How can we lead in times of disaster? As we remember 9/11, Terry Bradfield, a retired Army chaplain who was assigned to the Pentagon on that fateful day, joins Lewis Center Director Doug Powe for a conversation about leading faithfully during a disaster. He reminds church leaders to check their doctrine at the door, focus on the sacredness of humanity, and bring a connection to the divine.
Watch the interview video, listen to the interview, or continue reading.
Doug Powe: I know that for you especially, 9/11/2001 is a day you would prefer not to think about for many reasons, but I am hopeful that you can just share with our listeners a little bit about that day and what it was like for you.
Terry Bradfield: I’m a retired Army chaplain. During 9/11, I was assigned to the Pentagon, so I was on site in the aftermath of that attack. Just to put it all up front so that there’s a little bit of context here, the Pentagon was undergoing renovation at the time of the attack. The first of five wedges had just been completed. The completed wedge happened to be where the Office of the Chief of Chaplains was located. So, we had been relocated to an office building down in Crystal City and had not yet been brought back into the Pentagon to occupy our new spaces.
I was at that office building when the plane hit the Pentagon. I had missed the shuttle bus and was late for a meeting that would have been taking place three floors above the impact area. And of course, that was the part that collapsed and several folks that I worked with were involved as casualties. So, there was a fortuitous portion of that in my mind, but also there’s been a portion that regrets not being with my people. But in the days after that, I spent most of the time on site doing recovery operations with the rest of the crew that was there, removing remains, and working with the first responders.
Doug Powe: So, as you’re sharing the story—and there’ve been other stories like this—just amazingly, that day, you missed a shuttle bus so that you were not on site with your people. The days following, I imagine, had to be extremely difficult. You talk about being a part of recovery. But particularly as a chaplain, it feels like you have the responsibility to really try and help others as they were doing that work also. So, that tension for you I imagine must have been extremely challenging.
Terry Bradfield: It was. I have been chronologically challenged ever since that event. My memories around that first day and then the days after that are so chaotic and confused that I’ve never been able to put things in a straight timeline that made sense. In fact, I was interviewed in late October for a Washingtonian article. [During that interview] I made some statements about my recollections of the very moment of the impact. The chaplain historian who had taken the year to collect all the reminiscences to try and put things into some sort of context for the chaplaincy pulled me aside around a year later and said, “Terry, one of your recollections that you’ve repeated in a number of places is incorrect. And I just want to help you correct that.” What was amazing to me was that when he did that, I recognized the inconsistency immediately. And it was [my recollection of]that very moment after impact.
So, I’ll just let you know what that moment was to give you an idea of how thought processes might work during that time. Like I say, I had missed my shuttle bus and came back up to the 12th floor of the office building. We had gotten word of the attacks in New York City and went into our chief’s office. The chief was on vacation at the time, so his office was empty, but he had a big screen TV in his office. So, we had turned on the TV. We were watching the news coverage of what was going on in New York when we saw an explosion and a lot of smoke coming up north of us and recognized immediately that it was in the vicinity of the Pentagon.
It took maybe a couple of minutes for the news people to switch to D.C. coverage where they were showing the Pentagon. There were probably a dozen or more chaplains in the office at the time, and immediately the chaplains grabbed their hats and started running for the door because chaplains run to danger. Military people run to danger. That’s the first impulse. They’re heading out the door, and I happened to be the back of the line of that troop, and I was heading with them. We were all going to run up the street to get to the Pentagon, when as we got to the door, I looked back and saw all the civilians looking at us with such puzzled looks on their faces. It caused me to pause for a moment and I smacked the guy on the in front of me on the back and said, “I’m going to stay here with the civilians until we can sort out what’s going on, and then I’ll catch up with you.”
I told everybody that the person that I had slapped in the back was my boss named Hugh, but it wasn’t. It was another chaplain named Al. In the next sentence, I would say to somebody, “And then Hugh called me on his cell phone because he was in the Pentagon to let me know that he was okay.” For a year, I would say that without recognizing any of the inconsistency in what I was saying, but it was in my memory just as real as could be. What I say here you have to take with a grain of salt because my memories are what I remember, and they are probably couched an awful lot in the emotional turmoil that was going on at that time.
