Tomorrow will mark the 20th anniversary of the attacks on 9/11 when terrorists hijacked airplanes and crashed into structures across the country, including the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon.

Greene County Sheriff Jack Williams is a Marine Corp veteran and during the attacks on 9/11, he was serving at the Marine Corp logistics base in Georgia. He recalls what he was doing that day and how all military bases were then put on high alert.

“We were just working and then our Master Sergeant told us to get back to the office and then that’s when he had the tv on and we seen it. We just had assigned different perimeters around the base and then double the guards at the gates.” 

Jefferson native and Jefferson-Scranton High School graduate Phil Thompson recalls being a fifth grader in school the day of the attacks on September 11, 2001. He tells Raccoon Valley Radio everyone gathered for a conference at Scranton Elementary and the staff were telling students what had happened and for the rest of the day, that’s all they watched. 

Thompson points out those attacks had a profound effect on him and his family.

“At that time my oldest brother Chuck, he was a U.S. Army Ranger, and he was on what we call in the 18th Airborne Corps the Global Reaction Force. That’s a brigade that’s ready to deploy at a moment’s notice. And so I assumed that meant my brother was going to go to war and sure enough, by the end of September (in 2001) he was in Afghanistan. And from that day forward, there was always a Thompson overseas. At one point there were three of us over at one time. That day really changed the course of my family forever.”

Thompson is a U.S. Army veteran and was deployed in Iraq but never went to Afghanistan.