NC State coach Dave Doeren carried a personal 9/11 story into this week’s press conference, and it centered on a twist of fate that changed everything for his family.
On September 11, 2001, Doeren’s father, Bill, was in Boston on his 55th birthday and was scheduled to board one of the two flights that left Logan Airport and were hijacked into the World Trade Center. But the taxi meant to take him to the airport never arrived, and he missed the flight.
For hours, the family did not know whether he was safe.
Dave Doeren, then 29 and in his second season as a secondary coach at the University of Montana, was in a morning position meeting when program secretary Linda Cardinal came to the door with urgent news. His sister had called in a panic, and with cell service overloaded across the East Coast, nobody could get through to Bill.
“Of course, she thought he had crashed,” Dave said this week in his weekly press conference. “At that time, cell reception was nothing. You couldn’t get anyone on the phone.”
It took four or five hours before the family finally confirmed that Bill was alive. “Thank God, right, that he missed that flight,” Dave said.
“But I’ll never forget that day, because for four or five hours we thought we had lost my father in a plane crash. It was crazy.”
While Doeren and the Montana staff stood around a television watching the towers burn and then the second plane strike, the fear of those hours never left him. He said he has tried to explain that experience to his current NC State players, many of whom were not yet born.
“When you’re 18, 19, you’re like, yeah, it’s a good story. But for those of us that witnessed it, I mean, it was intense.”
Doeren shared the story as he talked about why NC State’s planned remembrance of 9/11 matters to him. The Wolfpack is set to mark the 25th anniversary tonight by wearing special black camo “Wolfpack Warriors” uniforms honoring those killed that day, first responders, and the military. The team also posted a look at the uniforms on Friday.
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