09/11/2026
25 years later, we remember.
Where were you on Sept. 11, 2001? What do you remember about that day?
Share your memories in the comments on our page. Your story could be included in our 25th-anniversary remembrance in the Woodward News.
“Call of Duty,” 9/11 excerpt by Rachael Van Horn, published in the Fall 2010 issue of BoomTown Magazine, a Woodward News publication.
Call of Duty
By Rachael Van Horn
Smoke curled its way, like some supplicant to God, through what was left of one triangular section of the wall of the Twin Towers. It was thick and acrid and came from a fire that burned for months.
It is a fire that is still burning in Glenn Billings’ mind.
As the time draws near again, to look back and remember those who lost their lives in the attacks of September 11, 2001, newspapers and magazines throughout the United States will certainly call to mind that most horrible chain of events. Many will replay in their minds, perhaps for the first time this year, those images.
But for one such as Woodward funeral director and philanthropist Glenn Billings, who served in the shadow of that great fallen hall — the Twin Towers — the images are indelibly etched on their minds and roam freely, emerging at will, elicited by the simplest of catalysts — a sound, a scent, a certain way the light flickers on a candle.
“It’s always the same image that plays in my mind when I smell smoke,” Billings said in a recent interview with BoomTown Magazine. “It is that one, free standing enormity of that wall that remained there with the smoke behind it. I see that one every time — every time.”
Billings continues his volunteer work through an organization called the DMORT (Disaster Mortuary Operations Response Team). His duties differ, depending on the type of disaster to which he is responding.
“During 9-11, we worked with the New York City Medical Examiners Office,” Billings said. “We worked helping to identify those people at the Twin Towers.”
While Billings has served in many disasters, the days spent at Ground Zero were, perhaps, the most life altering. Each day, he said, etched on his mind another feeling, another moment, another scent, another sound that keeps the memory of that time alive in a most poignant way.
But perhaps what resonates with Billings the most, and perhaps what provides the answer to that question about why Glenn Billings seems to have so much empathy for those he helps grieve on a daily basis, was his goodbye to a former colleague who was killed in the Twin Towers.
“I still remember the day Ronnie Bucca was brought in and identified,” Billings said. “He was a firefighter who we had worked with during the Oklahoma City bombing — that’s how we knew him — and he had been killed there in the Twin Towers.”
Now, Billings said, when he hears the song Amazing Grace, and especially if it is played on the bagpipes, he goes there — to Ronnie’s memorial and the multiple memorials to those who lost their lives that day.
25 years later, we remember.
