O'Brien looks back on anniversary of attacks

The tragedy of 9/11 continues to resonate for Boston College coach Tom O'Brien, as it will for many Americans, in the observance today of the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

According to the coach, O'Brien's younger brother, Sean, now a retired Navy officer living in Washington, D.C., was posted at the Pentagon, ``sitting 100 yards away" from where the building was struck by a hijacked American Airlines flight that was commandeered from one of O'Brien's Naval Academy classmates, Captain Charles Burlingame.

``In fact, it'll probably be very emotional for him," O'Brien said of his brother. ``They assigned officers to take care of families of military that were killed. The family [he was assigned] was similar to his own -- a wife and two young daughters -- and he survived, but someone else didn't."

BC was coming off a 38-22 loss at Stanford Sept. 8, 2001, and had an open date the following week before a game at Navy Sept. 22 when the attacks occurred. ``That Tuesday we had a team meeting and we knew people who were involved in the situation and gave them the choice of whether they wanted to go practice or not," O'Brien said.

Doug Goodwin, a defensive tackle who is now a BC graduate assistant, waited anxiously for news of his father's heart transplant, which was scheduled for that morning in Manhattan. Goodwin's father underwent a successful operation after the donor organ was flown from Boston and landed at a New Jersey airport minutes before the FAA ordered a shutdown of US air space. It was transported across the George Washington Bridge minutes before it was closed by New York authorities.

When BC played Navy, ``The biggest shock was the Marines all around the stadium with their M-16s and the total security that was in place just to play a football game," O'Brien recalled of BC's 38-21 victory. The game coincided with O'Brien's 30th class reunion. ``I stayed after the game, which I had never done, because I hadn't been to a reunion for many years, and so it was pretty emotional for a lot of us."

MICHAEL VEGA