9/11: Piloting Flight 11: Was John the first to die?

By Mary Ellen Korienk
Special to the Chronicle
It was a day like no other for many Americans. This year, we mark the 10th anniversary of the attacks on America. Across the country and locally there are many ceremonies commemorating the past, dedicating new memorials and celebrating the living.

We were living in Oregon; it was about 6 a.m. when we heard the news from our daughter Kim in Florida about a plane going into one of the Twin Towers, an American Airlines Flight 11. Our thoughts went immediately to our former neighbors at Little Island Pond in Pelham, N.H. — Peggy and John Oganowski.

When we lived next door to them, she was a flight attendant; he was a pilot for American Airlines flying out of Boston. They had a beautiful little 2-year-old daughter named Laura, and they also were expecting their second child.

American Airlines is so big, I quickly dismissed that it could be either one of them. A day later on the news they were interviewing a relative of Flight 11 — the brother of Capt. John Oganowski! When the news came on, I was busy hemming my dress for our son’s upcoming wedding that was taking place Saturday in Chicago.

John was one of the nicest guys, good husband and father, a big guy. Pilots then were trained to go along with hijackers to try to save lives. The terrorists had barricaded the cockpit doors with the pilots inside; not even the flight attendants knew what was going on. No one would believe that something like this would ever happen! Peggy and John had three daughters. Laura was around 17 when her dad was killed.

Getting to the wedding

Now with the horrible, tragic news of what had taken place on 9/11, without planes flying we had to figure out how we were going to make our only son’s wedding in Chicago. My husband had located a rental car that we could drive one-way at a discounted rate. Our flight reservations had been with American Airlines, so I contacted them to see if it was possible to just use the second half of our ticket, asking for no refunds — just to use the return flight. We have to originate with the first leg of our reservations in order to use the second. No planes are flying, so how can we originate? Per the airlines, “you can buy new one-way tickets for around $1,100 apiece.”

My husband’s idea was to wait and see if we could still fly; if not, we would miss the wedding.

Needless to say, that was not how it was going to go. The three of us climbed into our car on Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. to make the 2,100-mile drive to get there by Saturday. We arrived in the Chicago area Friday around 5 p.m. With rush-hour traffic, it only took us two hours to get to our downtown hotel off Michigan Avenue. But we made it.

Saved by a hunting trip

Our nephew Michael is a pilot for United Airlines flying out of San Francisco. He was scheduled to be on Flight 97 on 9/11 — the one that went down in Pennsylvania. Thank God for him, about a month before he traded his flight to another pilot for a hunting trip.