Matthew “Whiz” Buckley said September 11, 2001, was supposed to be the start of a new career with American Airlines. Instead, the former Navy fighter pilot put on his Navy flight suit, raced to Naval Air Station Fort Worth and prepared for the possibility that he might be ordered to shoot down an airliner.
The memory lands hard now because the 25th anniversary of September 11 is approaching, and Buckley’s account captures how fast the country’s response shifted from routine to combat footing. The planes that hit the World Trade Centers that morning changed the air itself, and for him the day became something he could not leave behind.
Buckley was fresh off active duty and had just been hired by American Airlines after serving as a U.S. Navy Topgun fighter pilot. On what should have been his first day in a new cockpit, he said he did not put on the airline uniform waiting for him. He put on his military gear instead and drove to the base with one thought in mind: “I knew we were under attack and had to do something.”
That meant facing a choice few civilians ever have to imagine. Buckley said he went from preparing to fly an American airliner to possibly being ordered to shoot one down, a grim assignment that would have forced him to act against a plane carrying Americans. He called it a surreal moment, especially because the aircraft was flown by one of his best friends. He did not say he carried out a shootdown, and that absence matters; what stays with him is the fact that the order was possible at all, and that he was ready for it.
He said the skies eventually reopened, but the day did not end when the immediate danger passed. Buckley later said it changed the arc of his life, and that is plain in what he does now. He runs the No Fallen Heroes Foundation, which connects 9/11 survivors, veterans and first responders with treatment for PTSD, depression and other invisible wounds.
For Buckley, the most lasting part of 9/11 was not only the threat in the air but the work that followed on the ground. More than two decades later, he is still answering the same shock with a different mission: helping people who came home carrying what cannot be seen.
