WASHINGTON, N.J. – Pat Lilly is a culinary arts teacher at Warren County Technical School, but 25 years ago on Sept. 11, he served as a U.S. Air Force Chef at the Pentagon. A framed picture of the U.S. military headquarters hangs in his classroom.
Lilly said that Tuesday in 2001, he was getting ready for catering events with generals, peeling shrimp. That is when someone told him one of the World Trade Center towers got hit by a plane. He said they turned on the news and saw a second plane hit.
“We were like, ‘This is crazy. This is definitely terrorism; we’re under attack now,’” Lilly said.
Lilly’s boss came in telling him and his colleagues nobody knew what was happening.
“I went back to peeling my shrimp, and I remember hearing a boom and then the whole building shaking,” Lilly said. “It felt like the building shook for a good five seconds, and we were just like, ‘What the heck was that?’”
Lilly said there was a Navy helipad on the other opposite side of the Pentagon. He thought the helicopter may have crashed.
But it was the sound and vibration of a hijacked plane slamming into the opposite side of the building. His secretary came in telling everyone to get out.
“I remember walking out down the concourse and outside of the Pentagon and just looking up, and it was a black cloud of smoke,” Lilly said. “Just so black you could barely see the blue sky.”
Lilly and a master sergeant drove to a nearby restaurant where he called the families of his fellow airmen. He said a three-mile drive from the restaurant took several hours to get back home to his family.
“Of course, you hug your family right away and cry. I cried like crazy,” Lilly said.
He was back at work the next day to support the highest-ranking Air Force officers. The building was still on fire.
“I remember everything in our facility was under that much soot because that much smoke went through the entire Pentagon — like everything, nothing was spared of that,” Lilly said.
He said the smell of smoke lingered for six months, from a day he will never forget.
“I mean 25 years, I’ve gone through this and that, you know, but I keep coming back to how lucky I am to be alive, number one, and I don’t take that not seriously,” Lilly said.
“So, I try to live my life in positive terms,” he said. “I mean, not everybody can be positive all the time, but I try to be. I try to teach my students that way. I try to teach them to look on the bright side of things.”
