By Nita Wilkinson

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Dianne Hickey knew exactly what her day was supposed to look like.

She had already briefed the Secretary of the Air Force and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force. Her next stop was Bailey’s Crossroads, a few miles from the Pentagon, where she planned to spend several hours meeting with intelligence analysts.

It was supposed to be an ordinary workday. Of course, it wasn't.

Hickey had spent much of her adult life serving her country. What began almost accidentally became a 25-year Air Force career.

“I didn’t know what I was doing,” said the retired Air Force official, who grew up in the Medina area and would later settle around DeGraff with her family. Her stepdaughters attended Riverside Schools.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I knew I didn’t want to go to school any longer.”

So she joined the Air Force. One decision led to another, one door opened after another, and before she knew it, Hickey had built a career she says she wouldn't trade.

She enlisted as an airman and trained as a Russian linguist, spending a year in intensive Russian language training in California. About seven years into her career, she earned her bachelor's degree, working nights whenever she had the time.

Then another door opened. She received her commission and became an officer, eventually retiring as a lieutenant colonel. By 2001, she was working in intelligence at the Pentagon, and then came Sept. 11.

Hickey's plans for that morning changed quickly. After the attacks began, she found herself trying to get back to the Pentagon.

Traffic was at a standstill. She couldn't get close enough by car, so she got out and walked . . . in her heels. Looking back, that is one of the strange details she remembers about that morning, the things that seem almost insignificant in the middle of something so enormous.

Hickey remembers walking toward the Pentagon while thousands of people were moving in the opposite direction. She remembers the surreal sight of the massive building with enormous billows of smoke rising from it, as she approached the side of the Pentagon that had been hit.

Police officers were driving through the parking lots with megaphones, directing people away from the building. Hickey needed to get inside, and there was only one entrance still open, she was told, and it was on the opposite side. So she walked around the building until she made her way inside.

That is where one of the hardest parts of her story begins. She had a job to do. The military still needed intelligence. People still needed information. The work didn't stop simply because the world had changed. But walking through the halls of the Pentagon that day felt anything but normal.

“I tried to block it out of my mind,” Hickey said.

She couldn’t. The building was still burning. People might still be trapped inside and suffering. And Hickey, trained to serve and protect, couldn't shake the feeling that she should be doing something to help.

“I felt like I should be going over to the crash site and helping,” she said. “But that wasn’t my job.”