Photos for Headline Surfer / Below: Port Orange Mayor is shown. Above: Burnette remembers 9/11 as shown with pics on his Facebook page on the 19th anniversary.
By HENRY FREDERICK / Headline Surfer
PORT ORANGE, Fla. -- How many of us still remember where we were and what we were doing on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, either before, during or just after the terror of four hijacked planes by foreign terrorists caused the spilling of blood on American soil?
More than a decade before he was first elected mayor of Port Orange, Don Burnette saw that fateful day played out on television sets everywhere.
"I remember it well -- 19 years later, Burnette said on the solemn anniversary, more than a decade before he was first elected as mayor in 2016, and re-elected last month for another four years. Burnette summarized 9/11 in two words: "Awful Day!"
"I remember it well -- 19 years later, Burnette said on the solemn anniversary, more than a decade before he was first elected as mayor in 2016, and re-elected last month for another four years. Burnette summarized 9/11 in two words: "Awful Day!"
Awful Day, indeed. But as the situation of the first three planes was as hopeless as it could get for those terrified souls on board -- the first two planes hijacked of Boston's Logan International Airport each slammed into the Twin Towers and the third into the Pentagon, Burnette reflects mostly on the last hijacked plane that crashed in a vacant field in Shanksville, Pa., wewere short of targeting a structure such along the hijackers' trajectory of Washington DC.
"We should also never forget the courage of those on the fourth plane that forced it to crash in a field in Pennsylvania before it could hit its target -- likely the White House," Burnette said, adding the earlier "events in New York were memorialized live on film for all to see and remember."
Seeing is believing and the ultimate degradation for Americans like Burnette that fateful morning was seeing the burning Towers of the World Trade Center collapse -- one then the other in a cloud of dust and smoke that choked the Manhattan skyline.
Burnette, married just a few years, was 34 years old and the father of two young sons - 3 years old and 8 months old, on 9/11.
"I was a District Manager for Burger King and I was traveling all my restaurants with my boss that day and we started early," recalled Burnette, now employed as a bank loan officer. "Nothing was going right in any of the visits. It wasn’t until late morning that I got the full story. No one had their minds on their jobs that day. There was no way that they could. Not for quite a while."
Burnette added, "A black cloud hung above us all, hurting for all the victims, their families, and our fallen heroes."
Henry Frederick is publisher of Headline Surfer, the award-winning 24/7 internet news outlet launched 12 years ago that serves greater Daytona Beach, Sanford & Orlando, Florida via HeadlineSurfer.com. Frederick has amassed more than a hundred journalism industry awards in print & online -- more than all other members of the working press combined in Central Florida since the mid-1990s. He earned his Master of Arts in New Media Journalism with academic honors from Full Sail University in 2019. Having witnessed the execution of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Florida's death chamber and other high profile cases, Frederick has appeared on national crime documentary programs on Discovery ID and Reelz for his investigative reporting and cops & courts breaking news stories.