Mike Tuohey was the ticket agent at Portland International Jetport on September 11, 2001.

can you guys just take me back to that day take you back to that day take me back to okay well that day i had to get up very early i i was the opening agent in other words i had to be there 4 30 in the morning to get all the computers up and running to you know unlock all the uh cash drawers and this that and the other thing to for the opening to start checking in passengers and i remember when i stepped outside that morning i went oh my god this is it was a perfect morning the sun hadn't come up yet because it was still very early but you could feel the air was crystal clear and and and and just cool there's a snap in here was wonderful and it turned out to be a spectacular day there wasn't a cloud in the sky and uh also because this was the first weekend after labor day that year you know that there were hardly any people there you know you for weeks and weeks and weeks you were getting a horde of people every morning but now that the main season was over you uh i walked in and there was only like believe it or not 4 30 there were six or eight people there and i went oh good this is good it's not a big match crowd so i got the shop open and uh i started checking in our passengers there are two other agents that joined me shortly after after that and the great thing was it wasn't a busy day so [Music] we had about six or seven flights between 6 a.m and like 7 something so usually there was a lot of people there was hardly any so we had three people working and we quickly worked through the passengers for all the flights the week prior to that you didn't have time to change your mind but this was nice that you could uh finally see the end of the line and then chat with each other but that was when i decided i was going to step outside i still smoked at the time and i decided i want to step outside and have a cigarette because there was a lull and as i'm leaving the ticket counter i see two fellas looking around like they don't know where they're going and i said what what airline are you guys on and he says usa where you're going they said boston oh it's after 5 30 the flight's leaving at six and i'm saying you guys get to come over here so i went back to the counter and uh i said oh good thing i'm checking them in i was working the first class counter and it's for high mileage people and people with first class tickets so i said oh good thing i'm here because they had like 2 400 tickets and you know you rarely see them and that and also another strange thing which was becoming strange at the time is they had paper tickets and you were seeing less and less paper tickets even even that time even at that time so i had him step up to the counter and i said okay let me see your tickets i looked at the tickets and okay they're going to la by way of boston and then i asked them the questions you know i don't know if you remember the questions you had asked me okay you'd have to each passenger had to be asked these questions has anyone unknown to you asked you to carry an item on board the aircraft for them and the answer to that would be no and have any of your bags been out of it out of your sight since you packed them and you had to say no to that and this was so that you know people wouldn't sneak stuff on the planes or stiff something in people's bags so um they both said no well atta said no and the other kid just went no you know i don't even think he understood what i was saying to be honest with you he just said no no so then i told her i said some well do you have any baggage to check and yeah they had a bag each so i started processing the baggage and when you do that you get the boarding cards so their bag tags come up and because it was so late you know for check-in i had to add another tag to their baggage tag to indicate that these bags are not to be loaded on the plane unless it's verified that these passengers are actually on board the plane because they showed up late so we got that done and then i asked them to see their ids now the younger guy his name was abdul aziz al-amari he was probably maybe mid to late 20s you know and uh when he held it i thought it's funny when he held his id up he held it up next to his face like this and he smiled like he was you know in the picture you're fine the other guy atta he had a miserable look on his face oh he was he had a miserable look on his face the whole time i i was dealing with him it seemed like he really didn't want to be here although i know he did now um but he just looked at you like sorry he never looked directly at you he was always looking at the side he's got a smirk on his face and he threw his driver's license up on the counter and uh okay fine i look at him and i'm saying okay he looks like a bottle of poison you know the faces got on and that's when i i i made a mental comment to myself and i said if this guy don't look like an arab terrorist nobody does and that thought actually went through my mind and then i gave my self a politically correct slap for even thinking that and just he's just a guy he's going to la on business you know i don't know so uh i tagged the bags sent them on the way check the ids set up their boarding cards now there was a new procedure a fairly new procedure in effect at that time the major airlines had starting they're starting to agree with uh giving what we call downline offline which means that the person is going to another city and catching another flight in other words they're not going to lay on u.s airways they're going on american and they're going out of boston not out of here so boston is down line and american is offline that new agreement was that passengers checking in here can get their boarding cards on their offline airline out of boston we would have them yeah i didn't like the policy because it eliminated a step in what i call the security procedure in other words they don't after me they don't see anybody for any kind of security reason you know because once you check in and you go you're inside the security perimeter and i'm saying that's not right they should have to check in with american i don't work for american so uh i set