October 1, 2026
CARY, N.C. — Sept. 11, 2001, began as an ordinary workday for Richard Brunson.
That morning, he and some colleagues were gathered in a conference room on the fourth floor of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina’s office building in Cary for a training session related to an upcoming missions partnership in Malaysia.
That’s when they heard that a plane had struck the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.
They stopped the meeting and went downstairs to watch the news. Shortly after turning on the television, they saw the second plane hit the south tower.
“At that point, everybody knew this was not just an accident,” said Brunson, who has served as executive director of N.C. Baptists on Mission, then known as N.C. Baptist Men, since 1992. “This was a planned attack.”
The workday changed in an instant. So did the work of N.C. Baptists on Mission.
As the day unfolded, Brunson and other leaders began preparing for a potential response by disaster relief volunteers. They didn’t know where they might go or what they might encounter. They only knew that after years of responding to hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters, volunteers might soon be needed in the aftermath of a disaster unlike any of them had ever seen or experienced.
On the evening of the attacks, a request came for a feeding team to assist at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., where another plane had struck the building as part of the terrorist attacks on the United States.
Within hours, volunteers from North Carolina began preparing to go. In Boone, approximately 35 volunteers assembled late that night to travel to the Pentagon.
“I called one guy who was instrumental on our team,” said volunteer Dan Norman. “I called him at 10 p.m., and he was at the church at 10:45, ready to go. I was just amazed at people’s willingness to drop everything and go.”
The team traveled throughout the night and received a Virginia State Police escort as it neared the Pentagon. The convoy arrived at approximately 8:40 a.m. on Sept. 12, less than 24 hours after American Airlines Flight 77 struck the building, and set up in one of the Pentagon’s parking lots.
The memories of what the volunteers saw remain as vivid as if it happened yesterday.
“It’s daylight, and it’s a beautiful morning,” said Skip Greene, who was serving as Baptists on Mission’s statewide volunteer disaster relief coordinator at the time. “And you see smoke coming right out of the top of the building. I can shut my eyes right now and see that smoke on that morning as the sun was coming up over the Pentagon building.”
Norman remembers the same moment.
“To look at that building and see it still burning brought me to tears right on the spot,” he said. “It was like, ‘This is what we’ve seen on television. This is the real thing.’”
The volunteers arrived with one of Baptists on Mission’s mobile kitchens, capable of providing thousands of hot meals in a single day. For the volunteers, the mission and ministry were familiar, but the circumstances were not.
After any disaster, providing food is often one of the most immediate needs, offering nourishment, comfort, and a small sense of normalcy when life has been disrupted. But at the Pentagon, volunteers were serving meals to first responders and search-and-rescue teams looking for survivors at the site of a terrorist attack amid heightened security, uncertainty, and a nation in shock.
Volunteer Patricia Fox remembers praying for everyone who came through the serving line for a meal.
“They were sweaty, and they were hot, and they were covered in soot,” Fox said. “Just the sheer weariness, just the sadness that you would see on their faces. At that moment, all we could do was provide the sustenance that they needed and also say a silent prayer for each one of them as they came through the line.”
One encounter that underscored the importance of simply being present remains especially vivid for Greene.
A first responder came and sat beside the team’s truck, leaning against a tire and looking back toward the Pentagon.
“He didn’t make eye contact, but he just sat looking back toward the Pentagon,” said Greene, who recalled just sitting with the man for about 10 or 15 minutes. “He didn’t say a word, but finally he looked at me, and the tears came.”
The work of N.C. Baptists on Mission also drew the attention of President George W. Bush on Sept. 12 — the volunteers’ first day on the job at the Pentagon. Bush visited the Pentagon in the late afternoon the day after the attacks to survey the damage and thank the rescue, recovery, military and civilian workers. As he concluded some impromptu remarks to reporters at the site and was returning to his vehicle, Bush noticed the volunteers in their yellow shirts.
“He walked straight up to me,” recalled volunteer Charlie Fox, who introduced the group and explained that they were a feeding unit there to serve first responders.
