‘Definitely a day I will never forget’

[Jamie_B]

Dad made the DD news (and now my last name is revealed. lol)

http://www.daytondailynews.com/dayton-ohio-jobs/jobs-news/definitely-a-day-i-will-never-forget-1096809.html

[quote]Multiple jet engines create a great deal of noise — especially when they are passing low overhead. Ron Bowers, a civil service physician assistant with a specialty in orthopedics, normally spent Tuesdays working in the Rader Clinic in Washington, D.C.

This Tuesday was September 11, 2001.

Bowers and others had gathered in the patient waiting room where the television was showing the drama that was unfolding in New York.

“The waiting room was right next to the door so we stepped out, looked up and saw the belly of the plane flying over,” Bowers recalled. “I figured he was a little low and off course (heading into Washington National) since all planes had been ordered to land.”

After going back inside, the clinic was rocked by the blast as American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon, approximately a mile downhill from the clinic.

“We jumped outside to look and saw the big plume of black smoke in the air.” The medical personnel caught a ride in a van headed that way. “We were the first medical officers on the scene on the impact side of the Pentagon.”
Bowers said they set up triage points and ambulances began to deliver litters and supplies. “I went into the building on the left side of the impact point with a general — I don’t remember his name — and a member of the FBI and a member of the fire department. We could hear people screaming but the smoke was too thick to see. We screamed at them to come toward us and about eight people were able to make it out.

“The others either died from the flames or smoke inhalation or from the impact,” he said.
“It was definitely a day I will never forget.”

Bowers was an orderly at Christ Hospital in Cincinnati when he joined the Army and was sent to medic training. A few years later he was trained as an operating room tech and then became an instructor in anatomy and physiology for the Army.
Accepted into the Army’s Physician Assistant school, he later took a fellowship in orthopedics. “I wanted to do orthopedics because that would get me back into the operating room,” he said.

After several different posts, including one in Germany, he eventually landed at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, which serves the Rader Clinic. After 20 years on active duty, he retired and continued serving as a PA at Belvoir for another 10 years. “I loved every minute of it,” the Mt. Vernon, Ohio, native said.

Bowers then accepted a teaching position at Kettering College of Medical Arts, where he helps train the future generation of physician assistants.[/quote]