them up from here to boston with their boarding cards their bag tags their boarding envelopes and i started sending them on their way and i said okay you go up to gate six and you better hurry up and that's when atta looked at the envelopes then he looked at me and he says they told me one-step check-in and that was that new procedure they that they have going it's called one step checking in otherwise you can check in here and you don't have to check it anywhere else and i said oh god he knows he knows i have his boarding cards here or he thinks he knows and he wants me to give them to him i didn't want to give them to him so i said look um you're in first class out of america and you get down america you go right to the admirals club they'll take really good care of you you know you're in a first class cabin and he's just intensely looking at me he says they tell me one-step check-in and i'm going oh boy uh i don't want to get into confrontation with this guy he's a miserable looking person and so i said well let me try this i said mr ata your flight is leaving very shortly if you don't get upstairs real quick you're going to miss your flight altogether check in with american airlines in boston and i think that part about you're going to miss your flight altogether convince them to turn right around and get upstairs that was the end of my dealing with them at the ticket counter when did you when do you remember making the connection that those were the guys well a couple hours later um it's real quiet you know a couple hours later a gal from continental i know she was leaving she's getting off work and she says she says to me as she's walking by and says did you see what happened down in new york i said no and an airplane crashed into the world trade center and your mind doesn't register right away you don't think commercial airliner you think you know a small private plane even maybe even a small private jet you don't think about a 757 or anything you know it doesn't and i said what you know how many a lot of people get killed she says it was a commercial plane and i was just struck it's astounding that a commercial plane holding maybe 200 people or more struck the world trade center and she says yeah go look on tv oh so i went in the back room and as i'm watching the second plane struck it was flight 11 out of boston and it didn't register right away but a girl i was working with diane she says hey tui because because i told her about these two guys you know how about you know they were kind of i didn't want to get into it with them she said toei didn't you check two guys in on that flight and i stopped and i thought about it my initial reaction is geez i feel so bad for these guys and then it hit me that thought i had about arab terrorists and i went i was right there were arab terrorists and it just hit me like a ton of bricks well right away the guilt what did i miss how come i didn't see this you know and of course it hadn't been confirmed yet but you know when are you going to see two commercial plans flying into the world trade center accidentally so yeah that that's when i first realized that first i'm feeling bad for them that they died in such a horrible way and then i realized oh my gut reaction my gut feeling about these this guy was right you know it was a horrible feeling yeah we were talking before i were rolling about your time working with the airlines yeah why did you want why did you want to get into this work into the airline industry oh my god it was at the time now i went to work in 19 you're talking 1967. i had just gotten out of the military and um i i took a civil service exam for boston police department and of course i get a little extra score for being a veteran and i scored high on the test and i wanted to be a boston cop i grew up in boston so uh and i'm not the guy tells me he's mike we got we're going to put a a class together for you know police officers you know school and yeah you might want to take a temporary job there until you can uh until we call you i said okay fine so this temporary job a friend of mine her her father her father told me he said look go in there and fill out an application tell them i sent you okay good of course i got the job working for the airline in them days you didn't walk in and get a job no somebody had to recommend you and you didn't take this job just as a uh you know temporary thing it was a career it was you guaranteed in the airline industry back then good pay good benefits and a million laughs a day it was probably the most fun job you could have had back then as compared to what it's turned into you know but yeah that that was uh enforced i was still waiting for the call from the academy but i remember one time me and a friend went over to eastern airlines at the time stepped up to the counter 20 bucks round trip first class to puerto rico 20 we got 75 percent off our hotel at the best hotel in puerto rico at the time right you rented a car 75 off and then i come back and i'm saying ah i'm not going to be a cop i'm not going to walk the streets of boston with a gun on my hip and everybody hates you you know and as you started taking advantage of all the benefits of working in the online industry and it was it was just a fabulous thing you you you didn't walk in off the street and get a job there somebody had to recommend you and it was it was a sensational job you know sorry i'm just like taking it taking it on how do you how do you get through your days now whoa it's it's okay now it's uh do you still think about it well i tell you what i get of course i gotta think about it every now and then but um especially since everything you see happening in the news today started on that day all this stuff in afghanistan this is just a continuation of what happened on 9 11. if you think about it you can draw a direct line to it but uh at first i had quite a quite a lot of psychological psychological problems you know because i did uh ask myself that question about oh don't these guys look like arab terrorists and i let it go because i did a gut check and you know it wasn't true and i carried around a lot of guilt what did i miss how come i didn't stop them you know all of