BATON ROUGE — Twenty-five years ago today, Mike Lamana went to work, just like any other day. He was confused when he arrived and saw co-workers glued to the televisions.
That’s how he found out about the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that had devastated the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.
The Pentagon is where his 31-year-old son Michael Scott “Scotty” Lamana worked.
“We got a call from some of his friends and they said that they couldn’t reach Scotty and he was unaccounted for,” Mike Lamana recalled. “He was in C ring, and the plane had gone into that section where he was, and they hadn’t heard from him, and he wasn’t answering his phone.”
Lamana and his wife Wanda left that afternoon to drive to Washington, picking up their daughter-in-law’s mother at her home in Kenner on the way. They drove all night to D.C. only to learn their son/son-in-law did not make it.
Scotty Lamana was one of the 125 people at the Pentagon who were killed when terrorists deliberately crashed a passenger jet into the epicenter of American military operations. The 59 people on the plane – crew, passengers and five terrorists – were also killed.
At the World Trade Center in New York, two planes crashed into the Twin Towers. More than 2,700 people died in the crashes and the resulting fires and building collapse. A fourth hijacked plane was believed to be headed toward the U.S. Capitol, but passengers aboard the flight learned of the other attacks and managed to thwart the terrorists’ efforts. The plane went down in a field in Shanksville, Penn., killing all 40 people on board.
At the time of the attack, Lamana was working in the Pentagon’s Navy Command Center. He was also pursuing an MBA at the University of Maryland, and was expected to graduate that December, according to the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial web site.
Lamana had graduated LSU in 1992 before joining the U.S. Navy. He was commissioned as an ensign at a ceremony the same day as his college graduation. He had made arrangements, his father said, to propose to girlfriend Lorna Duco onstage at the end of the ceremony as a surprise.
Mike Lamana said his one and only son had always been smart and inquisitive. He had two sisters. He liked to learn how things worked. He also valued community service, serving as a volunteer with the St. George Fire Department and a reserve sheriff’s deputy.
He had hoped to be a Navy pilot, but had problems with depth-perception. So he became a flight navigator, his father said, and an instructor. His role also included sometimes briefing the Joint Chief of Staff.
Mike Lamana was incredibly proud of his son’s work and his life, and he values military service. But losing his son has left the whole family missing a crucial piece.
“It’s just a void. It’s an empty chair. It’s not having a son, not having him around, missing his voice, missing his laughter, his kindness, his abilities, his intelligence. It’s not having him here. It’s just an empty space,” he said.
And time does not eliminate that void.
“The most horrible thing for a parent is to lose a child, and even if the child is six months, six years, or 31 years like Scotty was, the hardest thing that we have ever experienced is the loss of a child,” Lamana said. “And 9/11 to me means that I’ve lost that part of my life, and something that, a future that he could have had, something that we could have shared. It just means that he had so much potential, and he lost that potential. He lost his life, and we lost him.”
Lamana said he hopes that people will recognize the heroism of those who serve in the military.
“Know that starting from the first starting of this nation, men and women have died, sacrificed everything – not only their lives, but their whole families, their background, their monies, and everything – to make this country great and free,” he said.
He urged people to “honor and respect and remember the military who has, and and all the people who have, sacrificed, and died for, and just put on that uniform to sacrifice for this country to be where it is.”
Those sacrifices will always be needed, he said.
“What happened 25 years ago can happen again if the country, if the people in this country, are not vigilant,” Lamana said.
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