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.
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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.
Doug Powe: Welcome to Leading Ideas Talks, a podcast featuring thought leaders and innovative practitioners. I am Douglas Powe, the director of the Lewis Center and your host for this talk. Joining me is Chaplain Terry Bradfield. He’s a retired Army chaplain. Our focus for this podcast is leadership during times of disaster, like 9/11.
Terry, I am happy to be talking with you today. We of course know each other because you were at Wesley for a while after a career as a chaplain.
Terry Bradfield: Yes, I was. It was my dream job for 10 years there and it was good to work with you, Doug. I’m pleased that you thought of me for this podcast. I’m honored that you thought of me for this podcast. And my main thought and prayer for today is that whatever I have to say might be beneficial to those who are going to be listening to us. So, thanks for having me.
Doug Powe: It’s always good to talk to you. But today in particular, because this is a very challenging topic. And I know that for you, especially, that 9/11/2001 is a day that you would prefer not to think about consciously 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: Well as you said before, 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 going, was undergoing renovation at the time of the attack. The first wedge of the five wedges had just been completed. That happened to be the wedge that the Office of the Chief of Chaplains was located in. 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.
So, I was actually at that office building when the plane hit the Pentagon because 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 was … that part collapsed and a number of folks that I worked with were involved in that as casualties. So there, in my mind, there was a fortuitous portion of that, but also there’s been a portion that, well, regrets not being with my people. But yeah, that’s, so that’s what it was. But in the days after that, I spent most of the days on site doing recovery operations with the rest of the crew that was there, removing remains, and working with the first responders who were there.
Doug Powe: So, Terry, you know, as you’re sharing the story—and there’ve been other stories like this—just amazingly, that particular 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, and 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 how—you know—that tension for you, I have to imagine had to be extremely challenging.
Terry Bradfield: It was. And maybe, I mean, I have been chronologically challenged ever since that event. My memories around that, the first day and then the days after that, are so chaotic, confused, that I haven’t—I’ve never really been able to put things in a straight timeline that made sense. In fact, my initial recollections I had, I was interviewed I think in, it might’ve been late October, for a Washingtonian article. And I made some statements during that interview about my recollections of the very moment of the impact. And the chaplain historian who had taken the year to collect all of the reminiscences and try to put things into some sort of context for the chaplaincy pulled me aside, like I say, 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.” And what was amazing to me was when he did that, I recognized the inconsistency immediately. And it was the very moment after impact.
So, if you don’t mind, I’ll just let you know what that was to give you an idea how thought processes might work during that time. But like I say, I missed my shuttle bus, came back up. We were on the 12th floor of the office building that we had been relocated to. And we had gotten word of course, 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 was the vicinity of the Pentagon.
And it took maybe a couple of minutes for the news people to switch to DC coverage where they were showing that. And there were probably a dozen or more chaplains in the office at that time. And immediately, the chaplains grabbed their hats and started running for the door because chaplains run to danger. Military people just run to danger, that’s the first impulse. And 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. We were 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 back in front of me and said, “I’m going to stay here with the civilians until we can sort out what’s going on and I’ll catch up with you.”
I told everybody that the person that I had slapped in the back was my boss named Hugh. And it wasn’t. It was actually another chaplain named Al. And in the next sentence, I would say to somebody, “And then Hugh called me on his cell phone because he was in the Pentagon and 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. And that is to say to you that what I say here you have to take with a grain of salt because my memories are what I remember, and they’re—and they are probably couched an awful lot in the emotional turmoil that was going on at that time.
I can say that the events that I recount are going to be accurate. Whether I recount them accurately is going to be a different thing. But that’s, 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 there and 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 a number—we were one of the few numbers—that could be dialed and would receive an answer. And that word made it through. And it 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, but make contact with other people so that we could keep the communication channels going for a little while.
That … that little communication center that we set up transformed into the large communication center for family support. And for the next year, the chaplains were in the forefront of the family support network that the Department of Defense had set up then for all of those families who were looking for their loved ones during that time. So, just that, 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 those. Being ready for those.
Doug Powe: Yeah, it is amazing, and I appreciate sort of your vulnerability and honesty in sharing the story. I imagine for all of us that when we experience something traumatic that the way we remember it is not linear that things sort of pop in and out so that what you share is helpful just in terms of, for all of us, when we experience those type of things. And you talked about the families and when you started you talked about, of course, those who were actually at the Pentagon. I know that 9/11, there’s oftentimes we do events and memories for individuals, but I also wonder if that could be hard for the families, you know? And 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 sort of these horrific memories for you all?