that and um at first another thing another thing about that day was my wife was a flight attendant for american airlines at that time it's it's still well u.s airways i'm sorry u.s always at that time and she was out of town and when you think about what happened that day i was i mean it was awful the incident itself but the repercussions from that incident the entire airline industry in the world but especially in the united states was shut down remember they told every airline wherever you are land at the nearest airport never mind going to where you're going that is astounding there were 13 planes up in bangor that you know way too big for bangor and i don't know how many planes were landing and all and these were all these transatlantic flights there were big 747s big big planes and that's an immediate repercussion of that and my wife is stuck out of town she said i'm you know she's flying is she okay because now they're thinking how many other planes are going to be attacked because you had the other plane in the pentagon and another in pennsylvania now the government's whoa we have to put a stop to this every plane find your closest airport and land do not if you're if you're just leaving turn back can you think of any other time just with your time in that career that they've had to do something like that oh that's the one and only that is the one and only time that ever happened that's uh uh they've had flights divert maybe for you know a flight here a flight there because some action on board the aircraft or like the uh the guy the shoe bomber guy and other incidents like that but never ever a total industry shut down for i think they shut it down four or five days there was not a plane flying it was shut down for so long the atmosphere actually cleared up it had an effect on on fog and smog and everything else like that it's amazing so then that's another thing it compounds my guilty conscience you know so uh i had to have somebody to talk to so i called my mother you know with the day that day i went home you know i went home from work that day and i had to go back because the fbi wanted to talk to me and i i called my mother and i i told her what happened and she says what's she says to me why are you crying and i told her what happened and she said what's that got to do with you now she's 90 years old and she says i'll be right up i says how you're going to get up there i'll get up there don't worry about it sure enough she got my youngest brother had him pick her up and she drove up to maine all right and uh did that bring you comfort having her here to have your mother wrap around a little tiny woman wrap around around you and say everything's okay it's not your fault it it didn't take all the guilt away but it's it's your mother she says it's okay it must be okay you know and that was uh it didn't take all the gray clouds away but it it certainly did she stayed with me for she stayed with me until my wife got home you know her and my brother so then i had to deal with that psychological i went to four psychologists over the years do you are you comfortable sharing oh no no no no they did they did what they could but you know the the first three they said look every they all told me the same you have very profound ptsd and they even admit i'm not prepared to deal with that you know you might have to see a psychiatrist about this ah shaking my head i don't want to see a psychiatrist so but um eventually i had i found one guy and he had a he helped me a lot a lot and he had this gadget you put it in your ears and sits on your chest and he does this retrogression of you know go back to the day and i could see it almost as clearly as clearly as can be and i can almost hear verbatim what was said you know and that helped that was very cathartic and i found out that talking about it was very very good you know it let it out there finally uh i got to the point where the only time i really give it a lot of thought is on an anniversary and the fact that so much and the fact that the government so knew so much about this incident it enraged me after everything's you know once i get interviewed by the fbi you know and uh now that now i'm going to have to testify before the 911 commission and the news stories are coming out that on august 6th right a full month before this incident at the what they call a presidential pdb presidential daily briefing it was brought up that there were arabic gentlemen a lot of arabic gentlemen in and around the world trade centers taking pictures and you know it just seemed like there was a lot of there was a lot of chatter on all of the arabic uh networks about allah is going to be taking revenge you know you'll soon see what allah will bring upon the infidels right and then another thing was they were report and the reports of arabic men out in arizona taking flying lessons but they weren't too keen on landing they just wanted to learn how to fly the plane and i'm saying if that doesn't ring every alarm in your you know every alarm should go off when you hear that and nothing was done there should have been they should have allowed told the airlines that they were strange arabic man we used to get briefings every day right and do not fly lists and this that and the other thing and if they had told us well remember they had level one level two level three i think just on that briefing they should have brought us up to level three level four was you know hair on fire but level three so you know you get some arabic guys want to know how to fly planes they don't care about landing they're just learning i don't know how to fly them can you explain the levels one two three can you explain that to me well if i can go back uh level one was just normal things are preceded they have no um advisories of any uh crazy stuff going on uh from here they're aware they have no particular individuals that they're looking for although that's not true um and that's going routine level two it's it's slightly enhanced uh you might be on a look you know you have to be on the lookout for somebody who's got a one-way ticket paid for with cash or they may be advised you know they may have gotten a word that there's a group out