Terry Richards | The Valdosta Daily TimesA marker commemorating those who died on Sept. 11, 2001, sits in front of Lowndes County's old courthouse.

VALDOSTA — It was 4 a.m. Alaska time when Mark Deatcher watched the world change.

He was an airman at Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage who had been working outdoors. He walked inside where other men were taking a break and drinking coffee.

“On the TV, they were interviewing a firefighter when a plane hit the second tower,” he said. “I looked at my watch and knew that we were about to go to war again.”

The date was Sept. 11, 2001. What Deatcher saw was the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history, when members of the al-Qaida terrorist organization hijacked four passenger jets and slammed three of them into the two towers of New York City’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing thousands of people. 

The fourth plane, aimed at the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., crashed in a Pennsylvania field as passengers tried to storm the cockpit to stop the hijackers.

Deatcher and his wife, Linda, were present Friday among more than 100 others as Valdosta and Lowndes County officials held a somber ceremony at the historic old courthouse marking 19 years to the day since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Before the ceremony, Deatcher, a 26-year Air Force veteran whose last posting was at Moody AFB, said when he saw the disaster unfolding on television, he called home and told his daughter to “wake mom and tell her to turn on the TV.”

Linda Deatcher remembers hurrying to get the children from school. “They were trying to lock down Anchorage,” she said.

The ceremony Friday began with an introduction by Bill Slaughter, the Lowndes County Commission chairman, calling on recognition for firemen, police, EMTs and other first responders. 

“We should always continue to recognize not only the individuals that gave their lives on 9-11, but the individuals that continue to make a conscientious decision to invest in a career that puts them in that same location,” he said.

On Sept. 11, 2001, 343 New York firefighters, 61 policemen from three agencies and eight EMTs were killed when the Twin Towers collapsed.

Slaughter was followed by an invocation from Pastor Martin Collins.

“(On Sept. 11) we came together,” he said.

Brian Boutwell, Valdosta’s fire chief, brought to mind the days immediately after the attacks.

“On Sept. 12 began the unification of the nation,” he said.

Lloyd Green, Lowndes County Fire Rescue’s chief, asked, “Do you remember where you were and what you were doing? … We are blessed to live in a community that remembers our public safety.”

Following the laying of a wreath on the Sept. 11 memorial at the courthouse, Valdosta Mayor Scott James Matheson remembered where he had been.

Matheson was working on-air at Valdosta radio station WWRQ — Rock 108 — when the catastrophe unfolded.

“We stayed on-air continuously for 12 hours as the news came in,” he said. The station used the then-still-early internet to keep on top of breaking events.

Matheson said an unsettling fact came to light afterward: The station’s parent company had headquarters in Daytona Beach, Fla., “not a quarter-mile” from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, where the hijackers learned to fly.

In the crowd, Deatcher summed up the general feeling.

“They attacked us, and we said ‘Hell, no,’” he said. “9-1-1 is traditionally a call for help.”

Terry Richards is senior reporter at The Valdosta Daily Times.