in the hotel ballroom ran into the lobby. They could see debris falling to the street outside the building.
“It looked like snowflakes,” said Mrs. Jungmeyer. “The firefighters got there right away. It seemed like only seconds and they were there, instantaneously.”
They guided everyone out through a side door and told them to walk toward nearby Battery Park.
“So, we were standing there in the park, looking up,” she said. “All of a sudden, the second plane hit the second tower. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”
After a while, Mrs. Jungmeyer was filled with an impulse to get farther away from the burning towers.
“I had this feeling something else was going to happen,” she said. “I said, ‘Come on, we have to move away from here!’”
Shortly after they started walking, the South Tower collapsed.
“I thought we were all going to die,” she said. “One second, it was daylight — beautifully clear. An instant later, it was night.”
The words of Psalm 23 began cascading from her lips: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil. For you are at my side; your rod and staff are there to shield me.”
Another chance
Mrs. Jungmeyer found her way to safety. Later that day, a friend lent her train fare to Philadelphia.
“I had two things with me: my wallet and my Rosary,” she recalled. “Praying the Rosary really comforted me all that time. It helped so much.”
Like thousands of other people who experienced 9/11, her perspective changed. Her priorities began to shift. She went from focusing on success and her career to asking some difficult questions: “Why am I here?” “Why did God spare me?” “What is the reason for all of this?”
“Something in me began searching for more than what’s in this world,” she said.
She moved to Jefferson City, where she married Steve Jungmeyer in 2004.
She still grieves for all who lost loved ones on Sept. 11, and she prays that God helps them heal the way he has allowed her to heal.
“I’m so thankful for getting another chance,” she said.