there who plan to do this or that or the other thing level three was you you pay close scrutiny to who the people are that you're talking with you know who you're dealing with make sure their ideas are correct make sure the tickets are not one-way cash tickets that were purchased just recently you know and even on the tickets they handed me i looked at the tickets and i saw that they were first class tickets paid for with a credit card but that was three weeks prior to this so there's no suspicion on them tickets at all you know um and level four was uh you give close group you open people's bags it's when you're starting to open people's bags and dumping out the content if there's a thing comes up on the computer there's computers did all the cross-referencing you know and if a computer says dump the bag you took it you took the bag over to uh a security place that was set up years ago they had security that back then even and you dumped the bag and you went through everybody's bag then they packed it you know back to work but that was level four and that uh you didn't see a lot of level four you know because it slowed everything way down you know and of course the industry has itself worked on everything is on timing you know get them checked in get a check max check load unload the planes fuel it you know cater it get the people on board let's go you know but once you had to go to level four it all depends on how many bags you had uh dumped and then of course when the people went up to security they were given extra screening when they were going through security also you know so their bags got thoroughly checked and then they got thoroughly checked upstairs that's when they had to start when they started you know take your shoes off take your belt off stuff like that that was after that was after the well that was that was uh at that time but not everybody had it it was only the people who got flagged for security by your computer downstairs you know now that could have happened to atta and the other guy on larry but it didn't but if i had if he had actually hesitated when he asked that second time for boarding cut there was a key i could have hit and that would have set him up to basically he would have missed the flight because then they would have had to dump their bags and they would they never would have made it if they had to search their bags so uh yeah i wanna tell you i like dealing with it pretty pretty well now um yeah like i said it's it's it's in the past i wish people would think of this not just as a 20-year anniversary people are getting so laxed now it's uh it's not good i was going to ask you about kind of your feelings on how things have changed well the thing that i have seen is we have become a nation of entitled people you know uh you know you're stepping on my first amendment rights huh no no oh yeah i got the right to carry a gun and i got you know i got the right to do this i got to write you through that you know wait a minute you're talking about now not just in you see all the stuff going on board on aircraft now fist fights and you know i don't want to wear a mask and what do you mean oh it's my right not to wear a mask well it says the airline says you've got to wear a mask or not right you can't you know when it said you can't smoke and you didn't smoke did you some people tried but you know but uh there's a lot of people out there who feel that they're entitled to certain liberties that other people aren't entitled to be and they're getting a little lacks on not the industry itself but just think about it there were people there several hundred times a year they find people with guns now how stupid do you have to be to carry a gun on board try to carry a gun on board an aircraft you know and uh people are i think are getting a little lacks on their security and don't think that these guys uh these i don't know you call them the taliban you call them al-qaeda they watch everything that's being done over here to see what you can get away with and i think that they rehearsed that hijacking back then all the procedures so they knew all the procedures that's how he knew i had his boarding cards they had rehearsed it probably flying here and there and everywhere else until they know okay this is what we can expect when we go here and there you know okay i think the reason that they all split up was they didn't want a whole bunch of arabic guys walking down down the hallway at the same time would bring attention to them so you had some check in in boston you had some checking in portland the flight of boston you know and then they didn't hang around with each other in the boating area you know uh they don't want to attract any attention because they know american people now who think every arab every arab is a hijack you know and if you see eight of them all together hey who are all these guys you know but uh you know i just hope people slapping up i don't know if they did it's not that i don't i'm of course i don't think the government's doing anything to take away anything from me you know hey they took away my freedom when they drafted me they sent me off to war see i said well it's an obligation i have you know i didn't say oh you take my you know they when they were sticking how's this when i stuck my arm out and they punctured me with i think 14 shots when i got drafted right were they taking away my first amendment rights not to have shots or something you know people complain about things like now that i just don't understand them i don't you know maybe we should have more polio more scarlet fever you know if we had more of them around and people were actually seeing people die of these diseases they'd say oh maybe vaccine is good you know but it's it's a change it's a big change from 2001 to the generations that have come since since then i i don't know who instilled in them these ideas that uh you know you can do anything you want and i think it's going to get us in trouble one of these days to bring you back to that day again yeah what did it feel like like did the did the room change did did anything i know you said your gut kind of went off yeah but how did how did everybody that you were working