25 years later: Pentagon 9/11 survivor finds ‘little ways’ to honor sister killed in attack

Two planes had already crashed into the World Trade Center’s twin towers when Kathy Dillaber met up with her younger sister Patty Mickley under a clear blue sky inside the Pentagon’s open-air center courtyard 25 years ago.

The sisters, both Pentagon civilian employees, discussed the apparent attacks on New York, but their conversation soon turned to a happier topic — Mickley’s 5-year-old daughter Marie’s first day of kindergarten the previous day. By about 9:15 a.m., the pair decided it was best to get back to their offices inside the U.S. military’s sprawling Arlington, Va., headquarters.

“We knew what happened in New York, but we didn’t have any thoughts that the Pentagon would be a target because there’s nothing here but paperwork and computer results,” Dillaber recalled. “We had no idea, but it just felt like something was going on, like ‘This is not good.’ ”

As Mickley turned toward her Defense Intelligence Agency office, Dillaber stopped her, noticing the “beautiful red dress” and high heels she was wearing — an improvement, in Dillaber’s mind, over Mickley’s typical attire of “long dresses past her knees and frumpy tennis shoes.”

“I said, ‘Patty, your knees are exposed,’ ” Dillaber said. “She turned around to me, and she laughed and she went, ‘Oh, poo, poo, Khaki.’ She called me Khaki. That’s the last vision I had of her. She was so happy.”

A memorial bench honors Patty Mickley at the Pentagon’s 9/11 memorial in this image from a video. Mickley, a Defense Intelligence Agency civilian employee, was one of 184 victims killed in the attack. Her sister, Kathy Dillaber, was also inside the Pentagon and survived. (Stars and Stripes)

Kathy Dillaber, who survived the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon when she was an Army civilian employee, shows family photos that include her sister, Patty Mickley, who was killed in the attack. (Stars and Stripes)

At 9:37 a.m., with Dillaber and Mickley back in their offices, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the western face of the Pentagon. Dillaber was thrown to the ground, but she escaped the chaos with no injury.

Mickley, 41, was among 184 victims in the Pentagon and on the plane killed in the attack.

Twenty-five years after al-Qaida’s attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, that claimed Mickley and nearly 3,000 Americans and launched two decades of Global War on Terrorism, Dillaber’s emotional scars from that day remain. In a recent interview at the bench dedicated to Mickley’s memory at the Pentagon Memorial just outside the restored western-facing wall, Dillaber, 73, choked up as she thought about Mickley and her own survival of America’s worst terrorist attack.

“I’m still angry about what happened on Sept. 11. It never should have happened,” Dillaber said. “Being a survivor, all these years later, I’m grateful for it. It’s hard sometimes, and that sounds silly to say … but you know, now it’s just finding little ways to bring Patty back, but she won’t come back.”

Family business

Working at the Pentagon became somewhat of a family business for the Dillabers. Kathy Dillaber had followed her father, Philip Dillaber, a World War II veteran who had served in the D-Day invasion in Normandy, France, in taking a job at the Pentagon.

Her father, Kathy said, had nagged her to seek work with Defense Department “for the benefits.” In 1977, she gave in, telling him she would “go there for three years and do my duty.” She would end up spending more than 30 years working as a program analyst in the Army’s personnel office specializing in tracking women in the service.

Years later, Mickley came to work at the military headquarters as a financial analyst for DIA after graduating from Virginia Tech.

The duo made it a habit to meet in the center courtyard or in the massive building’s series of hallways most days — usually to discuss their family goings on. Rarely did they discuss work, Dillaber said.

When the plane struck the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, Dillaber had no idea what had caused the jolt in the building. She did not immediately link it to the attacks in New York.

“We got out of there, and they were evacuating everyone to the center court,” Dillaber recalled. She immediately began searching for Patty. “I looked to see if I could see what was happening in Patty’s area [of the Pentagon]. I didn’t see any smoke or fire, so I thought, ‘Oh, Patty’s in the clear. She’s OK.’ ”

‘I left Patty there’

Evacuating the Pentagon alongside thousands of other survivors took hours. Eventually, Dillaber made her way to Mickley’s home to wait for her sister. Her parents and other siblings joined. It was only there, hours after the attacks, that she turned on the television and learned that a plane had struck the Pentagon just like those that had hit the twin towers.

“That was the first time I saw that the Pentagon was on fire,” Dillaber said. “The whole family was there watching, and I said, ‘I left Patty there.’ I didn’t know.”

When Dillaber returned to work the following Monday, she still had not heard of Patty’s fate.

The wait for any news about Mickley was grueling. Dillaber still believed her sister had survived and was probably injured somewhere at a hospital. She went daily to the makeshift Pentagon Family Assistance Center, where officials had set up a command center to provide updates on those still missing after the attack.

“I didn’t want to give up,” Dillaber recalled. “I wanted her to come home.”

On Wednesday, Patty’s husband Joe called Dillaber. A general was coming to their home. Dillaber instantly knew what that meant.

“They came in [and] they told us that she was identified,” Dillaber recalled. “I don’t think I did anything. I was numb.

“I was sure Patty was OK. I saw her. She looked good. She was happy.”

Dillaber continued working at the Pentagon for nearly a decade after the attacks before retiring in 2010. In recent years, she has worked as a volunteer with the Pentagon Memorial Fund, which oversees the Pentagon Memorial that opened in 2008 and will break ground Sept. 12 on a Visitor Education Center charged with preserving the story of the 9/11 attacks at the Pentagon.

It is important, she noted, that young Americans who have no memory of 9/11 or were not yet born when it happened should understand what occurred that day and the impacts of the attacks on Americans even 25 years later.

“It’s so very important for the youth today to learn what happened here. Many of them just go, what? 9/11, what’s that?” Dillaber said. “So, it’s really important to see them come out here and visit this memorial and learn about that and learn about the victims and the survivors. And Patty.”

Firefighters and military personnel unfurl a large Flag from the roof of the Pentagon during the Sept. 12, 2001, visit of President George W. Bush to the site of the previous day’s terrorist attack on the Pentagon. (R.D. Ward/Department of Defense)