For many area residents the events of Sept. 11, 2011 remain etched in their memories.
“I was in a meeting,” said Kathy Isaacs. “I remember the television was on and I thought it was some bad movie. I wondered why we were all sitting around watching it. It took a long time to process that it wasn’t a movie, it was really happening.”
Others had close ties to the areas under attack. For managing editor Dave Warren, the attacks were personal.
“I was working as an editor at a southwestern newspaper at the time,” he said. “As I was driving to work I received a call from D.C. and turned on the car radio. I had friends in the World Trade Center and my oldest daughter was in the Pentagon at the time.
“It was surreal. I reached the newsroom and we all began calling our contacts in New York and Washington to get updates. At the same time we had the television on and the whole staff was fixed to it. No one could believe what they were seeing.
“Being from New York originally, I knew what I was seeing wasn’t going to end well and when the first tower went down I remember wondering
how many people I knew had just died.”
Arlene Abend was deeply touched by the attack. She had a son in the air that day, an American Airlines captain on the job. She fretted for two hours before she knew he was okay. He brought his 747 down in Los Angeles, about the same time another American plane (Flight ll) hit the first tower. “Until I knew, I held my breath and made phone calls.”
Some, like Chuck Kundrot and his wife Joann were sitting at home and planning on going to the doctor for a scheduled surgery.“We heard the news on television,” he said. “We didn’t think the surgery would take place after seeing that but we went and the doctor said if we were okay to go there, he was okay in doing the surgery.”
All Americans were effected by the events of that day, 10 years ago, and one Ozarks family has been carrying the loss of their son in the World Trade Center with them.
In the mid-1990s, then-Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan appointed John Willett to finish an unexpired term as Taney County treasurer.
At the time, Willett was called the state’s youngest county treasurer. Jim Sturgeon, a UMKC economics professor, stayed in touch with Willett after he earned his master’s degree there. When Willett moved to New York City recently, he invited Sturgeon to stay with him if he ever visited the Big Apple.
“He was a good student, very energetic,” Sturgeon said. “He helped put up a Web site for a professor, before there was too much of that going on.”
Though from a small town, Willett loved big cities. He had been all over the world, from London to Prague before finding himself employed at CO2e.com, a division of Cantor Fitzgerald.
His division facilitated the growing practice of “emissions trading” between organizations or governments to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
He was at work when the attacks began. In fact, he was on the phone in his 101st-floor World Trade Center office when a jetliner crashed into the south tower Tuesday morning. The phone line went dead instantly, his parents, who live in Walnut Shade, seven miles north of Branson, learned later.
For three days, they prayed that John was alive in a hospital. But Friday morning, they received a call from the president of Cantor Fitzgerald Securities, where John worked. John did not escape.
He was 29 years old.

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