Fox told Bush, “Mr. President, we’re praying for you. This is a difficult time.”
Bush didn’t say anything in response. Fox recalled it as a moment too heavy for words. But Bush did put a hand on Fox’s shoulder — hard enough, Fox said, that “he almost knocked me down.”
The feeding operation at the Pentagon lasted 30 days, with more than 60,000 meals provided, as volunteers rotated every five or six days. Yet the response did not end when volunteers came home from the Pentagon.
In the months following Sept. 11, N.C. Baptists on Mission also sent disaster response volunteers to New York City as needs there were changing. At Ground Zero and in neighborhoods surrounding the World Trade Center site, the immediate shock was giving way to the difficult work of recovery.
Dust and debris from the collapsed towers littered apartments near the World Trade Center, leaving homes coated in ash and soot. Volunteers from N.C. Baptists on Mission traveled to New York to help homeowners clean their apartments, some of which had windows blown out and overlooked Ground Zero into the space where the twin towers once stood.
During the response, the organization’s first disaster relief laundry unit went into service. More than two decades later, mobile laundry units remain a staple of Baptists on Mission’s disaster response efforts.
Working alongside Southern Baptist disaster response volunteers from other states, North Carolina deployed about 600 volunteers to Ground Zero over the course of six months.
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the work of the volunteers with N.C. Baptists on Mission did not go unnoticed. Their response drew recognition from elected officials, including U.S. Sens. Jesse Helms and Ted Kennedy, as well as senior military leaders, including N.C. native Gen. Hugh Shelton, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Today, much of that recognition endures in the form of plaques, certificates, photographs and newspaper accounts on display at Baptists on Mission’s offices in Cary. Collectively, the items preserve a record of the volunteers who went to the Pentagon and New York in the days and months after the attacks.
Among the most meaningful artifacts is a cross made from limestone debris recovered from the Pentagon after the attack. Only four such crosses were made for significant places and organizations connected to Sept. 11. One went to the Washington National Cathedral, another to the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and a third to St. Paul’s Chapel in New York City. The fourth was presented to Brunson on behalf of N.C. Baptists on Mission by the U.S. Army Chief of Chaplains for the ministry provided at the Pentagon.
Baptists on Mission’s Pentagon Cross is housed in a display case at the organization’s offices, alongside a section of a steel girder from the World Trade Center. Together, the artifacts provide a physical connection to the places where the attacks occurred and to the volunteers who served in their aftermath.
“These two pieces of history remind us of the places where people were hurting and Baptists on Mission were able to serve,” Brunson said. “They remind me of the volunteers who went, and the doors of ministry God opened for us in the midst of tragedy.”
Baptists on Mission’s response to Sept. 11 also highlighted needs that would shape the ministry in the years that followed.
“It was a defining moment for North Carolina Baptists on Mission disaster relief,” Brunson said. “We saw a much greater need for chaplains, so we started training and recruiting more. We also saw a need for laundry units — something we’d never even thought of providing.”
At the Pentagon, officials recognized that the uncertainty, trauma, and deliberate nature of the attack created a deeper need for counseling and prayer.
“We have so many more chaplains now than we did prior to 9/11,” Brunson said. “We saw a great spiritual need with the uncertainty of everything.”
In New York, a volunteer coordinator stationed at the Navy shipyards where displaced residents were being housed noticed a need for people to be able to wash their clothes. Upon her suggestion, volunteers built the organization’s first laundry unit soon after. Today, Baptists on Mission operates about 10 mobile laundry units that are used at disaster sites across the country.
The attacks also changed more than the ministry’s programs, Brunson said. Security around disaster response tightened too. Volunteers now carry photo identification, a practice that didn’t exist before 2001.
“The important thing is that during Sept. 11, the people who were affected saw that Christians really care about them,” Brunson said. “In the midst of a disaster, God gave us an opportunity to share His love with hurting people. Even during the uncertainty of an event like 9/11, we have volunteers who are willing to go and step out and be Jesus’ hands and feet.”
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This article originally appeared in the Biblical Recorder.
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