with what was the response in there from everything oh everybody was just slackjawed it was just what slackjawed you know uh the jaw dropped you know slack jaw because you're watching to watch on the screen what you were seeing i don't think your mind is not ready to wrap itself around that you can't comprehend that ever in a million years and what got to me the most is when i went home um i turned the tv on of course and i'm watching this you know the smoke billowing everywhere the the whole island of everything just covered in smoke and dust and there's no way out you have to take a choice do you you you're wrestling with your soul do i jump and get it over quickly or do i burn to death and the ones that had to jump you know they're wrestling with their conscience just to and that just i lost it there it's it's it's just overcoming overwhelming to think that a person would have to make that kind of choice with their own life it was a horror show i can't imagine oh watching it was just harvard already and i'm saying and then they showed some then then of course you see the film of the guy halfway down there going head first and going oh unbelievable unbelievable anymore when september 11th comes around every year what does it bring up for you what does it bring out for me actually um what does it make you feel i well one thing i do feel is good because there hasn't been another situation like that you know i'm saying all this stuff is good that the you know they've got the security in place even though people don't like it and they get a little taciturn about it but on on the level of me thinking i think about it of course i think but i can remember recently within the last few i remember i woke up when i didn't even realize he didn't think it was september i was camping somewhere you know and uh somebody else brought it up to me he said hey it's 9 11 you know it's 9 11 i said i did not until you told me you know so it's it's uh it's one of those things that you know i've dealt with it you know i play by the rules and my head is clear i it took me a while i wasn't responsible it's not my fault and another good thing is uh you see uh i don't know if you've ever googled your name but back well you know back i'd google my name and i'd see a hundred and thousand responses at one time a hundred thousand and yeah in a newspaper in bombay in a newspaper you know your name you know the the local news the bombay news the people who are critical of uh what i did that morning uh you know a lot of stuff but now you hardly ever you know i can google my name and i haven't done it in so long i don't even know how many references there are to it you know which means it's good people forget about it well not that they forget about it but to forget me anyway you know do you want them to forget you well they can't now i'm immortal as long as there's the united states i have found out which i didn't even realize uh when i when cnn called me in 2004 because they call me says it's just my toy i said yeah i said that she says are you the guy who was working above at 9 11. yeah that's me she says um how come nobody's ever heard of you i said have you ever given a tv interview or and i says no he says how is that i said well i told the fbi don't mention my name if they could keep it out and i guess they must have kept it out because it was three years later nobody ever contacted me and then they asked me if they could do something you know i did everything with paula zahn at that time and um they told me do you know that your name is the first name mentioned in the 9 11 commission report and i'm sorry i didn't know that i don't have a copy of that and she said yeah that goes in the honda that goes in the library of congress for all time it's all swell i'm immortal now yeah it's almost like you need a sense of humor you have to have a sense of you know well this is another thing that's going wrong here the country has lost its sense of humor come on get a laugh at something folks you know some things are maybe a little this way a little that way you know but it's still funny you know do you think laughter's gotten you through a lot of things well i think you know what's gotten me to a lot of this uh my wife and i have now been married 23 years boys have been good you know i've had a somebody who knew me before and now knows me afterwards all of these years i've had uh well i've had true friends now these are friends that not you didn't meet him six months ago a year ago and i think i've had friends that i've had for 60 plus years right it's still like this you know we still see each other some irregularly you don't have to be with each other every day you might call maybe a week later you'll call you might not see them again till the winter but the thing is it's it's your friends and the sad thing is i lost my best best friend last july not not last july the july before him and i have been like joined at the hip for 64 years and uh so that was a big big loss and i got i still have some left but these are guys from boston that i grew up with we've known each other since we're 10 11 12 years old we steep we still stay in semi-regular contact you know we know every child and grandchild and [Music] you know we go to a lot of weddings unfortunately we've got a lot of funerals more funerals than weddings these days you know which is sad i find myself now you know years ago when i was young you know you sit at a table and you'd notice the old the old people over there at the table now i'm at that table you know i'm at the old guys table you know but uh the good thing is is good friends you know and you know the fact that you know i don't dwell on it i can't dwell on it if you dwell on it you're crazy you know and a good act of life i've had a good active life up till now you know getting 75 though you slow down you know somewhat do you have anything else from that day that sticks out to you or well let me see yeah you want to share with people who are okay okay we coming to check and we covered they're profounded profound other but i had to go back to the airport once i went home and i had to go back to the airport because i never gave it a thought well mike you know