A retired Navy SEAL who helped rescue people from the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, says revisiting the terrorist attacks 25 years later has left him with overwhelming gratitude for the life he was given and the people he was able to help save.
Cmdr. Craig Powell, who was newly assigned to the Pentagon when American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the building, is among the survivors featured in National Geographic’s new three-part docuseries “9/11 Reunited,” which brings together survivors, firefighters, first responders and strangers whose lives intersected during the deadliest terrorist attacks in U.S. history.
Produced by 72 Films in collaboration with the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, the series, premiering Aug. 21, marks the 25th anniversary of the attacks by revisiting the connections forged amid the day that would forever change the nation.
In an interview with The Christian Post, Powell said that participating in the series meant returning to memories he had largely kept compartmentalized for years: “I lock everything away, and I don’t go back there,” he said.
Revisiting Sept. 11 for the documentary, however, helped fill in gaps in his understanding of what happened around him, and 25 years later, the overriding emotion is incredible gratitude.
“It’s more gratitude than anything else,” Powell said. “Gratitude that I got to live, gratitude that I got to appreciate my children, gratitude that I got to help.”
Powell had spent nearly two decades in the Navy by the time of the attacks. After graduating with an engineering degree from the University of Cincinnati, he entered the Navy in 1982 and completed Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training the following year. He went on to serve in a series of special warfare assignments, including SEAL Team Six, SEAL Team Two and the Naval Special Warfare Development Group.
The documentary shows how Powell had checked into the Pentagon only six days before the attacks. On the morning of Sept. 11, he was working on the fifth floor of the C Ring when Flight 77 struck the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m.
Powell was among a group of military personnel who entered damaged sections of the Pentagon looking for survivors, along with Navy Capt. David Thomas and Air Force Lt. Gen. Paul Carlton Jr., then the Air Force Surgeon General. At one point, Powell crawled into a confined area and helped clear debris around a trapped survivor.
Among those whose paths crossed with Powell that day was Lt. Col. Marilyn Wills.
Wills, who is heavily featured in the documentary, had been attending a meeting on the second floor of the Pentagon when the plane struck. After helping others escape, she eventually made her way to a window. Survivors worked to break it open, and the injured were lowered first to rescuers waiting below. Wills ultimately escaped through the window, where Powell helped receive those fleeing the building.
Powell told CP he believed for years that Wills had died after her rescue: “I thought she was dead on the day that that event happened,” he said.
After helping her, Powell recalled passing Wills to others who began administering CPR amid the chaos. He didn’t know at the time that she survived; a photograph taken later showed Wills on a backboard surrounded by doctors.
“She doesn’t look too good, but she’s alive,” Powell recalled.
More than two decades later, “9/11 Reunited” brought Powell and Wills together again, allowing him to see not only that she survived, but what she’d done with the years that followed.
As the duo talked, Powell said he was particularly moved by learning about Wills’ continued life of service, including her work in education, her involvement in her church, and the family she was able to watch grow.
“She’s got two great daughters, and now she’s got grandbabies, so she gets to see her grandbabies,” he said. “That’s the part that I’m happy about.”
Before the attacks, Powell said, he approached life with the emotional discipline expected of a SEAL: remain steady, do the job and keep moving forward. His military career also meant spending considerable time away from his wife and children. However, all of that changed after the Pentagon was attacked. In the documentary, he shares how, before 9/11, he “never cried.” Today, it’s a different story.
Powell said the realization that the U.S. had been attacked on its own soil made him think differently about his family and the time he had missed with them. After 9/11, he knew the nation would respond militarily and that he would likely deploy again. But confronting mortality so close to home forced him to reconsider his priorities.
“I was always deployed. I was always gone,” he said, crediting his then-wife with much of the work of raising their children while he was away.
“I need to appreciate my family, and ever since then, I did,” he continued. “And I actually made decisions specifically because of that, after that, for my family, as opposed to, you know, for me.”
Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon and aboard United Airlines Flight 93. Though there’s plenty of footage from the day of the tragedy, “9/11 Reunited” similarly focuses less on the attacks than on the human relationships created in moments of extraordinary danger.
The docuseries, directed by Julian Jones, follows survivors and rescuers as they reunite, many for the first time since 2001. The series interweaves those present-day encounters with a retelling of the attacks, giving participants a chance to ask questions left unanswered for decades and reflect on the relationships formed that day.
Powell said one lesson he hopes viewers take from the documentary is the importance of perspective, particularly for generations too young to remember Sept. 11.
“I think the young kids are great,” he said. “The thing about it is, they just have to focus their energy in more worthwhile things and some of these silly things that they worry about right now.”
But perhaps the clearest lesson Powell took from the Pentagon was the power of unity and people setting aside status and differences to accomplish a common goal.
He recalled seeing the military’s hierarchy become virtually irrelevant as people worked to save lives. At one point, he said, a three-star lieutenant general took direction from an E-5 petty officer because the lower-ranking serviceman knew what needed to be done.
“I want to help. He knows what’s going on, and they just work together collectively to be a team,” Powell recalled. “These communities, they have to work together and collectively. It’s not like me against them.”
Twenty-five years later, Powell said the physical consequences of that day remain. When 9/11 comes up in his everyday life now, he said, it is often in connection with medical issues involving his back, neck and lungs, as well as cancer.
But Powell said those problems are under control, and his focus remains on the family he came to appreciate differently after surviving the attack.
“I never thought being a SEAL I’d live to 40, let alone 60, and now I’m almost 70,” he said. “As long as my kids are doing well, I’m super, super happy. So I’m in a good place. I’m grateful, actually, that I got to be there [at the Pentagon] and I was able to help.”
The series premieres at 8 p.m. ET on Aug. 21 on National Geographic and will stream the following day on Disney+ and Hulu.
Leah M. Klett is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: [email protected]
