Grenier pilots to protect after surviving 9/11

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Madelyn Brown
  • 60th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs
TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. --  As Derek Grenier finished showering in the bathroom of his friend's 34th-floor apartment he felt the floor give and shudder under his feet. It was Sept. 11, 2001, and the coming events would change Derek's life.

After feeling the entire structure shake, Grenier continued getting ready for the day, unaware of the tragedy occurring just a block and a half away. He was in town visiting a friend. The day before, he flew a private plane from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. up the East coast to New York City, N.Y.

It wasn't until he happened to look out the window of the 375 South End Ave. apartment and saw the dismal scene of smoke billowing out of a gaping hole in the side of the World Trade Center North Tower that he realized something had gone terribly wrong.

Derek Grenier survived 9/11 and, exactly twelve years later, the Air Force pilot recalled the tragic day while participating in Travis Air Force Base's Freedom Launch.

"There was smoke pouring out like a smokestack," Grenier, a native of Hollywood, Fla., said. "Office papers were still floating around the outside of the building. I didn't know what had happened and I didn't know what to think."

Grenier's initial thought was to go out on the street and start walking toward the World Trade Center in order to find out what happened. He also began searching for a camera in nearby shops to document the tragedy unfolding in front of him.

"It was during my search for the camera that I heard a loud noise directly above me," he said. "It made me look up, and I saw the blue underside of the plane as it impacted the second tower."

Grenier would later realize that the blue he saw was the color scheme of the hijacked United Airlines plane.

"I don't even remember a loud noise," Grenier said. "It was the way the plane seemed to disintegrate into the side of the building that astonished me. Glass and metal fell everywhere."

As the flames in the South tower grew, Grenier described the eerie feeling of helplessness of the people on the ground.

"People are in trouble, and you want to help," he said. "I counted 37 people jump out of the tower before the building fell. You want to help, but there's nothing you can do at that moment."

When the first tower fell, Grenier was one of many New Yorkers attempting to outrun the rolling mountain of smoke.

"Once we were encompassed, I couldn't see and I couldn't breathe," he said. "I just kept running with my shirt over my mouth until I made it to the Hudson River."

At the bank of the Hudson River Grenier befriended a stranger, a stockbroker who worked next door to the towers who was also trying to outrun the smoke. They had both boarded the ferry to Staten Island enroute to the stockbroker's apartment when the second tower fell.

"My personal experience of 9/11 was that I had never felt so helpless in my life," he said. "It changed the course of direction of my life."

Three months prior to the September 11 attacks, Grenier had voluntarily disenrolled from the Air Force Academy, deciding the Air Force life was not for him.

After the attacks, Grenier wrote a letter to the Academy admissions office, explaining what he had experienced and requested readmission to the Academy. In a rare occurrence, they accepted him back into the program, he said.

"My way of rationalizing in my mind what had happened and how to deal with this feeling of helplessness was that I had to do something," Grenier said. "The first time I went to the Air Force Academy I was just there to fly planes. The second time, I was there to do something for the greater good and to help others."

Today, he is a 9th Air Refueling Squadron evaluator pilot on the KC-10 Extender and has deployed to Southwest Asia eleven times where he has flown 266 KC-10 combat sorties and accumulated 2,200 combat flying hours.

"I'm going to stay in the Air Force and keep working the mission as long as the Air Force allows me," he said.

In commemoration of 9/11 this year, Grenier piloted a KC-10 in the Travis Freedom Launch, a massive operation that consisted of 22 aircraft from the base. A C-17 Globemaster III initiated the launch with a take off at 8:46 a.m., the same time the first plane crashed into the North tower of the World Trade Center.

As far as paying tribute to 9/11, Grenier says it's something he'll never lose resolve in commemorating.

"I make it a point to call my friend in New York every year to talk about what happened," he said. "It's one of those things that is so terrible that it would be wrong to stop paying tribute. For the rest of my life I'll always be a part of something to remember 9/11."