Subdued 9/11 remembrances mirror Boston’s invisible scars

Tucked in a grove of ginkgo timber, a glass dice at Logan International Airport pays tribute to these misplaced aboard the 2 jetliners that took off from Boston and had been hijacked by terrorists who flew them into the World Trade Center towers.
But it’s principally silent homage. The memorial etched with the names of those that perished aboard American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 attracts few guests. And the airport’s different nods to its position within the tragedy — American flags that fly above the jetways on the gates the place the flights departed — go principally unnoticed and unremarked.
It’s reflective of town’s uneasy ties to the transcendent occasions of Sept. 11, 2001.
“It still feels surreal in a way, because it was just horrifying beyond anyone’s ability to grasp,” mentioned Virginia Buckingham, who was CEO of the Massachusetts Port Authority, which operates Logan, on 9/11.
Five terrorists smuggled field cutters aboard American Flight 11 at Logan. Five others did the identical with United Flight 175 at one other terminal. “None of the checkpoint supervisors recalled the hijackers or reported anything suspicious regarding their screening,” the federal government’s 9/11 Commission mentioned in its report.
On the day of the assaults, Buckingham was getting ready to fly to Washington to fulfill with the Federal Aviation Administration a couple of new runway at Logan when she bought a six-word message that also chills her: “Two planes are off the radar.”
Six weeks after the assaults, then-Gov. Jane Swift pushed Buckingham to resign. Buckingham, who wrote a haunting 2020 memoir, “On My Watch,” mentioned all of it practically broke her — and she or he’s solely lately come round to the concept it wasn’t her fault.
“I have PTSD, both from the trauma of seeing what unfolded like all of us had to, but also being blamed for it caused terrible trauma, bad dreams, depression,” she mentioned. “I was held personally accountable for the deaths of thousands … It’s been a long road back, and it’s nothing compared to what the families have gone through.”
Underscoring Boston’s uneasy makes an attempt to distance itself from its position within the assaults, subdued twentieth anniversary remembrances are deliberate on the airport on Saturday, Sept. 11.
Massport spokesperson Jennifer Mehigan mentioned nothing is deliberate aside from the standard TSA honor guards stationed on the airport’s most important checkpoints within the morning. American and United could have personal ceremonies.
The company was thrust into exhaustive authorized battles after the developer of the World Trade Center sued it, American and United, claiming porous safety at Logan in the end was guilty for the toppling of the towers. It didn’t finish till 2017, when insurers for the 2 airways agreed to pay $95 million to World Trade Center Properties to shut the case.
Massport, additionally named as a defendant in dozens of wrongful demise lawsuits introduced by households of 9/11 victims, maintained it had no obligation for the assaults as a result of it didn’t management safety checkpoints. Ultimately, a federal choose agreed.
Twenty years on, there’s little to recommend that Boston has really come to phrases with its supporting position within the assaults.

Although a monument to victims in Boston Public Garden will get visitors, Logan’s atmospheric memorial is never visited. On a latest weekday go to, an Associated Press photographer noticed solely two individuals enter the dice throughout a three-hour keep. That’s in sharp distinction to the often crowded memorial downtown to victims of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, which killed three spectators, wounded greater than 260 others and spawned the slogan “Boston Strong.”
“I’m struck by the amnesia that’s set in,” mentioned James Carroll, a former priest and retired Boston Globe columnist. “All we’re left with is the mythology of 9/11. I would have expected better of Boston.”
As the twentieth anniversary approaches, essentially the most poignant Boston-centric commemoration is a one-man operation. Retired flight attendant Paul Veneto, 62, a daily on United Flight 175’s Boston to Los Angeles route who had taken 9/11 off, is pushing an airline beverage cart from Boston to New York City to honor the pilots and fellow crew members who died within the assaults.
“I turned my life around to be able to recognize these guys who were never recognized,” mentioned the Braintree, Massachusetts, resident, whose survivor’s guilt triggered a 15-year prescription drug habit.

Buckingham likens her personal life to a bit of sea glass.
“It’s been broken apart and is nothing like it used to be. But that doesn’t mean it’s not beautiful, doesn’t mean it’s not valuable,” she mentioned. “If you go through something very, very painful, you’re going to carry that pain with you. You’re going to be changed forever.”