The events that I recount are going to be accurate. Whether I recount them accurately is going to be a different thing. I also want to say that because of that story, and we’re going to talk about leadership in a time of disaster, there was a serendipitous event that took place. I’m not sure—this might be an inappropriate place to talk about serendipity, because that seems like such a nice, calm, pretty word for such an ugly event—but sometimes things happen in a serendipitous manner. And because they are in a serendipitous manner, good comes from them. Because I stayed back and the chaplain who worked most closely with me was behind me in that line trooping out the door, he decided to stay back with me. We ended up establishing a communications center for the Pentagon for about 12 hours that day because we were one of the few numbers that could be dialed and would receive an answer. And that word made it out through commands all around the world. We were taking phone calls from commands all around the world. Because of that, and because of us being in that office, we were able to answer some questions and contact other people so that we could keep the communication channels going for a little while.
That little communication center that we set up transformed into the large communication center for family support. For the next year, the chaplains were in the forefront of the family support network that the Department of Defense set up for families who were looking for their loved ones. So, that spur-of-the-moment tap on the shoulder resulted in a big thing that wasn’t intended, wasn’t anticipated, and it’s something for which a lot of people can take credit. But it’s one of those serendipitous things that can happen in the middle of a disaster, and you have to be open to and be ready for those.
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Doug Powe: It is amazing, and I appreciate your vulnerability and honesty in sharing the story. I imagine for all of us that when we experience something traumatic, the way we remember it is not linear: things sort of pop in and out. What you share is helpful for all of us when we experience those type of things. You talked about the families and those who were actually at the Pentagon. I know that for 9/11, we often do events and memories for individuals, but I also wonder if that could be hard for the families? Talking with you as we prepared for the podcast, for those who were there, it’s not an easy time. So how do we honor those who were a part of it and survived without bringing up these horrific memories?
Terry Bradfield: Actually, I think the first thing I have to say is: you can’t. Not if you’re going to put that condition on it. There’s trauma, and there’s trauma in remembering. This just happened to be trauma through disaster. You experience similar things without it being a disaster. The loss of any loved one is a traumatic experience, whether you think you’re prepared for it or not. We’ve been experiencing all sorts of disasters: natural disasters with weather, wildfire, those sorts of things. My wife and I just celebrated our 40th anniversary this February and we did it with a cruise to Hawaii, and we couldn’t go to Lanai because of the destruction of that area with the wildfire. But the people on that island, every place we stopped, that was the topic of conversation when we were talking to the inhabitants.
So, you experience trauma everywhere. And I think there might be a time-related element to the way we do our remembering, and the way we do our honoring, and the way we do our grieving. Immediately, in the aftermath of the attack, the first thing that happened were the first responders got to the scene because there was a huge fire burning uncontrollably. It burned all day into the night and through the night. It wasn’t until the next morning that the flames were gone, but the rubble was still superheated. So, the first responders are the first ones on site. Even all those chaplains that took off up the street to get to the Pentagon to help with rescue efforts were not allowed into the site at all. They ended up sitting on the bank by Arlington Cemetery for the whole day. And those who were evacuated from the Pentagon, they made their way to home or some other piece of shelter.
Everybody that first day was asking: “What can we do to help those who can be helped? What can we do to bring under control whatever this disaster is?” Now, that’s one of the first things that you experience in a disaster, is you lose complete control. Nobody is in control of this. And military people, anybody in a leadership position, lack of control is the worst thing you can experience. Everybody wants things under control. On the first day, the second day, there’s no control. So, that’s the first thing you must get used to. That’s the immediacy of it. Getting to the point in a disaster, if you’re able to do rescue operations, that’s one thing that gives you a great feeling. You’re doing something that you feel is good and worthwhile. It makes a profound difference in the lives of people.
In a situation like we had at the Pentagon, things moved from the rescue to the recovery very quickly because it was evident that any survivors of the tragedy were already outside the Pentagon. Anybody that was still inside, especially in the area of impact, you know at that point that there’s no rescue. At some point it might be recovery. That’s probably where you hit your first moment of grief because you have the confusion, you’ve got the anxiety around the lack of control, the chaos, you get the anger that it happened, and then you get the realization that we’ve got loss. There’s not a thing we’re going to be able to do about that, and so that’s where the grieving begins. It’s worse for the families who don’t know what’s going on. For those of us who are there, you can see what’s going on, so you have a very good idea. Then the days after that is where the emotions start flip flopping. Back, and forth, back, and forth. To high points: hoping, low points: realizing, and that undercurrent of grief the whole way through. So, for the immediate time after that, as a religious leader, you try to separate yourself from the emotion of the loss and move to the reality of the ministry.
