AARP Hearing Center
Lt. Col. Marilyn Wills was delivering a presentation to a dozen or so coworkers during a routine Tuesday meeting when she was flung across the table they were gathered around as a fireball ripped through the ceiling of conference room 2E487.
You can subscribe here to AARP Veteran Report, a free e-newsletter published every two weeks. If you have feedback or a story idea then please contact us here.
American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757-200 airliner, had just struck the west side of the Pentagon at 530 mph, almost directly below the second-floor conference room. It was September 11, 2001, and America was under attack.
“OK, people,” shouted Col. Philip McNair, the senior officer in the room. “We gotta get out of here.” The room was pitch-black, getting hotter and filling with acrid smoke.
Certain moments test the true fiber of a person. What followed that morning has come to define the lives and character of Wills, an Army congressional affairs officer, and McNair, an Army executive officer to Lt. Gen. Timothy Maude.
“It was just by God’s mercy that I decided to go left and not right, because the floor of the building to the right no longer existed,” Wills told AARP Veteran Report some 21 years after the 9/11 attacks. “We would have fallen into a black hole.”
AARP Membership— $12 for your first year when you sign up for Automatic Renewal
Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of discounts, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP the Magazine.
Clambering over ash, debris, tipped-over cubicles and buckled flooring, Wills felt someone grab her leg. It was Lois Stevens, a civilian employee who had spent 25 years at the Pentagon. “Hold on to me. Lois. Where I go, you go,” Wills told her.
A small group had formed as people from the meeting banded together to survive. Minutes later, choking on smoke and with her nylon pantyhose melting onto her legs, Stevens said she couldn’t go on. “Oh yes, you can,” Wills told her. “Just get on my back.”
As Wills crawled along the floor, carrying Stevens, water sprinklers came on. McNair watched as Wills took off her black wool sweater, soaked it in a puddle that had formed on the floor, sucked from it and passed it on.
“We were all short of air,” McNair told AARP Veteran Report. “Your instinct is not to breathe in smoke. The moisture in the sweater acted like a filter. Marilyn’s quick thinking gave us time. I know I took a few sucks on it.”
The only light came from a window at the far end of the shattered second floor. Wills, with Stevens, and McNair headed toward it. But the window was blast-proof and wouldn’t smash. A young Army specialist heaved a printer at the glass. It bounced back and landed on Wills.
We’re all going to die, and these people are going to die because of me, Wills thought. I brought them here — they followed me to this window.
