Relatives remember horrors of 9/11 vividly

By DENISE DICK

denise_dick@vindy.com

Historians call it a seminal event. For one Sharon, Pa., family, it was more than that.

Rebecca Koborie, 48, a Sharon native, was working as an executive secretary for insurance company Marsh & McLellan on the 97th floor of the World Trade Center. She died 15 years ago, on Sept. 11, 2001, when two planes, hijacked by terrorists crashed into each of the WTC towers.

A third plane struck the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., leaving Mahoning Valley native Terry Lynch among the dead.

A fourth plane crashed near Shanksville, Pa., after passengers charged the hijackers, preventing them from striking another target.

Tim Koborie of Tallmadge, Ohio, formerly of Sharon, remembers his oldest sister, whom he called Becky, as a fun, giving and outgoing person.

“She was a musical theater major, and she was always a star,” he said.

Rebecca was the eldest of the four Koborie children, and Tim is the youngest. Twelve years separated them.

“I was going into kindergarten when she was going off to college,” he said.

Rebecca earned her degree from University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

While she worked in an office during the day, Becky, a singer and pianist, appeared in musical theater productions at night.

“She was always performing in something,” Tim said.

When Koborie first learned about the plane crashes, it didn’t dawn on him that Rebecca worked there. She had recently changed jobs, moving into the WTC office. He didn’t know in which tower or on what floor she worked.

He called his parents, Julianne and the late John Koborie, who remained in Sharon. John died in 2015.

The couple wasn’t watching television and didn’t know of the attack.

Tim went to his parents’ house as did other family members as they awaited news of Becky.

At that time, there were stories of unidentified people in New York hospitals who were injured and couldn’t say who they were.

Tim’s wife, Eileen, has family in New York City. The Kobories sent a photograph of Becky and her information to New York. Eileen’s family posted them around the city.

“We never heard from anyone,” Tim Koborie said.

Four or five days after the attacks, the family learned that Rebecca had died.

She had taken the day before, Sept. 10, 2001, off to play golf with a friend. She had to be at work early Sept. 11 for an international conference call.

After they learned of Becky’s death, the family heard through Marsh & McLellan about the international call to England.

“They said they were talking and then they heard someone in New York said, ‘Oh’ and that was it,” Tim Koborie said. “The line went dead. They had no idea what happened.”

The piano from Rebecca’s New Jersey home sits in her youngest brother’s home. Tim also got all her music, including some she had written. A framed picture of Fred Astaire that used to be Rebecca’s hangs in Tim’s Tallmadge home.

He is a music teacher, and the two shared that love. He misses talking to her about music, he said.

Rebecca led the Marsh & McLellan Choir, which performed at her memorial service.

The family had only a large photograph of Rebecca for the service.

When John Koborie went to New York after the attack, he kept saying, “‘I’m going to bring Becky home,’” Tim Koborie said.

That never happened.

Her remains were never found.

The only tangible representation of Rebecca was that photograph.

“It was almost like she was a missing person,” Tim said.

Rebecca loved Buhl Park in Sharon, which isn’t far from the family home. She started a Thanksgiving tradition of the family walking to the park after the meal.

The family donated to the park to create a garden in Rebecca’s memory. A brick-paved walkway leads from the road to rows of trees and flowers, one donated by each of Rebecca’s three siblings.

They call it Becky’s

Garden.

Tim Koborie and his father traveled to New York on the first anniversary of the attacks. The site remained a sort of war zone, he said.

“It was like a big giant, excavated dust hole,” Tim said.

He returned for the 10-year commemoration, and it had been turned into a memorial to those who died.

It was no longer an eyesore. Trees planted at the site distinguish it from the rest of Manhattan where greenery is rare.

“They reclaimed it. It’s a peaceful place,” he said.

Tim doesn’t plan to mark the 15th anniversary in a special way.

“I think about her every day, so that day won’t be any different,” he said.

Terry Lynch’s widow, Jackie, who lives in the Philadelphia area and is also a Valley native, couldn’t be reached.

While not everyone lost a loved one in those attacks 15 years ago, Sept. 11, 2001, for many, that day’s events changed their view of the world.

SEMINAL EVENT

“The 9/11 attacks were a seminal event in American history,” said Martha Pallante, chairwoman of Youngstown State University’s history department.

