Sept. 11, 2001, was a confusing day for Josh Rutherford.
When the planes struck the World Trade Center in New York City, he was in kindergarten at Messiah Lutheran Church in Fairview Park. After his mother picked up him and his brother, the day’s events went like this: Their father, a pilot for Continental Airlines at the time, frantically called his co-workers. Their mom cried in their parents’ bedroom. The rest of the family watched history unfold on the TV in their basement.
A week later, during his brother’s birthday party, Rutherford formed another memory associated with 9/11 — hearing a plane’s engines overhead for the first time since the incident.
His final and most personal 9/11 memory was made five years after the towers fell, when his uncle, Mark Smykowski, 23, was killed in Iraq. Rutherford believes that was when he truly understood the weight of what he had witnessed that day.
Though he didn’t know it at the time, these events would come to be Rutherford’s “why” — his reason for joining the military.
“The day after, the day of, even, there were American flags everywhere,” Rutherford said. “Everyone felt so patriotic and everyone loved each other, and everyone was united not only in their pain but in that feeling of ‘This isn’t the end. This isn’t going to take us out.’ And I think that’s something that a lot of people have lost sight of.”
Following his graduation from Medina’s Buckeye High School in 2014, Rutherford enlisted into the Army and became an intelligence analyst. In 2018, he was released from active duty, transitioned to the Army Reserves as a sergeant and moved from North Carolina to Ellet, where he and his wife currently reside. Today, Rutherford is studying integrated social studies as a cadet in Kent State University’s Army ROTC program and plans to become an officer after he graduates.
Rutherford remembers 9/11, but someday he will become one of the few who can. Behind him are generations of ROTC and Junior ROTC cadets who were born into a post-9/11 America, never having witnessed skyscrapers falling in real time or listened to eerily silent skies.
“I think that’s going to be something that the military is going to have to navigate — and maybe in some states they are navigating it now — of recruiting from a population that can’t remember [9/11],” he said. “You can appeal to a sense of patriotism and sense of service, but how are you going to do that when you’re talking to someone that can’t remember that period of time?”
The fragility of life
Not having firsthand memories of what took place 20 years ago hasn’t stopped a few Junior ROTC cadets at local schools from having 9/11 as their “why” for serving.
Ellet High School has some of those cadets in its Naval Junior ROTC program. Juniors Seth Young and Nick Hartley are two of the 115 students who their instructor, Col. Lionel Urquhart, anticipates will be in the program this school year.
Young and Hartley were born in 2005 and were first told about 9/11 at ages 7 and 8, respectively. For both, it wasn’t until years later when they watched a 9/11 documentary that the impact of that day took its hold. Young said that the film taught him the lesson that destruction is easier than creation.
“It also made me realize that lives can be put into the hands of one person, and then just be gone,” he said.
While Junior ROTC cadets are under no obligation to enter the military after graduation, both teens said they hope to join the Navy in the future. Young would like to become a naval architect so that he can create blueprints and design ships. Hartley, on the other hand, wants to be a recruiter.
Deterring future attacks
Green High School’s Air Force Junior ROTC program has seven cadets with 9/11 as their “why.” The program has a total of 78 students this school year, according to Lt. Col. Colleen VanNatta, an instructor.
Regardless of how they learned about 9/11 or how concrete their plans are to join the military, most cadets said preventing additional terrorist attacks was what led to them joining Junior ROTC.
“We don’t need anything like that to ever happening again,” sophomore Cameron Bailey said. “No more death from terrorists, except for maybe soldiers trying to put an end to them, but no big attacks.”
When discussing how future terrorist attacks could be avoided, cadets voiced that increasing the size of the U.S. military would help.
“I feel that back then there were a lot of people who wanted to fight for our country, and it’s died down since then,” Green freshman Lydia Zorn said. “And if it dies down and we don’t have many people on the front lines, we could risk something like that happening again — probably some sort of attack.”
Senior Jonah Barger and freshman Ryan Moore said they also believe that if more people joined the military, the chances of future terrorist attacks would decrease.
“The impact that 9/11 had on me, it was really strange,” said Tyler King, a freshman and like-minded cadet. “I was like, ‘Wow, that’s crazy. Why would that happen?’ But if I were to join the military, I could prevent stuff like that from ever happening again.”
New perspectives
Some cadets have completely different takeaways from 9/11. For example, Green sophomore Hailey Horak was inspired by the residents of New York City banding together to help one another after the attacks.
“That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to join [Junior] ROTC — to help my own community,” she said. “I felt that, even if we’re not suffering like they were, I can still help out.”
After junior Karson Butterfield listened to the final phone calls of those in the towers in fifth grade, he realized that we need more leadership and discipline to prevent a repeat of that day. Butterfield, affectionately called Butters by his peers and superiors, is a cadet staff sergeant and cross-town student, meaning he attends Lake High School but is the class commander in Green’s Junior ROTC program.
Signing a blank check
In the end, only time will tell if these cadets enter the military after graduation or, if they do, whether it will be by enlisting or enrolling in a college’s ROTC program. For those that do decide to continue their career with the military, Rutherford’s advice is simple: Always remember your “why.”
“Never forget why you’re basically signing your life to the military, because it’s a blank check up to and including your life,” he said. “So, even if you weren’t alive to experience [9/11] and experience that sense of being attacked … don’t forget why. You’re enlisting because if someone gets called to go fight, it’s not going to be an innocent person, it’s not going to be the everyday American, it’s going to be you.”
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