Honoring the six D.C. Public School victims who were killed on 9/11: ‘They will always be remembered’

On Thursday, September 11, 2001, three students and three teachers from Washington, D.C. were among the nearly 3,000 who died that day.

It’s been 24 years since two planes struck the Twin Towers in New York City, another hit the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a fourth crashed before it could reach its target after it was taken over by the passengers on Thursday, September 11, 2001, forever changing the nation. 

Of the nearly 3,000 individuals who died that day, six of them, including three children, were on their way from Washington, D.C. to a National Geographic conference in California when their plane, flight 77, was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon. 

The six on board from DC public schools included Leckie Elementary School teacher Hilda Taylor and 11-year-old student Bernard Brown, Bertie Backus Middle School teacher Sara Clark and 11-year-old student Asia Cottom, and Ketcham Elementary School teacher James Debeuneure and 11-year-old student Rodney Dickens. 

“It seems like they never left us,” retired Leckie Elementary School teacher Estella Cleveland told ABC 7 News while speaking to the outlet around the 20th anniversary of the attack. “They’re still here with us. That’s the way I feel about it. They will always be remembered in my heart.”

The three students had been selected for a trip to study ecology in California alongside National Geographic Society researchers, per Fox 5 DC. On that tragic day, at 9:37 a.m., Flight 77 was hijacked less than 35 minutes in the air before it hit the Pentagon, killing everyone on board and 125 Pentagon employees. 

In a memorial post on Instagram, DC Public Schools shared more about who all six were and the lives they led before their untimely deaths. 

According to them Asia had been a new student Backus Middle School while her father worked as a coach classroom aid. Bernard, known for keeping his teachers a Leckie Elementary School on their toes, had been showing real progress and was recommended for the trip partly as a reward. Rodney was an honor roll student Ketcham Elementary School, a role model for his siblings, and a devout pro wrestling fan.   

Hilda, who hailed from Sierra Leone, was a veteran teacher at Leckie Elementary School, a mother, and a grandmother who had immigrated to the United States for a better life. DeBeuneure, a father of three, had returned to the classroom at Ketchum Elementary as a second career. Sarah Clark began teaching in DCPS in 1965, was a mother of two and engaged at the time.

In the years since the attack, the six individuals have been honored locally in various ways. At Leckie Elementary School, a banner emblazoned with all six names of the victims hangs near the front entrance. There’s also a memorial for Taylor and Brown made from stained glass. Meanwhile, Ketcham Elementary School created what they call the “9/11 room,” dedicated to Dickens and Debeuneure, which those who knew them, including Debeuneure’s daughter, use as a space for quiet reflection to this day. 

Jalin Debeuneure, the adoptive daughter of Debeuneure, told ABC7, that while she “sometimes” still had her “moments,”  she knows it’s okay to be sad when she thinks of her dad, who had been a single father who was her world. She, a mother now herself, has used hope along her healing journey. 

“Someone will see this and say, ‘Wow I feel exactly how she felt but I see how she is 20 years later, there’s hope for me,’” said Debeuneure. “And that is what I want for others. That there is hope.”