Twenty-five years ago, a Virginia firefighter responded to the attack on the Pentagon unaware that his police officer father was there, too.
The list of law enforcement agencies and fire departments that responded to the Pentagon the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, is long and distinguished.
D.C. Fire Assistant Chief Tony Kelleher was on duty as a firefighter in Loudoun County when his engine company got the call to head to the Pentagon.
“As we crested that hill … it was like somebody lifted a curtain on one of the most surreal things I’ve ever seen,” he said. “And that was just the impact to the Pentagon and the amount of smoke – not only from where the impact site was – but just the top of the Pentagon.”
Kelleher’s engine crew was not among the first to arrive at the scene of death and unimaginable destruction that day.
“So, the people that arrived here first saw and dealt with things that were even more unimaginable,” he said.
A still frame from TV news shows Kelleher’s father, a now-retired Arlington police officer, who also was on scene at the Pentagon that day.
No one’s phones worked for hours, so father and son were unaware until later that they were not far apart from each other on a day that’s painful to remember and impossible to forget.
