Retired brigadier general recalls leading Air National Guard in aftermath of 9/11

TAPPHANNOCK, Va. — Retired Brig. Gen. Dave Brubaker was waiting to find out if he got a new job at the Pentagon when the September 11 attacks happened.

Brubaker was in Tucson, Arizona, recovering from a motorcycle crash and watching the attacks unfold on television. Just days earlier, he had traveled to the Pentagon on crutches for an interview to become deputy director of the Air National Guard.

Less than 24 hours after the attacks, Brubaker got the call.

“They said, you need to come to Washington as quickly as you can,” Brubaker recalled.

With commercial flights grounded, it took several days for him to reach Washington.

When he arrived at Reagan National Airport, the Pentagon was still smoldering.

“There was still the smoke from the Pentagon and the smell of it burning because for many days and sometimes I think even up to a week or more. Fires would re-erupt from the rubble of the Pentagon and they'd have to go back in and put them out,” he said.

Brubaker was a newly promoted one-star general when he took the deputy director position. He soon became acting director of the Air National Guard after the director retired.

“I had no expectation when I applied for that job that I would be running the Air National Guard for six months after that attack on the United States,” Brubaker said.

He suddenly found himself helping oversee the Air Guard's response as the military prepared for what would become the Global War on Terrorism, leading more than 100,000 guardsmen during the largest mobilization since World War II.

“We went into a defensive mode, and whatever it took, people were going to do. I mean, it was heartwarming to be in such a bureaucratic building as a Pentagon, and and what bureaucrats remained had crawled under the woodwork because you didn't say no,” Brubaker said.

Air National Guard fighter units began flying combat air patrols over the United States in case of another attack. Brubaker said thousands of guardsmen volunteered or were mobilized in the months that followed.

He also remembered something beyond the military response: a country that seemed united by a common purpose.

“Everybody came together,” Brubaker said. “It was, ‘All right, figure out how to get it done,’” he said.

Brubaker served as acting director until June 2002 and retired from the Air Force in February 2005 after 34 years of military service.

I spoke to Brubaker at the Tapphannock-Essex County Airport, which is one location out of 49 states where he teaches young students through his nonprofit, STEM Flights.

Looking back 25 years later, Brubaker said one of the biggest lessons of September 11 is the power of Americans working together.

“It took a common enemy back then to make us realize, you know, we're all in this together,” he said.

Brubaker said he hopes Americans can remember that sense of unity without having to experience another tragedy to find it.

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