Dion McGill had been in the Illinois Army National Guard for just 11 months when America was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.
The morning after his 22nd birthday, McGill’s sister alerted him to the news.
McGill, who lives in Englewood and is now 47, had taken that day off. They turned on the TV and saw news broadcasts just before watching a second plane hit the World Trade Center towers in New York City.
There were later reports that a third plane struck the Pentagon and another crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
“You could feel the seismic shift almost immediately,” he said. “Obviously, the world is different. You just don’t know how different.”
McGill had signed up for the Guard for tuition assistance after running out of money while a student at Western Illinois University before eventually dropping out.
“I thought I would fill sandbags if there was flooding, maybe help a lady or two across the street,” he said.
McGill completed basic training shortly before 9/11, but his advanced individual training — which teaches recruits the specifics of their jobs — was delayed by nearly two years.
The job he chose came with an $8,000 signing bonus, specializing in mitigating deaths in the event of any nuclear, biological or chemical attacks.
Sense of duty
In 2004, three years after 9/11, McGill’s unit was preparing for deployment to Iraq as part of a U.S. military operation in the region when they were diverted to Germany days before their scheduled departure.
“A lot of soldiers were being killed,” McGill said, explaining that troops already familiar with the region were being sent to Iraq while soldiers less familiar with the area were diverted elsewhere.
McGill recalled feeling relieved he could support the war without heading to Iraq. He would spend 15 months in Germany.
But, in 2008, his unit was later deployed to Afghanistan. McGill said he returned home with a fractured hip, a bad back, post-traumatic stress disorder, nasal polyps, sleep apnea and “a host of stories and memories I could have easily done without in this life.”
He finally got his degree from Saint Xavier University in 2010, but several friends never made it home. He wonders about the lives they could have gone on to have lived.
“One thing my mind always wraps around is this idea that Josh will forever be 21. Jason will always be this mid-20s guy,” he said of his friends Josh Harris and Jason Vasquez.
McGill said the experiences left him with a new fearlessness and resolve.
“I came home with a sense of duty that has permeated the fabric of my life ever since,” he said, pointing to his current work as a counselor in Englewood.
McGill said he receives disability pay for his PTSD and has found therapy helpful, but the survivor’s guilt hasn’t left him.
“You fall into that rabbit hole of guilt and sorrow, and that’s not how I want to honor their memories,” he said.
‘I wish we could have done more’
Days before the 25th anniversary of 9/11, New York City released more than 170,000 pages of records concerning post-9/11 air quality and the city’s response.
For Jim and Pat Maloney, Chicago brothers who rushed to help at Ground Zero after the attacks, the records have renewed questions about the air quality first responders were exposed to.
Jim Maloney, 72, a retired Chicago Police Department lieutenant who was a cop for more than 35 years, said he never had asthma before 9/11. Since then, he’s developed a cough that now requires an inhaler to control.
Maloney and his brother are among the thousands enrolled in the World Trade Center Health program.
Pat Maloney, 65, a retired Chicago Fire Department battalion chief, was treated for cancer.
As a firefighter for more than 40 years, he says the concerns about the air quality don’t change his views about having gone to New York to do what he could in 2001.
“It’s not about self-preservation,” Maloney said in an interview while in New York, where he traveled to mark the 25th anniversary of the attacks. “We show up at a scene that’s very dangerous and hazardous, and we gotta put calm to some chaos.”
Pat Maloney (right), a longtime Chicago firefighter, was part of a group to help at Ground Zero after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
The brothers said they have kept in touch with the first responders they met in 2001. When Pat Maloney retired, he said seven New York firefighters came to Chicago for his last day on the job.
Looking back, Jim Maloney said he would “absolutely” do it all again.
“I wish we could have done more,” he said