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Terry Bradfield: Actually, I think the first thing I have to say is you can’t. Not if you’re gonna put that condition on it. There’s trauma, and there’s trauma in remembering. This just happened to be trauma, and 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. I can say, I mean, we’ve been experiencing all sorts of disasters: natural disasters with weather, wildfire, those sorts of things. I mean I just had, my wife and I celebrated our 40th anniversary this February and we did it with this 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 there.So, you experience trauma everywhere. And I think there might be, to get specifically to where you were going, 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, the first responders get to the scene because there’s a huge fire burning uncontrollably. It burns all day into the night through the night. It’s not until the next morning that the flames are actually gone. But the rubble is 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 just, it was just a matter of: “What can we do to help those who can be helped? What can we do to, just, 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. At first day, the second day, there’s no control. So, that’s the first thing you have to get used to. So, 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. 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 the 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 anxiousness 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. And 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. And then the days that go after that is where, it’s 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. And so, for the immediate time after that as a religious leader, what you try to do is separate yourself from the emotion of the loss and move to the reality of the ministry, for lack of a better way of saying that.
Because if there’s one thing that ministers are probably more accustomed to than non-ministers is dealing with grief and dealing with those who are grieving. And so you, you move into that mode and you start looking to care for the folks who are alive. And then the farther you get time wise from that, the more that the loss becomes real. The grief, probably to say, 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. And in the case of the Pentagon, this was a year-long process that was actually kind of structured because the decision was made to have the Pentagon rebuilt by the end of the first year. And everything was sort of aiming towards this hard stop at September 11th, 2002. We’re going to have, on that day, a memorial service where we honor everybody. Those who were lost, those who responded, 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. And 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 because of that. So, it was a plan for a positive outcome in the midst of a negative thing.
Doug Powe: Terry, I want to pivot and talk more about leading during a disaster. And you’ve alluded to this all already. Having gone through such a traumatic disaster, sort of what are important lessons for leaders to remember, particularly pastoral leaders, to remember. Because as you say, it could be weather related. 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—a 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 (something like that). The pastor is now in the midst of a larger community of victims, of responders, of political and social leaders, community leaders. And 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—of the setting. So, the first thing to remember is: this is not your pond. You’re not the big fish. And 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, basically. That’s the way it’s—that’s the way it’s going to be.
Now I remember a number of years ago, there was a popular book on second chair leadership. And there’s some lessons in that can be important for a setting like this, but even that book, I think, was talking more about within the context of pastoral leadership. Not being the senior—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. Like I said, 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 actually make a difference with your (lack of a better term again), 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 was, I had just gotten on site the same day that the Virginia Task Force One arrived on site. And 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, finding people within the collapsed buildings. A lot of times that’s Virginia Task Force One. They’re in 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), they went in and started shoring up the building to keep it—to make it stable so that we could do a thorough search of what remained of the structure.
At the same time, they came in, a mortuary team came in from Fort Lee, an Army mortuary team. 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 particular 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 like I say, they’re trainees—many of them at the end of their training—but still, this is their first encounter with any kind of casualty situation, real life casualty situation. And this was a mass casualty situation. And I get 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 get there, and I see 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 just basically yells out, “Chaplain, can we have a prayer?” And so, we gathered everybody up. They got quiet. And 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. When we broke huddle that look on their faces had changed from anxiety to resolve. And I knew at that moment that whatever I had done made a difference for them that right then and there. And 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 of 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. And 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 have to keep that in mind for ourselves because it’s really easy to get lost in the emotions.
It’s the reminder of what is sacred, what is of sacred worth in this moment. And 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 let’s keep the humanity in this whole thing. That’s one of the things that I remember from that. 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 have to discover what my role is at that point. And almost always the role is to remind people that we’re human and there is sacredness in that humanity.
Doug Powe: Terry, you know, 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 has sort of been—we have a Master of Divinity chaplains’ program, and we have a Doctor of Ministry chaplains’ program. And I’m wondering 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? You know, 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: Yeah. 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 I got to say, 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 … 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, so that’s the second thing: What is your role? You’re going to be a chaplain? Check your doctrine. You’re going—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, I go back to what I just said: 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 a dog that was with them, and we often call them 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. And the dog kept searching and found something in the rubble pile and started getting really excited. And then a person jumped up out of the rubble that the dog had found. And 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—to find people 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, what we would do, is 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.” And so, those dogs are looking for that spark of life, and when they find it, it sparks their life.
That’s something that, I think, 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. And so, I oftentimes just equate myself to a cadaver dog in these circumstances, that 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—your spending this time with us.
Terry Bradfield: I appreciate it, Doug. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was gonna be.
Doug Powe: I appreciate you saying that.
Terry Bradfield: Thank you.
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Related Resources
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Photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Alexander Kubitza, DOD.
