REMEMBERING Sept. 11
SUMMIT TWP — Jana Semler likely won't watch television today, Sept. 11.
For her, it is a time to reflect and remember.
Semler, who was an Air Force senior master sergeant stationed in the Pentagon's dental clinic when the building was hit by a commercial airliner piloted by an al-Qaida terrorist, needs only to close her eyes to revisit the events of that historic and catastrophic day.
The plane that hit the Pentagon, the headquarters to this nation's military, was the fourth in a coordinated suicide plane attack against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.
When the two first planes hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center complex in New York City, and a third plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pa., many watched on television.
Semler, now 54 and retired, was working in the Pentagon.
It was Tuesday. She arrived about 7:30 a.m. with paperwork on her mind.
Between the time of the first crash in New York at 8:46 a.m. and the second crash at 9:03 a.m., Semler said she became aware of the attacks at the World Trade Center because patients, dentists and technicians were gravitating toward the building's televisions. Work stopped.
But Semler did not hear or see a thing at 9:37 a.m., when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the western side of her building.
On the contrary, sitting in her office in the underground clinic on the opposite side of the city-sized building, Semler learned of the crash after her aunt in New Jersey called.
Semler said at first she shrugged off a call from her aunt to see if she was OK because there had been earlier reports of planes hitting in other parts of the country, including the Sears Tower in Chicago, that turned out to be unfounded.
But then she got a second telephone call from a colleague who was in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and could see the Pentagon burning. Semler jumped into action.
Semler, who would receive a medal for her efforts, joined a group of four people who cleared the building of patients and civilians and dentists.
They then pushed carts of medical supplies from the dental clinic to an area in the parking lot where medical responders could use them for injured people.
The dental clinic was so new that personnel hadn't yet established an emergency procedure. At some point, Semler met a nurse from the building's medical clinic who told her to go to the damaged side of the building and find out which of the supplies were in need. She recalls the nurse repeating the instructions, figuring Semler might be in a state of shock and need to hear the words again.
With her instructions in mind, Semler sprinted.
As she neared the danger zone, Semler said she could smell the burning building. Then she felt a flood of water, perhaps from the sprinkler system or broken water pipes. It was as high as mid-calf.
She started noting odd pieces of metal she'd later come to realize were plane parts.
“By the time I got there, everyone was running the other way,” Semler said.
Eventually, she came to the place in the building were the wall had been crushed by the plane. A bevy of emergency responders were at work, sorting through the rubble, some standing on desks in the water and rescuing the injured.There, where the floor ended and the giant gash in the building began, Semler said a flagpole and an American flag that once had decorated someone's office still stood.A captain pointed out the flag and said, “Look at that flag. Those bastards. They hit us. But they cannot keep us down.”Semler's eyes swell with tears in recalling that flag and how it was something to hold onto amid the destruction around her.“It was surreal,” Semler said. “But I never felt in danger that whole day.”Semler said she stopped a firefighter and asked, “What types of medical supplies do you need?” That person answered, “Everything.”Semler ran back to her group to report the instruction.At that point, many of the injured were being treated in the building's courtyard. Since ambulances could not get through the traffic, which was stopped, and the Metro had been halted, injured people were being placed in passing cars with directions to the nearest hospital.By this time her group had a new role. They, about two dozen people, were moved to a hillside overlooking the smoldering Pentagon, waiting to recover the dead.Semler said her colleagues spent hours discussing how the attack would change the way we live and where the people had been when the plane hit. They passed around scavenged cell phones making repeated attempts at reaching family. And they watched the Pentagon smolder and the responders doing their jobs in what she called, “organized chaos.”“I did not see panic or fear,” Semler said. “But I did see emotion. We were at an advantage in that almost everyone in the building was trained to do something, and they were using the training they'd had for years.”While some dental workers have special training in body recovery and identification through dental records, such skills were not in Semler's repertoire.Semler, who grew up in Texas, worked as a secretary after high school. She joined the Air Force in 1982 with hopes of becoming a jet mechanic and visiting her first husband's home country of Greece. Instead the military placed her in the dental program and first stationed her back in Texas.“I cried, I didn't want dentistry,” Semler said.But something magical happened when Semler decided to give her assigned vocation a go.“I loved it right from the beginning. And I reenlisted for the max,” she said.Her military career carried her around the world, including multiyear stays in Spain, England and Phoenix. Just after her first marriage ended in 1999, Semler, then a single mother, was reassigned to a newly opened dental clinic in the Pentagon.On the day of the terror attack, Semler was spared from body recovery duty. That was because the building would be treated as a crime scene, and the FBI would take over.Among the 184 dead were 59 people on board the plane, the hijackers and 125 people in the building. Semler said the part of the Pentagon that had been hit was newly renovated and the offices were just starting to fill. If not for that, the casualties would have been far greater.“I was told anyone who did not make it out in the first 30 minutes, did not make it out,” Semler said.At home she was greeted by her then teenaged daughter, Alexis. She went back to work the next day, and stayed at the Pentagon until her retirement in December 2003.That same month she married her current husband, Ed. The couple moved to Herman after Ed's retirement from the Coast Guard in 2007.Now they enjoy traveling to Texas to visit her relatives, and they raise chickens for fun.“Life moves on,” Semler said. “It has to.”