If there’s one thing that ministers are probably more accustomed to than non-ministers, it’s dealing with grief and dealing with those who are grieving. So, you move into that mode and start looking to care for the folks who are alive. Then the farther you get time wise from that, the more that the loss becomes real. The grief becomes more bearable because you’ve rationalized it at that point. You’re able to move forward. And what you’re looking to do now is honor the memory of those who are lost. In the case of the Pentagon, this was a year-long process that was kind of structured because the decision was made to have the Pentagon rebuilt by the end of the first year. Everything was aiming toward a hard stop on September 11th, 2002. When we were going to have a memorial service where we honored those who were lost, those who responded, and those who reconstructed. That was a day of memory, a day of honoring, and a day of celebration all rolled into one.
So, you can see the waves going through that whole year. It was important that those time hacks be met for the people who worked at the Pentagon, for those of us who were involved with aiding in the recovery at the Pentagon, and for the families who experienced loss t. So, it was a plan for a positive outcome amid a negative thing.
Doug Powe: Terry, I want to pivot and talk more about leading during a disaster. Having gone through such a traumatic disaster, what are important lessons for leaders, particularly pastoral leaders, to remember? There are so many disasters now that are taking place in the country. So, what are important lessons to remember when you are leading during this time?
Terry Bradfield: One of the things I think is very important is to contextualize your position. The role of a pastor is usually the leader of a congregation. To manage a church, dealing with people in a setting that is known, familiar, and “owned” by the pastor, for lack of a better way of saying it. When a disaster occurs and a pastor or minister gets involved in whatever efforts are there to rescue, recover, move forward; that pastor is no longer the senior person in a faith community that is structured around a church building or a facility. The pastor is now in the midst of a larger community of victims, responders, political and social leaders, and community leaders. The pastor is not going to be the one who is in charge. Very rarely do I think a pastor would be in charge of the context or setting. So, the first thing to remember is: this is not your pond. You’re not the big fish. You’re going to be swimming around in a school of fish where you’re going to have moments where you can shine and moments where you’re going to reflect. That’s the way it’s going to be.
A number of years ago, there was a popular book on second chair leadership. And there’s some lessons that can be important for a setting like this, but even that book was talking more about within the context of pastoral leadership. Not being the team leader but being one of the associates within that team and the places where it’s appropriate for you to be the leader. I think there may be some parallels in that because pastors cannot be followers. That’s just not the nature of being pastors. So, what you have to do is contextualize your leadership. Where is it that you can make a difference with your skill set? What are you good at?
I have a couple of instances that I can recall from being on site at the Pentagon. I had just gotten on site the same day that the Virginia Task Force One arrived on site. If you know anything about Virginia Task Force One, if you’ve seen building collapses anywhere in the world, you oftentimes see a responding unit from the United States going out there and stabilizing the buildings and then doing the initial recovery operations, searching for, and finding people within the collapsed buildings. A lot of times that’s Virginia Task Force One [from]Fairfax County in Virginia. They were not the first responders, they weren’t the fire department and the police who showed up first at the Pentagon, they were the second responders who (after the fires were out and the building cooled off enough) went in and started shoring up the building to make it stable so that we could do a thorough search of what remained of the structure.
At the same time an Army mortuary team came in from Fort Lee. Now Fort Lee houses the training center for the Army Mortuary Affairs people. So, the soldiers who had just gone through basic training and now were at their advanced training for their job specialty, which was mortician, were at Fort Lee. Fort Lee deployed a company of these people up to the Pentagon to assist with the recovery of the remains of those who were in the structure. They get on site, and they’re trainees—many of them at the end of their training—but still, this is their first encounter with any kind of real-life casualty situation. And this was a mass casualty situation. I got assigned to them just because I happened to be the first chaplain who walked into the operations tent that morning. They sent me down there and I got there, and I saw a couple of officers—a bunch of non-commissioned officers—and a whole bunch of very young trainees looking confused, wondering what to do.
At some point, one of the NCOs (non-commissioned officer) just basically yells out, “Chaplain, can we have a prayer?” So, we gathered everybody up. They got quiet. Don’t ask me what I said in this prayer, I don’t have a clue. But whatever I said made a difference to them, and probably just because I said something to them, it made a difference. But what I realized at that moment—because they came together in a huddle with a lot of fear and anxiety on their faces—but when we broke huddle that look on their faces had changed from anxiety to resolve. I knew at that moment that whatever I had done made a difference for them right then and there. That said to me that one of the things a minister, a chaplain, can do in a situation is to not be directive, possibly be suggestive, in a way to move forward. But primarily to bring humanity into the context of all this vulgarity, all of this destruction, all of this tragedy. To remind people that we are not here to fix what’s broken structurally, we are here to take care of one another as basic human beings. To bring the humanity into this. A lot of times folks will say, “But you’re a chaplain, don’t you bring the spiritual?” I go, “Yes, but it’s the humanity. It’s the sacredness of humanity that we bring to this moment.” We must keep that in mind for ourselves because it’s really easy to get lost in the emotions.