For her parents’ generation, they recall the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, as such a defining event. For Pallante’s generation, that event is the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

“For my children, this is the event that sort of marks the end of their innocence,” Pallante said. “I think that’s true for many Americans. It was the first time we realized we are as vulnerable as the rest of the world to a

terrorist attack.”

It’s too soon to gauge the full effect of that day on the world.

“I don’t think we have enough perspective on it yet,” Pallante said. “A lot of the way we view the past is shaped by exactly where we are in the present.”

We know 70 years later, for example, the effect of the Pearl Harbor bombing. The United States entered World War II, she said.

“I think the way 9/11 will be perceived in the future has to do with events between now and then, and I don’t think we know that yet,” Pallante said.

H. William Lawson, executive director of the Mahoning Valley Historical Society, said Sept. 11, 2001, is an event when anyone who was old enough to understand remembers where they were when they learned of the tragedy.

“I think it’s the gravity and the realization that the world is never going to be the same again,” he said.

POLICE CHIEF’S MEMORY

Robin Lees, Youngstown police chief, was a lieutenant assigned as the department’s planning and training officer.

“I was here, on the second floor of the police station and someone said an airplane had hit one of towers of the World Trade Center,” he said.

At first Lees thought it was a tragic accident. When the second plane hit, he and others at the station knew it was something worse.

After the attacks, more security measures and procedures were put in place. At any airport or event that draws a large crowd, security is heightened, Lees said.

“The shock to me personally, and to a lot of people in law enforcement or the military, when you looked at potential attacks, you were not thinking that the person would be sacrificing themselves,” he said. “We always thought of the person or persons who would deliver the attack and escape. This is new phenomenon where they don’t care about escaping.”

Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally was an assistant law director for the city then. He was sitting in his office listening to 570 WKBN Radio’s Dan Ryan show.

“I almost remember it like it was yesterday,” McNally said.

Like many others, the first plane crashing into the first tower didn’t point to him as a terrorist attack. When the second plane hit, that changed.

It hasn’t changed much for him personally. He’s more aware of his surroundings. He knows there are more security measures and screenings and believes those measures, while irksome, are worth the annoyance if it keeps people safer.

“I don’t think we should fear going places where we want to go,” the mayor said. “Time is too short anyway to not do what you want to do and go where you want to go.”

TRESSEL AT OSU

YSU President Jim Tressel was the head football coach at Ohio State University.

The Buckeyes had played their first game of the season and the team was gearing up for the second one when Tressel learned news of the attacks.

A professor who specialized in terrorism talked to students and to staff about the events.

Tressel was in his late 40s 15 years ago.

“I was in fourth grade when [President] John F. Kennedy was shot,” he said. “9/11 was the next big shocker in my lifetime.”

At first he was in disbelief, Tressel said.

OSU was the first university

to cancel its game planned for that week.

Anthony Spano, a procurement officer at YSU, was a YSU student in fall 2001.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” he said. “Things that big in your lifetime that happen in your community or in your country, they’re in your head for the rest of your life.”

He was walking to class that morning when people were talking about it. His professor told the class the country was under attack and ended class.

Televisions blared the news.

“I remember seeing the video of the plane going into the side of that tower,” Spano said.

Campus was shut down about 10:30 that morning.

Campus police were closing buildings and students were directed to go home.

“I went back to my apartment and was glued to the television for six or seven hours,” he said.

He was in disbelief.

“It really happened on our soil, in our country,” Spano said.

That wasn’t supposed to happen, he remembers thinking.

He was still shocked for the first day or two.

“It was one of those life lessons, not to take things for granted,” Spano said.

In the following months, he and Sara O’Brien, another student, pitched the idea for a memorial on campus. Spano said David Sweet, then-YSU president, and Cynthia Anderson, who was vice president for student affairs at the time, supported the idea.

The memorial was dedicated to Lynch, the YSU alum who died in the Pentagon attack.

Students sold T-shirts to raise funds for the memorial that sits in the campus core.

Jason Loree, Boardman administrator, was a student at Kent State University, on Sept. 11, 2001.

He was a resident assistant in one of the dormitories.

People were talking about the events all over campus, he said.

“There was a lot of confusion, and a lot of people were in shock,” Loree remembers. “It was eye-opening. There had always been a feeling, ‘You’re in America. You’re going to be safe.’”

The attacks changed that feeling.

In the campus cafeteria later that day, the atmosphere was different.

“I remember how quiet it was,” Loree said. “People were just sitting there – we had to eat. It was very eerie. Nobody wanted to joke and laugh.”