Twenty-five years later, Cashmere remembers Sept, 11 through those who were there

CASHMERE — Twenty-five years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Bishop Gretchen Rehberg stood before a crowd at Cashmere’s Spirit of America Memorial on Friday with someone else’s lungs.

Rehberg was living in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, in her third year of seminary. An EMT, firefighter and trained hazardous-materials responder, she watched the World Trade Center towers burn from a chapel tower before going with classmates to St. Vincent’s Hospital to give blood.

When a nurse learned her qualifications, Rehberg was instead put to work doing decontamination outside the emergency room. She quickly fell into the mode that people sometimes do, performing tasks where they can be useful in times of emergency or tragedy.

“And to everyone who came in, I asked similar questions,” Rehberg said. “Does anyone know you are here? Are there others with you? Is there somebody to notify?”

Too many, she said, told her they had been separated from their crews or were the only ones left.

Rehberg later worked at the World Trade Center site, first as rescue gave way to recovery, and at St. Paul’s Chapel, which became a respite center for responders and recovery workers. She remembered the missing-person posters that covered the city and the smell of burning that lingered for months.

Twenty-five years later, she was one of three people honored with the Spirit of America Award during Cashmere’s 9/11 remembrance ceremony, alongside retired Seattle Fire Chief A.D. Vickery and Chief Chris Flores. All three carried direct connections to the attacks and their aftermath.

The ceremony marked the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11 at a memorial built around a mission to “remember, honor and educate.” Doug Jones, a past president and current member of the Spirit of America Memorial Foundation board, opened the ceremony in place of foundation President Paul Harrison, who was ill.

Jones noted that a generation has now grown up without its own memory of that morning.

“One out of every four Americans, many in the front row here today, one out of four Americans do not have their own recollection of the events on September 11th, 2001,” Jones said. “They were too young, or they weren’t even born yet.”

Students were among those gathered Friday as the ceremony opened with Rotor 2 from Wenatchee Valley Fire Department, followed by the Seattle Police Department Pipes and Drums, presentation of the colors by Civil Air Patrol cadets from Pangborn Composite Squadron and the national anthem performed by Chris Ward.

Vickery, who retired after 53 years with the Seattle Fire Department, served as a task force leader with Washington’s FEMA Urban Search and Rescue team and deployed to the World Trade Center following the attacks.

He focused his remarks on a question he has heard repeatedly in the years since: Why did New York firefighters run into the burning towers and climb the stairs?

“We will risk a lot to save a life,” Vickery said.

He pointed to generations of firefighters who had done the same before them, including those who climbed more than 79 stories after a B-25 bomber struck the Empire State Building in 1945 and those who responded to the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.

Vickery wore a lapel pin bearing the number 343, representing the FDNY members killed on Sept. 11.

“That was the number of those New York City firefighters who died, who risked it all,” Vickery said, “because that’s what we do as firefighters.”

Flores also deployed with Washington Task Force 1 after the attacks. His remarks centered not only on those who died that day, but on the human cost that has continued accumulating since.

He spoke about fellow responders he knew, including brothers Thomas and Peter Langone, both killed at the World Trade Center, and about Rick Rescorla, the Morgan Stanley security chief credited with evacuating thousands of employees from the South Tower before returning to search for others and dying in its collapse.

Flores urged the students in attendance to carry those stories forward.

“Future generations of Americans should know about this period in our history,” Flores said. “It helped shape their future and their nation.”

For Rehberg, Sept. 11 continued shaping her life long after she left New York.

A year after the attacks, she found herself unable to breathe while running. She was initially diagnosed with asthma. A decade later, doctors told her she had pulmonary fibrosis.

For years, she said, she resented the disease and questioned whether the damage to her lungs had been suffered for nothing.

“I came to realize that was wrong,” Rehberg said.

Her experience, she said, had changed her understanding of forgiveness, peace and faith. She remembered wanting revenge after the attacks, then confronting what that desire meant for the person and priest she wanted to become.

“It meant the hard path of pursuing peace and not revenge,” Rehberg said. “Because I knew I wanted revenge. It meant the harder path of inclusion and not exclusion.”

On March 14, Rehberg received a double lung transplant.

“To receive lungs, new lungs, was to experience resurrection,” she said.

Then she considered the distance between the woman who stood in Cashmere Friday and the young seminarian who climbed a chapel tower in New York City on a clear September morning.

“September 11th, 2001 was 25 years ago,” Rehberg said. “And it was yesterday. And it was a lifetime ago.”

Spirit of America Foundation founder John Jackson closed the guest remarks by recounting how the Cashmere memorial itself grew from the aftermath of Sept. 11.

Jackson described a series of connections that helped the foundation obtain pieces from the Pentagon and steel from the World Trade Center, and explained the symbolism of the figures at the memorial, holding hands and rising from the ashes.

The memorial was designed to be completed by the visitor, he said. A person who takes the hand of one of its figures becomes the final link in the chain.

The morning concluded with the ringing of the bell by Battalion Chief Keith Wright and Capt. Doug Clark of Wenatchee Valley Fire Department, a 21-gun salute by American Legion Post 10 of Wenatchee, Taps performed by Kent Chalmers and a retreat by the Seattle Police Department Pipes and Drums.

But Rehberg left the crowd with a question extending beyond the anniversary being observed.

“To have joy and love is to also have tragedy and grief,” she said. “Every generation has their major trauma.”

“The only real question is how will we respond when it is our turn?”

Andrew Simpson: 509-433-7626 or andrew@ward.media