FORTVILLE — Countless flags will be on display today as the country commemorates the 20th anniversary of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. One outside a home in Fortville will list the names of the thousands of victims who died that day, including Army Lt. Gen. Timothy J. Maude highlighted in yellow.
The three-star general was the Army’s deputy chief of staff for personnel and the highest-ranking officer killed in the attack on the Pentagon. But to longtime Hancock County resident Carol Webb, he was her brother. Two decades later, she doesn’t dwell on his death, but rather remembers with pride everything she and others loved and appreciated about him while he was alive.
“I can’t believe it’s been 20 years,” she said.
She was opening her former business, Seven Seas, in Greenfield that Tuesday morning when she heard a radio report about an airplane crashing into the World Trade Center. Not long after that, she learned of the Pentagon attack through a phone call from her late mother, Dolores. Carol’s husband, Kenny, brought a television to the business, and at first she was relieved to see the Pentagon’s crash site wasn’t where her brother’s office was located. She went to her mother’s home in Cumberland to await word from Tim. But after learning his office had recently been moved to the part of the Pentagon the plane had hit and going days without hearing from him, they eventually accepted the grim reality.
“We did not know until after the fact that he had moved into the new office within the past month,” Carol said. “… We also thought at one time they might have already gotten him out of there and he was in a safe place. But, not to be.”
American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the west side of the Pentagon at 9:45 a.m., about an hour after the attack began in New York with the first hijacked plane smashing into the World Trade Center.
Fuel from the Boeing 757 ignited on impact. In the inferno, a section of the building collapsed. A total of 125 people died in the building. All 64 people aboard Flight 77 also perished.
All told that day, nearly 3,000 people died in New York, at the Pentagon and in a field in Pennylvania where another plane crashed.
Maude, 53, an Indianapolis native with over 30 years in the Army, was survived by his wife, Teri, and daughters, Karen and Kathy. A funeral was held in Arlington National Cemetery in October 2001, and his tombstone is inscribed with, “He took care of soldiers.”
“He was just an all-around good guy,” Carol said.
She hasn’t let her grief linger as each Sept. 11 comes and goes.
“I don’t dwell on it,” she said. “I really don’t. When it comes around, it comes around, and it’s just, OK, tomorrow will be here. … You can’t stop living. You still have your life that you have to go on with.”
She feels, however, that the attack on the Department of Defense headquarters is often overshadowed by those on the World Trade Center’s twin towers, although she understands why.
“I don’t think it’s right,” she said. “I know why the towers get more attention, because there’s so many lives lost. And of course, it’s the Pentagon, so they’re not going to share everything.”
As a young man, Maude went to sign up for the draft and ended up enlisting, later often joking that he “got in the wrong line,” Carol recalled with a laugh.
He kept that lightheartedness and subtlety throughout his career as he rose through the ranks and moved to different posts throughout the U.S. and world.
“You wouldn’t even know he was a lieutenant general,” Carol said.
Kenny agreed.
“He could sit here with us and talk and drink a beer and if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t know it,” he said. “He could talk on a lot of different levels. And if you’d ask him, ‘What do you do?’ He’d tell you, ‘I’m a soldier.’ That’d be about it.”
His accomplishments created a sense of pride throughout his family.
“You can’t help but be proud of him,” Carol said. “He did so many things that we didn’t even know about till after the fact. He was a very important person.”
Maude organized the Army’s “An Army of One” recruitment campaign. He advocated tirelessly for soldiers, including through testimonies before Congress. After his death, his family learned he had already had multiple meetings with officials on Sept. 11 regarding his efforts to improve death benefits for soldiers’ families.
“That’s what he was doing that day, still working for the soldiers,” Carol said.
Seven Seas became a victim of the Great Recession, prompting the Webbs to close the business and sell their home to become full-time RV-ers in 2009. For over a decade, they spent their winters traveling the southern and western U.S. in their motorhome before returning in the summers to Greenfield, where their children and grandchildren live. They settled in Fortville last year.
When they moved into their new home, one of the rooms came wallpapered in a patriotic red, white and blue — a fitting place to proudly hang a portrait of a uniformed Maude. It’s also where Carol keeps mementos of her brother, including a coin recognizing his promotion to lieutenant general, a program from his funeral, photographs, old newspapers, letters, gifts and a biography about him penned by a Soldier Support Institute historian.
“I kept everything,” she said.
The items have come from a wide array of sources over the years.
“There were people I would get stuff from I didn’t know,” Carol said. “Not being disrespectful or anything, it’s just everybody knew Tim. From Seoul, Korea, to Germany, to, oh, I can’t tell you everywhere.”
It was overwhelming to be reminded from so many just how appreciated he was, she added.
“I knew he had a very important position,” she said. “I knew he was deputy chief of staff of Army personnel. … He was just, my brother. I don’t know how to put it. He didn’t go on rank and flaunt that; we didn’t either. If we saw him in his uniform, it was when he was at work.”
Appreciation for Maude continued when the Army named a complex after him at Fort Knox, Kentucky, in 2010.
He’ll surely be on the Webbs’ minds as they head to Indianapolis today for a ceremony at the Indiana 9/11 Memorial, which includes an 800-pound piece of Indiana limestone that was part of the wall in the Pentagon that was damaged in the attack.
When thinking about what she remembers the most about her brother, it’s difficult for Carol to narrow it down to just one memory.
“From being kids, siblings, and then everybody getting married, and having families,” she said. “It’s just life. … He’s just a guy, my brother, who achieved a lot during his lifetime.”
