Reporter-News Archives Thursday, September 13, 2001 Former Dyess commanders survive attack By Sidney Schuhmann Reporter-News Staff Writer Two former Dyess Air Force Base commanders at the Pentagon are accounted for and safe after Tuesday’s terrorist attack. Other Defense Department employees with Abilene ties were not as fortunate. An Air Force information hotline confirmed Wednesday that former Dyess commanders Brig. Gen. Joseph Stein and Maj. Gen. Larry Northington were not injured in the attack. Stein’s fifth-floor Pentagon office was in an area shut off because of damage from a hijacked commercial airliner that flew into the first and second floors. Stein served as the 7th Bomb Wing commander at Dyess from June 1999 to November 2000. His job at the Pentagon includes building the $30 billion manpower portion of the Air Force program. Northington served at Dyess from August 1995 until March 1997. At the Pentagon, he is the deputy assistant secretary for budget in the Air Force Secretary’s Office. He plans the $76 billion Air Force budget. The Pentagon attack followed two aircraft crashing into the World Trade Center in New York earlier Tuesday. The brother-in-law of Abilene resident Toni Jennings, 45, was working at the Pentagon when it was hit. Tuesday evening, Pentagon officials told his wife, Pat, that her husband was probably dead. Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Robert Joseph Hymel worked in the area hit by the plane. He had just spoken with his wife, who is a principal at a nearby school, when the plane crashed into the five-sided building. Hymel, who had a grown daughter and a grandchild, was a B-52 bomber pilot in Vietnam who was shot down and rescued, said Jennings, a financial assistant and ministry secretary at Wylie United Methodist Church. “He survived that,” she said. But this time, Jennings said, the “terrorists took him.” Army Col. Philip McNair, 47, was “blown across from one corridor to another” when the plane struck, said his brother, Chris McNair, a dean at Hardin-Simmons University. The colonel’s office was “obliterated” and at least a dozen of his staff members were killed, his younger brother said. Philip McNair survived because he was attending a meeting in another area. He was hospitalized with burns, cuts and internal injuries, but was not in critical condition, Chris McNair said. “It’s pretty miraculous,” he said. Family members of Pentagon employees seeking information can contact the Army at (800) 984-8523 or (703) 428-0002; the Navy and Marine Corps at (877) 663-6772; and the Air Force at (800) 253-9276. Contact military writer Sidney Schuhmann at 676-6721 or schuhmanns@abinews.com Send a Letter to the Editor about This Story Start or Join A Discussion about This Story Send the URL (Address) of This Story to A Friend: Enter their email address below: texnews reporternews local news features Copyright ©2001, Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps. Publications