The tragic attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 continue to weigh heavily on the hearts of many Americans, especially armed forces veterans, citizens with military ties and families of service men and women who perished in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. With the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 attacks approaching, the Dispatch spoke with several locals who are forever linked to the nation’s military and whose lives were forever changed that day.
The tragic attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 continue to weigh heavily on the hearts of many Americans, especially armed forces veterans, citizens with military ties and families of service men and women who perished in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. With the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 attacks approaching, the Dispatch spoke with several locals who are forever linked to the nation’s military and whose lives were forever changed that day.
Patty Gutierrez:
Gutierrez is the wife of U.S. Army Staff Sgt. David Gutierrez, who was killed Christmas Day 2009 in Afghanistan by a hidden roadside bomb.
On Sept. 11, 2001, David Gutierrez was set to fly home to the Bay Area from South Korea. When the planes struck the Twin Towers, the only thing on Patty’s mind was her husband’s safety. “I spent the whole day worried and wondering where my husband was. I didn’t leave the house at all. I stayed glued to the TV with one hand on my cell phone and the other hand on my landline cordless phone.” David called that evening to tell her he was safe and would soon land in Seattle, not San Francisco.
“I wasn’t going to wait another two weeks, so I drove up to Seattle to pick him up.” David’s death eight years later would come during a war that was the result of the 9/11 attacks.
Bob Dillon:
Dillon, a Gilroy City Councilman, served as a medic in the U.S. Navy from 1966-1970, including deployments to Vietnam in 1967 and 1968.
“I actually saw live when the second plane hit. I initially thought it was just an accident, but when the second one hit I knew we were under attack,” Dillon said. “I sat there the rest of the day. I had big tears rolling down my cheeks when the buildings collapse.”
What angered Dillon the most was watching World Trade Center occupants forced to choose between staying put and burning alive or leaping to their deaths on the streets below. That day, Dillon called his mother, who was 16 years old when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, sparking the U.S.’s participation in World War II. “She said, ‘If you want to know how I felt about Pearl Harbor, it’s just how I feel right now,’ ” Dillon recalled.
Lana Ailes:
Ailes is the mother of U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Jeramy Ailes, who died Nov. 15, 2004 while attempting to root out insurgents in Fallujah, Iraq. He was the first Gilroyan to die in combat since the Vietnam War.
Lana Ailes admitted she hadn’t turned on the news in “a long time.” But on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, she clicked on her television, and her family would change forever. “It was unbelievable for all of us,” she said, recalling watching recaps of the attacks in utter shock. Jeramy was then a student at Gavilan College. In the wake of 9/11, his friends began enlisting, and it wasn’t long before Jeramy joined them. “One thing led to another, and there he was,” Lana said. The tragic memories flash daily in her mind, she said, though the past several years have yielded some progress.
“We have done a lot to help Iraq and Afghanistan to get a lot of the terrorists. But it (9/11) still lives on in us every day,” she said. The U.S. struck its biggest blow to terrorism this past May, when a team of U.S. Navy Seals killed 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. “Getting bin Laden – that’s a relief, because that’s how everything started right there.”
