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Past, present Team Randolph members recall unforgettable events of Sept. 11, 2001
Posted 9/11/2009 Updated 9/9/2009
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by Robert Goetz
12th Flying Training Wing Public Affairs
9/11/2009 - RANDOLPH AIR FORCE BASE, Texas -- The 12th Flying Training Wing's chief of public affairs was attending a commander's staff meeting the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when he first heard the news that stunned the world and forever shattered many Americans' feelings of security.
The wing's vice commander, who was chairing the meeting, was called out of the session but soon returned with an announcement that seemed unbelievable: An airplane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center buildings in New York. What else happened that day bordered on the unthinkable.
"I was angry that someone had attacked our nation," said Col. William Nichols, then a major serving as the wing's public affairs chief. "I immediately thought about my family - my sons in school and my wife who was downtown for a meeting. I wanted to make sure she was aware of what was going on."
But the personal thoughts of Colonel Nichols and the rest of the wing's leadership quickly shifted to the task at hand: to protect the base population.
"I remember it (Randolph's response) being very deliberate, thorough, methodical," he said. "While things were happening quickly, it was still very deliberate. I remember being impressed with the leadership in the wing and the professional response of all people who began implementing all the force protection measures."
Colonel Nichols, now director of public affairs for the Air Forces Central/Air Forces Forward Combined Air and Space Operations Center, was not alone in his emotional responses to the Sept. 11 tragedy. Other Airmen who belonged to Team Randolph at the time expressed similar feelings as they recalled that fateful Tuesday.
"My first reaction was disbelief," said Mance Clark, 12th Security Forces Squadron antiterrorism force protection officer. "For a brief moment, I thought this was it - the world was approaching its end."
Then his disbelief turned to anger, followed by sadness for all of the people who lost their lives.
"It wasn't until that moment when all of the terrorist incidents I had read about or studied hit home," he said. "They were no longer simply words on a page."
Mr. Clark was performing his current role, but as an active-duty senior NCO, when he first saw pictures of the incident, unaware of what was happening.
"As I watched the incident unfold on television, I thought it was a TV movie, and even then, it looked unreal," he said.
Maj. Dennis Sprenkle, a captain assigned to the 563rd Flying Training Squadron as an instructor navigator, also looked on in disbelief as the day's events unfolded. He was watching coverage on a big-screen TV in the squadron's crowded lounge when several questions immediately came to mind.
"How many people were in the buildings? How many people died?" he recalled. "These weren't accidents - this was an act of terrorism. Who did this and why?"
Major Sprenkle, now a flight commander with the 55th Operations Support Squadron at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., said his thoughts about how the attacks would alter the future roles of the squadron's students "added a sense of urgency and importance to the entire training program."
"In the 563rd FTS, we were training young men and women who had been in the Air Force less than a year, maybe only a few months, to become electronic warfare officers," he said. "They soon would be going to war against a foe yet to be determined."
Major Sprenkle's observations of traffic coming into Randolph corroborated Colonel Nichols' description of leadership's thorough, methodical reaction to the event.
"The most visible response at Randolph were the long lines of traffic trying to get onto the base," he said. "Overnight, the SPs went from waving through vehicles based upon stickers on the windshield to physically examining every ID card. It was a very slow process. Students were late for flights and were parking cars along Pat Booker Road and walking to the main gate because it was faster than driving. A couple of the gates were closed, which slowed the process even more."
Another response at Randolph was reaching out to the victims of the Sept. 11 tragedy. Chief Master Sgt. Kevin Lambing, at the time a master sergeant and 12th Medical Group Medical Services Flight NCO in charge, joined other base medical personnel in heading to the McGuire Air Force Base-Fort Dix area in New Jersey to set up a 500-bed field hospital to care for the overflow of patients from New York. A question from his son, not yet 3, elicited an emotional response prior to his departure.
"My son was 2 and a half at the time and was glued to the television like everyone else," he said. "The next day when I left, he asked me this question that resounds in me today: 'Daddy, are you going to help those people?' With tears streaming down my face, I said, 'Yes, baby, I am. Take care of mommy and daddy will be home as soon as he can.'"
Sergeant Lambing, who now serves as the Air Education and Training Command Medical Enlisted Force chief, said the additional staff was not needed in the end because there were few survivors of the attacks on the World Trade Center.
"However, the event led us to demonstrate our outstanding Air Force medical capabilities and the speed in which we could deploy those assets," he said.
Sergeant Lambing said his sense of personal security was not as affected on Sept. 11 as that of many Americans because he had been assigned to Wiesbaden, West Germany, in the 1980s when bombings perpetrated by the Red Army Faction terrorist group were commonplace.
He said Americans "had lived in such comfort and security for so many years that we truly didn't think it would ever happen to us."
But Sergeant Lambing also called that day a worldwide tragedy.
"We as Americans must never forget that 2,392 people perished, and America was just one of 90 countries that lost loved ones in the attacks," he said. "The world was affected and continues to be affected today."
Joseph Lubic, a senior military operations analyst in Alexandria, Va., for defense contractor Systems Planning and Analysis, was a lieutenant colonel serving as the 12th FTW's chief of safety on Sept. 11, but was on convalescent leave following surgery. Like millions of Americans, he watched coverage of the horrifying events of that day on TV, amazed that the hijackers could use "our system and equipment against us, attacking us from within and catching us completely off guard."
"I think, like every other American, I realized that the buffer provided by the oceans that provided a sense of security to our somewhat isolated country was now gone," he said. "I began to wonder about our ability to protect the homeland, especially from an enemy intent on causing as much death and destruction as possible."
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