The Butler Eagle first published this article on Sept. 13, 2021.

It was an event that shook the nation, an event whose effects are still rippling through our history.

Much like the attack on Pearl Harbor or the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, history is now divided into "before 9/11" and "after 9/11."

Butler County residents remember the day of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Some watched in disbelief, others were much closer to the events on that horrific day.

Ethel Scott, 93, was going to visit the Twin Towers on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. The Eldorado resident along with a friend was in Ridgefield, N.J., that day visiting her godson, the Rev. Steven Connor, a priest.

After visiting his rectory, Scott said, "We were going to go to the towers and the Statue of Liberty."

"He was taking us that morning," she said, but the traffic kept getting turned around, and they didn't know why.

"It was 9 a.m. after Mass, and we were driving and they turned us back.

"We had to turn around and we saw the buildings burning. We took pictures of it," she said.

They learned of the attacks through the car radio. It took them six hours to get back to Connors' rectory because of the traffic chaos that morning.

Later, on the train ride back from New Jersey to Pittsburgh, Scott said the train was stopped at Horseshoe Bend railroad curve in Blair County.

"We were there for three hours while they searched the train. They must have been looking for someone. They never told us why," she said.

"I am now 93 and I will never forget those images," she said.

The Rev. Gordon Pyle, former pastor of the North Main Street Church of God, also had a close-up view of one of the attacks.

Pyle said he was speaking at a breakfast meeting of Realtors at a hotel in Bedford the morning of Sept. 11.

As he was leaving the hotel he noticed a group of people around a television set which is where he learned of the attacks.

"Around 10:30 a.m. they said a plane went down in Shanksville which was 20 or 30 minutes down Route 30," he said.

He decided to drive to Shanksville on his way home.

Turning off Route 30 onto a two-lane blacktop, Pyle said he reached the crash site around 11:30 a.m.

He parked at the top of a knoll and looked down.

"There were about 30 people and two fire trucks, some state police," he said.

"There was smoke and a big hole in the ground. There were debris scattered in the woods. You wouldn't know it was a passenger plane if you saw it," Pyle said. "There were no parts of a plane, nothing."

He walked a little closer to the crash site.

"If you wouldn't have known you would have no idea that an airplane was involved. They drove it into the ground, there was no piece of that airplane anywhere," he said.

"One of the policemen said there were terrorists on that plane," he said.

Up until then, Pyle said he didn't realize the plane crashes were connected.

"It was a clear day, nice, warm sunshine. Everybody was just kind of in shock," he said.

"I've never been back since. I should go back to the memorial," Pyle said.

Jerald Sullivan, a Realtor with The Preferred Realty in Butler, was a Moniteau High School senior on Sept. 11.

"I was sitting in the auditorium that morning with the rest of the senior class as our teachers discussed our upcoming senior trip to New York City," he said.

"They told us during that meeting about the first plane hitting the towers. Like the rest of the world at first, everyone thought it was a freak aviation accident," Sullivan said.

"While sitting in my next class, the teacher had the news coverage on and we were all watching it," he said.

"I distinctly remember shortly after 9 a.m. that morning with my classmates the second plane hit Tower 2 and at that moment realizing that ... it wasn't an accident.

"Especially within an hour's time two other planes crashed. One was in a small town in western Pennsylvania, just like where my high school was located," Sullivan said.

He said the rest of the morning as slightly chaotic at school.

"No one really knew what to do. There were concerns the Underground Mine in Boyers, a mile from the school could potentially be a target, and I'm pretty sure most teachers and administrators were on high alert that day," he said.

Students were given the option to leave school, and Sullivan along with many other students went home.

Elvajean Downing of Butler was at the Wendy's at the Clearview Mall when the news came on about the towers attack.

"Customers were very nervous wondering if any more planes were coming," she said. "Many were nervous wondering if Flight 93 had flown over Butler."

"To me, the greatest shock was the number of people who died," she said. "I was 58 and until then never imagined that many deaths at the same time. Like many others, I guessed I always felt the USA would never experience a tragedy like this."

Donald McCandless Jr. of West Sunbury and his wife, Shirley, had just attended an annual meeting of Pennsylvania retirees of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Soil and Conservation Service in the Poconos.

"We were staying in our travel trailer at a local campground. On Tuesday morning on the 11th we had gotten up early because we were going to a campground near Quakertown north of Philadelphia," McCandless said.

"About 8:50 a.m. on way to campground bathhouse another camper told me a plane had hit the north tower of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, New York City," he said. "We turned on our radio and a few minutes later they reported a second plane had hit the south tower. Then there were reports of a plane crash near Somerset, Pa., and also at the Pentagon."

McCandless and his wife left the Poconos at 10:20 a.m. and traveled south listening to news bulletins on the truck radio.

"It was a very eerie trip," he said. "Nearly all the businesses along the 78-mile trip were closed. There was very little traffic which was unusual for a Wednesday morning in eastern Pennsylvania."

McCandless wondered if gasoline would be available for the 320-mile trip home. They reached home at 10 p.m. Sept. 12.

"After the attack it made us aware that mainline USA was vulnerable to attack at any place at anytime," McCandless said. " It had been 60 years since Pearl Harbor which I can remember as a youth."

John J. Thompson, 71, of Hilliards was at a Veterans Administration hospital in Pittsburgh participating in a sleep study with more than 20 other veterans.

"We learned a plane had just hit the twin towers. We said we were all ready to put our uniforms back on," said Thompson, an Army veteran.

Thompson said the VA hospital was locked down for 90 minutes after the attacks in the chaos and uncertainty of their aftermath. It was thought the federal building in Pittsburgh could have been the target of another hijacked jet.

"It gets me a little shook up talking about that stuff," he said. He's also worried that something may happen on the 20th anniversary of the attacks.