A former Iowan plans to attend a ceremony at the Pentagon today to remember those killed 25 years ago in the September 11th attacks.
Sioux City native John Grote was in his office was about 150 yards from where a hijacked plane slammed into the Pentagon. He received the Soldier’s Medal for his rescue efforts and a Purple Heart for injuries suffered by jet fuel burns. “Everybody always asks me, like, why did you do it? My thought has always been, well, I would hope to God that if I was the one stuck in there, somebody else would be trying to dig me out, and I always felt like, you know, I wasn’t doing anything special. I just did what I would hope somebody would have done for me,” Grote says.
Grote says there are times when the aftermath of the attack still lingers with him. “My regret there, and my survivor’s guilt there, is that we could still hear people screaming that we absolutely could not get to,” he says.
A trial date has been set in 2028 for the four men who have spent years at Guantanamo Bay for their alleged roles in the 9/11 attacks. Grote has been named as a prosecution witness and has traveled to Cuba many times for legal proceedings. “My heart of hearts knows that they’re eventually going to get through this, sentence these guys hopefully to death like they’re on trial for, but I look at it and say 25 years later, really it’s just incredible to me that it’s taken this long,” Grote says.
Grote retired from the military in 2015 and now lives in Wyoming. Grote says 9/11 also inspired his two sons to join the military. They were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan to fight the Global War on Terror.
(By Sheila Brummer, Iowa Public Radio)