It’s the reminder of what is of sacred worth in this moment. At that moment, it is that we have a job to do. We know that we are facing a lot of death in this place. We need to keep in mind that our role here is to honor those who have died and keep the humanity in this whole thing. That’s one of the things that I remember and it’s one of the lessons I’ve kept with me no matter where I am. So, I never feel like I don’t have a place in whatever context I’m in. It’s that I must discover what my role is at that point. Almost always the role is to remind people that we’re human and there is sacredness in that humanity.
Doug Powe: Terry, even though this is a difficult topic, I’ve enjoyed our conversation. We’ve got to get ready to bring it to a close, but I want to end with your legacy here at Wesley. We have a Master of Divinity chaplains’ program, and we have a Doctor of Ministry chaplains’ program. As we think about preparing people for leadership during disaster, whether you’re a chaplain or a pastor, what are some of the things that you should think about in that preparation that you may not really think about not actually having gone through that sort of situation? Sort of like preparing for ministry. You go and you get your MDiv and you’re excited and you think you’re ready, then you get to your first church, and you realize, “Uh oh!”
Terry Bradfield: One of the first things that pops into my mind is the phrase, “Check your doctrine at the entrance.” If you’re going to be a minister, a pastor, a chaplain in any nonsectarian event and most tragedies are nonsectarian: check your doctrine at the door. You can minister to anybody, no matter what their spiritual inclinations are, or no spiritual inclinations. You know who you are as a person of faith. As ministers, that’s what we do at the seminary. We try to train people into circumstances. So, we don’t train people in one, two, three methods of doing things. We say, “You’re going into the circumstance. What is it that you think you need to be in this role?” That’s the second thing: What is your role? You’re going to be a chaplain? Check your doctrine. You want to be an effective member of the team? What role do you have in this team? Be consistent with that. And I think the third thing is: remember that what you bring in any of these situations is a connection to the divine, to the sacred. You don’t have to express it in religious terms, but that’s what you bring.
When the Virginia Task Force folks were searching the rubble for the remains of people, they had cadaver dogs because they’re looking for bodies more than anything else. But I was watching an exercise one day where the handler set the dog loose to go through the rubble pile. The dog kept searching and found something in the rubble pile and started getting excited. Then, a person jumped up out of the rubble that the dog had found. I went up to the handler and I said, “What was that all about?” And he said, “Well, these dogs are like people. They have a role, which is to try to find the remains of folks who are trapped in the rubble, whether they are alive or dead. That’s what the role is.” He says, “If all that they do is encounter remains, dead people in the rubble, they tend to get depressed. And so, we’ll put somebody in the rubble, send them out to look for them, so that they can find a living being. And when they do, they just show happiness, and it refreshes them so they can go back and do their real thing.” Those dogs are looking for that spark of life, and when they find it, it sparks their life.
That’s something that religious professionals bring in times of disaster as well. We go, we are confronted with all the carnage, we’re confronted with all the loss, the confusion, the chaos, the death, and it’s easy to fall prey to an attitude of “All is lost. We’re never going to be well.” But the religious professional finds that spark of life in this thing, or that spark of the divine in this. So, I often equate myself to a cadaver dog in these circumstances. I am looking for that spark of life. So, check your doctrine, find your role within the context, look for that spark of the divine. Those are the things that I would most heartily recommend when we’re looking at being a leader in times of disaster.
Doug Powe: Well, Terry, thank you so much. This has been rich, and I appreciate, knowing the difficulty of the topic, that you spent this time with us.
Terry Bradfield: I appreciate it, Doug. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.
Doug Powe: I appreciate you saying that.
Terry Bradfield: Thank you.
Related Resources
- Doctor of Ministry in Military Chaplaincy from Wesley Theological Seminary — 100% tuition-covered scholarships for the cohort beginning in March 2025
- Master of Divinity with specialization in Military Chaplaincy from Wesley Theological Seminary
- Does Your Church Need a Disaster Ministry Plan? by Jamie D. Aten and David M. Boan
- 5 Characteristics of Effective Preaching in the Wake of Mass Trauma by Kimberly Wagner
- Preaching in the Wake of Mass Trauma featuring Kimberly Wagner — Watch the Leading Ideas Talks podcast video | Listen to the podcast audio version | Read the in-depth interview
- Rebuilding Communities with Hope featuring Glorymar Rivera Baez — Watch the Leading Ideas Talks podcast video | Listen to the podcast audio version | Read the in-depth interview
Photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Alexander Kubitza, DOD.
