If you’re ~30+, you likely have a 9/11 story to tell. We received the following story from West Seattle banker Ryan Sales, including a mystery that someone who reads this might be able to solve:
On Remembering 9/11
After 25 YearsMorning Edition on NPR was my alarm clock for years starting in college at the University of Utah. Bob Edwards was most often the sound that pulled me from sleep.
I believe it was Seattle Mariners left fielder Charles Gipson who dove to catch the final out for the Mariners’ 104th win on Monday, September 10th, 2001. World Series fever had Seattle in an epidemic of Mojo fever.
I slept on that Mojo high.
Homer Simpson woke me up Tuesday morning around 6:05 pacific time. Homer was oddly talking about a “propjet” crashing into the North Tower, World Trade Center 1. As my brain’s cartoon Mojo haze gave way to weekday workday consciousness, I realized Homer was Bob Edwards, who was now talking about passenger jets and not prop-jets. His vocal tones were deepening into an uncharted baritone of serious.
The walk to work from my West Seattle, Admiral District apartment to the Junction felt like an episode from The Twilight Zone. No planes. No cars. No walkers or joggers.
This was pre-smartphones.
I arrived at work and began opening the West Seattle First Mutual branch where Pegasus Pizza is located today. My manager Dotty joined me next. Shock was our conversation. First Mutual had already sent out closure approval emails. But Dotty and I resisted the initial closure request. We put out coffee and dragged out a small lunchroom curved-screen TV.
We opened to no one. Quiet. Blue sky.
A couple people and a couple calls. After a half-hour our audience was five.
There was a tall, close to 6’2” gentleman who walked in slow and calm, eyes up, baseball cap down, who talked with Dotty for a few short minutes. It was a little over an hour after opening. About four people were still at the small TV with coffee. I was working hard to be busy with unsettled calm and shock augmenting my caffeine nerves. I had breathing and focus. He slowed as he approached the corner of my desk.
This is my first and only effort to recount with certain inaccuracy what he said to me that Tuesday. September 11th, 2001.
I’m proud you’re open today. I was the front line of our country on D-Day. When the ramps of our Higgins Boats opened at Omaha, I watched two good buddies shot up. I made it to beach, and we knew we were lucky. But we knew even more we were there for a responsibility. We had lots more work to do. Later they moved me to the Pacific. And I had to find beach under fire again. The responsibility for doing our job was our greater service. A service I believe we did well for our country.
Now it’s your generation. It’s you. Thankfully, and with blessing there’s no bullets at your desk. But I saw many closed doors in the Junction today but yours is open. You are the new front line. Customer Service. Now you serve with the greatest responsibility to serve our country. Thank you.
I thanked him back in a cloudy muffle of near tears.
If you lived in West Seattle in the late ’90s and early 2000s and frequented the Junction, you likely remember and know him. He was well known and well liked. He lived on Beach Drive. Who was he?
He is who I remember 9/11 for. No one who worked that Tuesday and served in response to it are forgotten. They are a remembered frontline that lives on in honor and kindness the way that World War II veteran lives with my memories. The responsibility and service he talked about with me is the responsibility and service we carry for all from 9/11.
I will be first at work today. I will open. I will remember with a full day of focus breathed with responsibility and service to the community of our country.
By Ryan J Sales
09/11/2026
