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At the second annual 9/11 remembrance ceremony Thursday at Van Zandt VA Medical Center, emcee Rachel Prichard noted that the catastrophic event 24 years ago inspired many individuals to join the service.
The ceremony’s main speaker was one of them.
Air Force veteran Brandon Lape, now the hospital’s deputy police chief, was a junior at Berlin Brothersvalley High School in Somerset County, watching the TV that happened to be on in study hall, when the first plane crashed into the North Tower, seeming like an accident – followed by the second crashing into the South Tower, which is when “it got a whole lot more real,” Lape said before Thursday’s ceremony.
Lape lived about 15 minutes from where yet another hijacked plane – Flight 93 – went down in a field near Shanksville, when passengers fought back, after learning from cell phone conversations with loved ones that their plane was likely to become a weapon against some nationally significant site.
“That close to home when it happens, it’s kind of like, wow,” Lape said.
It wasn’t until later on Sept. 11 that the “full scope” of what happened became clear, and even then, being young, “I didn’t know what to think,” Lape said.
A clear impression remains, however, that for several days, there were no planes or contrails as evidence of planes in the sky, due to the prohibition against commercial flights in the aftermath of the attacks, he said.
It was a few months later that he decided to enter the service.
“It felt like the right thing to do, to honor the people that were killed,” he said.
“It wasn’t just me,” he added.
Several friends and others he knew from school also signed up.
They talked among themselves about which branch was better.
A number went into the Air Force, while others went into the Army, the Marines, the Navy and even the Coast Guard, he said.
Why the Air Force for him?
“I guess I was talked into it by a pretty good recruiter,” he said.
The convincing arguments included “the opportunities you have,” “the different places you can go,” “the impact you can make,” “the different career fields available,” and “also the educational perks,” Lape said.
It helped that friends, including those with whom still stays in touch, went into the Air Force with him.
He chose a security focus.
He had long favored law enforcement as a career, and might have ended up in that field even if 9/11 had never happened, he said.
He had intended to go for one enlistment, then get out, but ended up in the military for 11 years – 2003 to 2014.
He was deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom twice and jointly with the Army in Operation Enduring Freedom and jointly with the Navy in Operation Inca Gold, according to a program for the ceremony.
“I was deployed a lot,” he said. “(And) a lot of that was by design.”
He enjoyed his time, although he spent a period under fire in Kapisa Province, Afghanistan.
He declined to go into detail about that, due to the “sensitivity” of what was happening there.
“Nothing notable or compelling,” he said.
He has a master’s degree in homeland security. He and his wife of 12 years, Pamela, have two sons, Felix and Owen.
Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.