The tragedies of 9/11 may have taken place hundreds of miles away, but the pain felt in Door County made them feel much closer to home.
It has been 25 years since terrorists hijacked planes that crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. A fourth attack was thwarted by passengers aboard Flight 93 before the plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
According to the Wisconsin 9/11 Memorial in Kewaskum, 18 people with Wisconsin connections were killed in the attacks. One of those individuals was Barbara K. Olson, who was buried at Ellison Bay Cemetery after her remains were recovered following the crash of American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.
According to the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial, Olson was a well-known conservative legal analyst and author who called her husband, U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson, as the plane was being hijacked. Her burial in Ellison Bay placed her near her family’s longtime vacation retreat.
Door County Maritime Museum Deputy Director Sam Perlman was nine months removed from moving to Door County from New York City when the attacks occurred. Perlman’s Brooklyn residence served as a point of reference when he would visit Windows on the World, the restaurant that sat on the 106th and 107th floors of the World Trade Center’s North Tower.
As a freelance writer for the Door County Advocate, Perlman shared stories not just about Olson, but also about his time in New York City and the friends he still had there.
“The whole thing seems totally unreal to me,” Perlman wrote 25 years ago. “I cannot imagine the next time that I return to New York and see where the World Trade Center used to be. The idea of the skyline of the city without the Twin Towers there is unbelievable.”
Linda Schultz was working at Sevastopol School when she got the call from the Red Cross to spend three weeks in New York City providing respite care to first responders and rescue dogs working at Ground Zero. Her Red Cross group attended several funerals for firefighters, and she can still see and smell the devastation in her memories. She wishes people could come together as they did in the days following the attacks, and she treasures the keepsakes and relationships she formed while serving in New York City.
All told, 2,977 people died in the 9/11 attacks, including more than 400 New York City emergency personnel and more than 50 military personnel at the Pentagon. Fire departments in Door and Kewaunee counties have participated in the 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb at Lambeau Field in past years, with many firefighters donning their turnout gear while carrying the name of a fallen hero.