the fbi wants to talk to you uh well i said geez why didn't i i should have known that why did i go home i should have known the fbi was going to get called in on this but uh i understood i'm saying okay i can understand that but i i found they had a at my check-in point there was a camera right above me and i said you know what i was right below this camera you should be able to hear and see everything i said that we would said there he said okay good i found oh that camera wasn't working uh so now i had a actually i went back at like one and i was there till like eight o'clock being interviewed by the fbi and uh um i had to go over the uh checkpoint the the video the checkpoint and pick them out as they were coming through and the strange thing about that is when they were in front of me they had on my ties and jackets right when they went through the checkpoint they had on sports shirts so somewhere between the counter and a security point they took their jackets and ties off i don't know why why would they do that i don't know there's no footage that shows it now is there footage that shows that it shows them going through security with sports shirts on but they had jackets and ties on in front of me right when that video is not there you said oh no there's no video there you know so between i mean i can see how they could easily do it if they did it as they were walking and they were stuffing them into uh their carry-on bags okay but people ask me why and i i don't know maybe they wanted somebody to be confused when they looked at their video and say and i even said that to them i said look i'll tell you what these guys had on jackets and ties at the counter but that's them in the sports shirts right there one behind the other you know so i don't know maybe it was just to obfuscate things you know make a little less clear you know my image of them in front of me with the jackets and ties that image of them going through security which has sports shirts on you know actually not sports dress shirts they would red shirts yeah but uh outside of that no it's just uh that's about all i can think of that we covered uh i'm a happy man today and i don't i don't dwell on it and like i said that's really good oh i just lead the good life here and you know i was i'm concerned i'm living life here you know because i came from housing projects in boston to this you know worked all the way do you guys have questions i'm curious about your first day back at work what's that again oh my first day back at work yeah that was um well initially i went back to work the next day i showed up for work the next day and of course you have no flights no planes no this know that but you still had people showing up because now their flights were cancelled and they need to be re-accommodated and the bad thing was you don't know how long the industry is going to be shut down you know the government didn't give you any idea when they're going to reopen the skies so i uh people tend to were getting angry you know actually i could i could get a bit of a temper too i could get my irish up pretty easily and uh not easily but and i'm starting to say people are just annoying me now and i'm thinking about what i had gone through the day prior and i just tell my boss i have to get out of here i said i can't i said i want to lose it with these people i said they don't seem to understand that there isn't much that i can do for them right now and he told me she said take a few days off so i did i i i was out for three days you know and i felt like a whole new man when i came back to really i felt like a new person when i come back i just get all of that negativity out of myself you know and by that time they were starting to open up the the airspace you could you could actually deal with people and check them in and re-accommodate them and take care of them you know you know so no i was just thinking there was a time when i remember the airport being closed but it was a specific airport it was boston it was not the whole system during the blizzard of 78 new england was closed you know i don't know if you're old enough to remember the blizzard of 78. i know the eyes are of 98 but that was here i still yeah i was here the ice storm and now yeah yeah didn't lose power you know they're talking of you know how you how's this when this still was a little house 1991 well i only been in here about a month when bob hurricane bob hit you only been here how long 30 years but bob we hit 30 years ago and i was in this house i was dating this gal and i said look let's go to blockbuster no more blockbusters rent a movie and settle down you know cook up some food maybe have pizza burgers something for the hurricane well while we were gone i guess the police come down and they evacuated it was mandatory evacuation for the whole road and uh we were unconscious we come back got the food ready sat down plopped in a video cassette there and the whole hurricane we the electricities wavered but we never lost it but then i found out the neighbors says oh you were home he says yes geez the cops came made us leave gosh my cameras are dropping like flies right now howdy it's okay it's okay am i talking too much [Laughter] this is great i got a lot of good stories actually man um i just want to make sure that you feel like you've said everything you want to say yeah basically i um 20 years is a lot what's that 20 years it's a long time and it actually is it puts more distance between you know what i've been through and and and today but like i said i i i get a lot of counseling i had a lot of at a good ma i had good friends and i've had an exciting a pretty i would say exciting life in the last 20 years you know [Music] no regrets you know and i just hope nobody would ever have to go through what we meant to and i mean the collective we as a nation would ever have to go through that again

Channel: NEWS CENTER Maine

Views: 260,391

Keywords: 9/11 recording from plane, 9/11 tribute, maine 9/11, portland maine 9/11, 9/11 portland jetport, Mike Tuohey, mike tuohey, michael tuohey 9/11, mike tuohey maine

Id: Kq5sOxPo25w

Length: 53min 16sec (3196 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 11 2021