25 years after the terrorist attacks, Chicago-based United Airlines added to a memorial at its Support Center in Arlington Heights.
United dedicated a bench during a ceremony that included employees reading names of their 18 colleagues killed on Flights 93 and 175.
The solemn event also included an honor guard salute and bag pipes for passengers and crew members on American Airlines flights that were also hijacked, and the victims on the ground in New York and Washington DC.
Managing Director of Safety Compliance Laura Allen was working that morning and was activated to care for the family of CeeCee Lyles, a flight attendant on the plane that crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
Allen says she talked with CeeCee’s husband and “heard her voice remarkably calm in the final moments of her life, telling him she loved him, sending her love to her children and hoping she would see his face again.”
Arlington Heights Mayor Jim Tinaglia says all these years later, it still feels impossible to comprehend what happened.
Leaders from United talked of how the world changed that day and the dramatic security increases that followed - that many of us may not even give a second thought to.
The bench reads “In remembrance of 9/11 - United” and sits next to a commemorative plaque installed on a large rock in 2024.
