Remembering 9/11 Victims From Illinois 20 Years Later

ILLINOIS — Anyone older than 25 in Illinois likely remembers where they were on 9/11.

Americans experienced a collective trauma as first one and then another plane flew into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001. As the truth dawned on people watching from their TVs that America was under attack, another plane took aim at the Pentagon. A fourth was brought down in a field in Pennsylvania in a final act of heroism by passengers who realized their flight had been hijacked.

Nearly 3,000 Americans, including nine from Illinois, were killed in the suicide attacks carried out that day by 19 militants associated with the Islamist extremist group al-Qaida.

On the 20th anniversary of the attacks, our state remembers and mourns:

• Kathy Bantis, 44, of Chicago, killed in the north tower
• Andrea Lyn Haberman, 25, of Chicago, killed in the north tower
• Suzanne Kondratenko, 27, of Chicago, killed in the north tower
• Darya Lin, 32, of Chicago, killed in the south tower
• Jeffrey Peter Mladenik, 43, of Hinsdale, killed on Flight 11
• Lt. Cmdr. Patrick Jude Murphy, 38, of Flossmoor, killed at the Pentagon
• Robert Arthur Rasmussen, 42, of Hinsdale, killed in the south tower
• Susan Sauer, 48, of Chicago, killed in the north tower
• Cmdr. Dan Frederic Shanower, 40, of Naperville, killed at the Pentagon

All 9/11 victims will be remembered at memorial services planned across the nation on Sept. 11 to mark the 20th anniversary of the attacks.

At the 9/11 memorial in Lower Manhattan, New York — an area known for years after the attacks as “Ground Zero” — the names of the fallen will be read aloud.

“Throughout the ceremony, we will observe six moments of silence, acknowledging when each of the World Trade Center towers was struck and fell and the times corresponding to the attack on the Pentagon and the crash of Flight 93,” the 9/11 Memorial & Museum wrote on its website.

The annual “Tribute of Light,” which are lights pointed to the sky in the shape of the Twin Towers, will go on that night.

Most 9/11 victims were from either New York or New Jersey, where many who lived across the Hudson River from the World Trade Center recall the horror of watching the twin towers collapse from their homes in Hoboken and Jersey City.

More than 2,700 people died at the World Trade Center alone on 9/11, including the passengers of American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175. Another 184 were killed when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into The Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and 44 died on United Airlines Flight 93 when it crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.