Earlham Echo

September 8, 2026

By Todd Weber

Almost everybody remembers exactly what they were doing on 9/11/2001. I worked for Seabury & Smith, an insurance division of Marsh & McLennan in West Des Moines. That morning I was helping to set up a video conference call involving upper management. Dozens of us were gathered in a large room together when news of the tragedy broke. There was a stunned silence as we watched the first news reports and live video. Then came grim concern. Our company’s home office was in the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Someone in the room who had been there many times saw the gaping hole in the burning building and said, “That’s right where Marsh is.”

Then, apprehension. Associates in our West Des Moines office often traveled to the World Trade Center—I had been there on the 94th floor a year before. Anxious conversations began: “Do we have anybody in New York right now?” There were a few people to account for. In a furious few minutes, calls were made and emails were sent.

Concern grew for Jim Cleere, an assistant vice president, who was scheduled for a meeting in the WTC that morning. Someone called his wife, Jean. She hadn’t talked to Jim, who was staying in the Mariott Hotel directly between the Towers, but she had two voicemails from him. In those haunting recordings, Jim reports the somber details of the events as they were happening. Jim’s first message was just after the North Tower was hit, and the second call came after the strike on the South Tower. Jim described the scene: “It almost looks like planes are attacking it, trying to run into it.” Jim and Jean spoke briefly later, and he assured her he was okay.

There was mass confusion, of course, that day at the site. After the first attack, a message was broadcast in the South Tower for everyone to say put. Some people took that advice and others didn’t. Once the second plane hit, there wasn’t much time for an evacuation.

Jim did not make it out. His remains were never identified; only a metal name tag was recovered. He was the only Iowa resident killed at the World Trade Center that day.

Every year around this time, I stop to reflect on the events of that day. It isn’t easy. It’s uncomfortable. It’s sad. But I think about Jim. I watch videos of the planes exploding into the buildings, people leaping from windows in desperation to avoid being burned alive, the Towers collapsing into a pillar of fire, smoke, and dust. I read the stories about the heroic efforts of the first responders, the scarred survivors, and the grim statistics.

On the 25^th anniversary of the tragedy, I realized that there is now an entire generation of young adults born after that day and many more that were too young at the time to really know what was happening. If that’s you, I’m sure you know something about 9/11, but I encourage you to learn even more. If anyone older has merely filed the event into history and forgotten its impact, I say—re-visit that day in your mind.      

I don’t want to forget it. I remember and reflect not only out of respect for those who were murdered, but also to stay vigilant. Enemies picked a fight with America on 9/11, and we haven’t won it yet.