The events of Sept. 11, 2001, greatly affected the life of Manuela Curran of Sugarcreek Township, Armstrong County.

“I was in school at Slippery Rock University, and on my way to a class on death and dying. After arriving at class. as it turned out the class ended up being canceled that particular day,” she said. “I was driving on Hanson Road in West Sunbury, listening to the radio when the first plane hit one of the twin towers in New York City.”

“It impacted my life through my daughter, Jessica, enlisting the Navy the very next day. She went to boot camp in November of that year,” Curran said. She spent 15 years in the Navy.

“My son, Carl, was in the Army National Guard and his unit was called up for duty in Iraq. We lost him in 2004,” she said.

Her son was in a vehicle that was crossing a bridge when an IED explosion blew the vehicle into a canal where he and another soldier drowned.

Linda J. Pitzer of Franklin Township said she is also still shaken by the events of 9/11.The Butler High School graduate served as a chief warrant officer in the Army from 1970 to 1995, before moving back to Butler County in 1998. In 2001, she was working for a small packaging company in Meridian.“On Tuesday at 9 a.m. I got to work and was surprised that no one else was there,” Pitzer said. “At 9:05 the supervisor came and said 'Did you see the news?'”“We tuned in just in time to see the second plane hit the World Trade Center, and we both knew it was an attack on America.”Pitzer said she traveled to the Pentagon in October 2001 because she had to see it.“It was a horrific day,” she said. “I'm surprised myself that I haven't gotten over it yet. We cannot forget. We cannot let our guard down.”

Charlotte Hoener of Concordia Lutheran Ministries, 134 Marwood Road, Jefferson Township learned about the events of Sept. 11 while on a 10-day bus tour in Colorado with her husband, Ken.“We heard when we were getting ready to leave the hotel room to go to breakfast,” said Hoener. “Getting on the bus, it was very, very, somber for the rest of the day.”Their planned trip that day to the Air Force Academy was canceled because the academy was locked up behind tightened security.Hoener said, “We did continue on the tour. We had three flight attendants who lived in Chicago on the tour.“Three days later on Sept. 14 we were ready to fly home from Denver, they wouldn't get on the airplane,” she said. “They had their families drive out from Chicago to pick them up in Denver.”