A pilot sat at the far end of the memorial, staring out at the field of flags that had been planted for the anniversary. A flight attendant silently read the names of her fallen peers. Wiping away a tear, she placed a bouquet of flowers for the victims of United Flight 175 — she worked for United when the towers fell, she explained. One man began to sob as he read the words immortalized in the concrete walkway — “Remember this day.”
“It’s an emotional connection to how my life changed,” said Andrea Ciasullo, who began working at Delta Airlines as an engineer in 2002. “It’s a big deal for us, even if we didn’t lose one of our airplanes. In a way, we lost some of our own that day.”
Her friend Rebekah Michaels, who she was in Boston with to see a concert this weekend, was working in Delta’s finance department on the day of the attacks.
Michaels remembers the chaos that followed. A scrambled department meeting in the conference room. A race to figure out whose planes had gone down. Walking out of the airport, the familiar boom of the runway was absent.
Michaels lost an ROTC classmate in the attack on the Pentagon in Washington. Still, she said, she would fly back to New Orleans with Ciasullo on Saturday afternoon.
“Looking at what happened today 20 years later, it’s twofold,” said Michaels, sun reflecting off the memorial’s glass beside her. “Flying out today, it’s a little bit haunting, in a way. But in another way, it is empowering, because I’m standing here 20 years later.”
For a brief moment Saturday, Logan fell silent. A small crowd gathered in Terminal B as the Transportation Security Administration Honor Guard presented the American flag for a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m., the exact minute that American Airlines Flight 11 struck the World Trade Center’s North Tower.
The rush of travelers resumed about five minutes later, but memories of that frightening day still loomed.
“Today, you remember how painful it was for so many…