On a flight into history

Retiring from the Air Force on Thursday, Thomas Stevens was a crewman on one of two presidential aircraft in Florida on Sept. 11, 2001.

By VANESSA DE LA TORRE
Published November 30, 2005

The first plane had already careened into the World Trade Center when Tech. Sgt. Thomas Stevens arrived at Jacksonville Naval Air Station.

He arrived at the air crew quarters in time to see the surreal wreckage on television that he and others had heard on the radio in the rental car.

Flames burst from the north tower after an airliner had barreled through glass and steel. At the time, there was no official word that the plane had been hijacked, so the cause was debatable.

But a second explosion, at 9:06 a.m. in the south tower, was unmistakable.

"We watched the second plane hit the tower. And we knew it was a terrorist attack," said Stevens, 39, an Air Force technical sergeant assigned to presidential aircraft.

On Thursday, the St. Petersburg native retires from the Air Force after a 20-year career that culminated in an assignment to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where Stevens was stationed as a maintenance technician aboard Air Force One.

For seven years he witnessed the comings and goings of two U.S. presidents, foreign dignitaries and first ladies. But Sept. 11, 2001, evokes a different breed of memory.

President Bush was in Sarasota that morning, reading to students in a second-grade classroom.

Stevens was one of four maintenance crew members traveling on the Air Force One backup aircraft, a C-20 Gulfstream jet, and was ready to leave Florida after a two-night stay.

After seeing the second plane, United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston, hit the second tower on TV, Stevens said he hurried to the hangar and began towing the Gulfstream.

"We knew we were going to get the call anyway, so me and some other guys anticipated, "Hey, let's get the heck out of here. Let's get this thing ready."'

But the crew was told to sit tight for 20 minutes, Stevens said. At 9:30 a.m., Bush addressed the nation from Emma Booker Elementary School.

About 15 minutes later, a third hijacked airliner, American Airlines Flight 77, crashed into the Pentagon. The presidential unit waited another 20 minutes before being told to "head west," Stevens said.

And that's all the information they were given. While much of the country watched the news unfold on television, those in the air gathered pockets of data from different radio transmissions.

"We weren't able to talk to our families and tell them where we were going or what we were doing," Stevens recalled.

Once they arrived at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, which looked like a war zone with security racing about the grounds, Stevens said, crew members stayed an hour as President Bush vowed in a national address to hunt down those responsible for the attacks.

Then they headed north to Nebraska, where President Bush stayed in an underground bunker at Offutt Air Force Base. They stayed for two hours.

When they finally returned to Washington in the evening, those aboard the Gulfstream noticed a plume of smoke rising from the Pentagon. At that point, the jet was only one of five aircraft allowed in U.S. airspace, Stevens said.

"That's when we knew it was real. It hit us like a ton of bricks."

Being in the position to witness history took nearly two decades.

Stevens enlisted in 1985, a few months after graduating from Lakewood High School, where he played trombone in the marching, jazz and concert bands. He started as an airman in basic training, then was transferred to Clark Air Base in the Philippines, where he attended various maintenance specialty schools before being promoted to the Andrews base in 1991.

Five years later, the aircraft mechanic was chosen for the plush presidential assignment. Duties included traveling to Honduras, where Stevens met the country's vice president while smoking a cigarette on the road hangar.

Stevens also invited family members to tour Air Force One. His father, who served in the Air Force as a communications instructor 50 years ago, confessed to lounging in the presidential desk.

"And my wife even tried his jacket on. President Clinton's jacket," said Jim Stevens, 72, of St. Petersburg.

But Thomas, the fourth of five kids, only talks about the experience when coerced, Jim Stevens said. "He's a very humble person. Some of the awards he was given, we never even knew he had them."

Now Thomas Stevens is looking beyond his military career, though such plans don't involve straying from the runway, he said.

Stevens recently earned a private pilot's license and is enrolled at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the nation's top aviation school.

"It feels good to retire, I'll tell you that."

[Last modified November 30, 2005, 05:17:42]