Standing beside the Sept. 11 memorial in Mohnton, Pennsylvania State Representative Mark Gillen reflected on the profound emotions and enduring aftermath of the terror attacks that reshaped the country a quarter-century ago. Speaking outside the Berks Military History Museum and Holocaust Museum and Education Center, a regional institution he established in 2014, the lawmaker recalled the heavy mixture of shock, grief, and determination that gripped him and millions of fellow Americans on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
The day began with confusion when the first commercial airliner struck the World Trade Center, initially appearing to observers as a tragic aviation accident or severe malfunction. However, that perception shattered minutes later when a second aircraft crashed into the South Tower. With that second impact, the nation recognized it was experiencing an orchestrated act of war, triggering widespread horror and an almost paralyzing sense of vulnerability across the United States.
Rather than remaining on the sidelines, Gillen felt an urgent obligation to respond. He possessed a background well suited for emergency intervention, having completed training in interior structural firefighting and emergency medical care, alongside previous law enforcement experience within university police departments and the corrections system. Drawing on these professional skills, he resolved to travel directly to New York City to support disaster relief and search operations.
Gillen quickly prepared for the journey by borrowing protective turnout gear from a fellow firefighter based in Mohnton. Equipping himself with whatever tools and protective apparel were immediately available, he climbed into his vehicle and embarked on a solo drive toward the devastated metropolis, completely unsure of the exact conditions awaiting him at the disaster site.
Navigating along Interstate 78, the magnitude of the emergency became undeniable. Electronic highway billboards repeatedly flashed the stark advisory that New York was officially closed to transit. Using his professional credentials to gain passage through numerous police checkpoints established along the route, Gillen gradually made his way through the locked-down transit corridors until he reached Jersey City, New Jersey.
Upon arriving at the waterfront, Gillen encountered an unprecedented scene where standard emergency management protocols were nonexistent, yet waterborne activity remained bustling. Responders were improvising transit across the Hudson River. Securing passage aboard a harbor tugboat, Gillen crossed into lower Manhattan to integrate with local emergency operations and offer direct on-the-ground support.
Shortly after arriving in Manhattan, emergency commanders assigned Gillen to accompany a trained search-and-rescue dog handler. Working through the dark hours of Tuesday night and into the morning of Sept. 12, the team navigated the smoking ruins of Ground Zero in a desperate effort to locate potential survivors trapped beneath the mountain of wreckage.
Gillen described the physical devastation at the site as surpassing anything captured by cameras or news broadcasts. Navigating the perimeter of the destroyed complex, the rescue team began marking and flagging human remains. The environment was filled with catastrophic damage, featuring crushed ambulances and overturned fire apparatus that had been destroyed while crews rushed into the burning structures.
The staggering loss among emergency personnel was immediately apparent, with 343 New York City firefighters ultimately perishing in the collapse. Gillen witnessed surviving firefighters digging furiously through the rubble, occasionally locating a lost comrade’s helmet or personal identification badge. The search efforts required grueling physical labor through compacted layers of structural steel, construction debris, and pulverized office materials in conditions that made penetrating below the surface nearly impossible.
The vivid memories of Ground Zero stayed with Gillen for years and directly influenced his decision to incorporate artifacts from the attacks into the Berks Military History Museum. Situated within the historic 1873 Cyrus D. Hornberger Wagon Works building on Main Street in Mohnton, the museum was created to honor military and domestic service, with Gillen ensuring that the broader Global War on Terror was formally commemorated.
In 2016, following extensive administrative paperwork spanning roughly a year, Gillen succeeded in securing a significant historical relic from the disaster site. The artifact was a massive, 600-pound steel rail from the Port Authority train station located underneath the Twin Towers, visibly bent and warped by the immense pressure exerted during the towers' catastrophic collapse.
To facilitate the transport of the heavy steel rail, Trans Logistics of Birdsboro stepped in to provide logistical assistance. During the acquisition process, the team was also presented with an unexpected opportunity to salvage a large architectural sign from World Trade Center Five that had been abandoned or left behind by another organization unable to transport it.
Recognizing that the storage warehouse holding the relics was on the verge of permanent closure, Gillen agreed to take custody of the World Trade Center Five sign provided it did not require another lengthy bureaucratic process. The salvaged sign was successfully loaded onto the transport vehicle, placed into secure offsite storage, and designated for future public exhibition at the Mohnton museum.
Reflecting on the 25th anniversary of the attacks, Gillen observed how dramatically the national atmosphere has shifted since the early 2000s. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, communities across Berks County experienced an overwhelming surge in public solidarity and patriotism, with store shelves completely running out of American flags and citizens gathering openly in collective prayer across public spaces.
The attacks underscored a shared realization that every part of the country was vulnerable, whether in major metropolitan centers like New York and Washington, D.C., or rural Pennsylvania fields. Today, however, Gillen expressed deep concern that this unity has deteriorated into domestic acrimony, warning that Americans risk viewing one another as internal enemies rather than maintaining focus on critical geopolitical challenges confronting the nation.
To keep the memory of that fateful day alive, the Berks Military History Museum and Holocaust Museum and Education Center hosts an annual public memorial service in Mohnton. Held outside at the dedicated Sept. 11 monument, the commemorative ceremony begins promptly at 8:46 a.m., marking the exact moment the first hijacked airliner struck the World Trade Center and altered the course of modern history.
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