Resolved never to forget
By Steve Herring
Published in News on September 14, 2016 11:57 AM
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News-Argus/STEVE HERRING
Participants hold hands and small U.S. flags Sunday morning during VFW Post 9959's 9/11 ceremony.
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News-Argus/STEVE HERRING
VFW Post 9959 member Mike Saviak lowers, then raises the flag to half staff Sunday morning post Commander Ray Harrell salutes.
MOUNT OLIVE -- Robin McSwain shakes her head in disbelief as she recounts comments by what she calls a "big official" who said it is time for the country to put 9/11 behind it and move on.
Mrs. McSwain and Ann Dewar agree that would be like forgetting Pearl Harbor.
And Mrs. Dewar, whose late husband served in World War II, and was a MP at the Nuremberg Trials, remembers both attacks very clearly.
She and Mrs. McSwain, a member of the VFW Post 9959 Auxiliary, were among those who attended the post's Sunday morning 9/11 remembrance ceremony.
Seventeen miniature U.S. flags lined the post's driveway in memory of each of the North Carolinians who died in the 9/11 terrorist attack.
Post Commander Ray Harrell read the 17 names as those at the ceremony gathered around the flagpole.
Harrell also read the timeline of that date 15 years ago.
Violet Saviak read George Washington's prayer for the United States.
At 8:46 a.m. post member Mike Saviak lowered the flag then raised it to half-staff to commemorate the time that the plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
"That event, I think, touched every state in the country," Harrell said. "About 3,000 people including firefighters and policemen died. There were a lot of acts of heroism that day.
"One fire captain from New York Ladder Station No. 1 had to order his brother into the tower to help rescue people. Imagine how that might have felt."
Passengers on Flight 93 stormed the cabin after learning by phone about what was going on from family and friends, Harrell said.
"They may have had a chance to take over the plane and keep it in the air," he said. "In the ensuring struggle we know the plane crashed. The people sacrificed, they saved either the White House or the Capitol building itself."
It was a day that changed the county and not just the lives that were personally touched Harrell said.
"It changed, really, our way of life," he said. "It changed our country, and in fact it changed our whole world in just a few brief minutes.
"The struggle against this kind of thing continues today, and there is probably no end in sight. We have to be strong in order to defeat these people."
But it also is important not to be terrorized, he said. If the country surrenders to that, then that is when terrorists win, he said.
Harrell said in his opinion the country already has done too much of that as it is.
Following the ceremony, the group gathered in the post home for cake and coffee and to talk and remember.
As a 10-year-old visiting at her grandfather's home on N.C. 24 between Clinton and Roseboro on Dec. 7, 1941, Mrs. Dewar said she knew something was going on, but did not know exactly what.
The adults were listening to the radio while the children played outside. It was a mild sunny day, she said.
"Even at 10 I realized there was something very different about my mother, my granddaddy, my Uncle Remus and others were taking, they were serious," she said. "I knew it was serious business.
"At that time, Pearl Harbor I had no idea what they were talking about, but it ingrained it in my mind that I never forgot that day."
She also recalls standing by the roadway waving to long convoys of at least 100 vehicles.
Mrs. McSwain said she does not remember the attack, but that she had two sisters working in Raleigh at the time.
The family lived in the country.
"Mama's house was full of soldiers and sailors who had gone into Raleigh for the weekend -- didn't have anywhere to stay," she said. "Kathleen and Dixie were, 'Come on out to the house.'
"They would bring them out to the house. They would sleep on the floor on quilts."
On 9/11 Mrs. Dewar was watching one of the morning news/variety shows.
"I was sort of watching, and all of a sudden I am hearing something and seeing something on the screen that didn't make any sense," she said. "I don't know what I was seeing.
"So I really paid attention for about three minutes, and the first plane had hit. Then they are telling me something else is going on. I didn't know if it was going to be everywhere or what was happening."
She was at home alone. Her husband, Allen, was at work.
"I thought, 'What am I supposed to do?'" she said. "I am a registered nurse. I am an EMT. But I needed somebody."
She looked outside and saw two men across the street replacing a light pole.
"They were the only people that I saw, but they were alive and real," she said. "And I went to them."
She asked if they had any contact with their office. They told her no.
Mrs. Dewar said she tried to explain to them what she had seen.
"I don't know why, but it just helped to have somebody," she said. "The men walked back across the street with me, and I showed it to them. We stopped and watched it on television for a few minutes, but it was just, I had to have other people. I am a people person.
"I have often wondered how crazy those men thought that old woman is that came out of that house and came across the street and told them about an airplane going into the tower in New York City."
The men returned to their work and Mrs. Dewar called her husband at work to tell him about the attack.
"I watched television for 48 hours straight," she said. "I couldn't believe it. When they told about the plane in Pennsylvania I thought it was the end of the world. It was unreal."