Joseph Palermo lives on a quiet slice of land with his wife and a small menagerie of farm animals near Natural Bridge.
He was also one of the first people at the Pentagon in the moments after a hijacked plane barreled into one side of the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, killing 159 people.
Palermo is a retired agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And though he may be living a quiet life these days, even 25 years after the events of 9/11, his life in Rockbridge County looks like a veritable before and after. On one side of his property is a weathered barn that houses a charming old horse and a donkey. A few steps away is a stand-alone cabin that serves as a shrine to his career, complete with tokens from the month he spent combing through the rubble of the Pentagon.
Palermo was the night-side team leader during the grim task of recovering victims in the days after nearly 3,000 people were killed in the terrorist attacks that rocked the nation. He and agents from several government agencies, including the ATF and FBI, were at the scene for a grueling month before handing the operation over to the Pentagon.
Palermo has a hardened “We just had to get through it” way that he talks about those weeks on the ground, and he also breaks for jokes here and there, like a lot of first responders do as a coping strategy.
But it’s clear that his time at the site still affects him greatly. “What we did there, it wasn’t search and rescue; it was recovery,” Palermo said. “It was tough, but I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else.”
He was in the middle of teaching a class at the FBI Academy at Quantico when his beeper went off and he heard the news that a plane had hit the Pentagon.
“And first they go, ‘Okay, no big deal. Probably another small plane,’” Palermo said. “And then all the pagers went off.”
Palermo keeps a photo album of jarring – but also moving – images of the days after the attack and the heroes who spent countless hours on the ground trying to gather remains to send back to victims’ loved ones. Some of the memorabilia he hangs onto are profoundly affecting to touch: his helmet, his worn FBI ID card. Other pieces Palermo describes finding in the burntout rubble are even more devastating. For example: “the front landing portion of the aircraft was actually standing up next to the captain’s chair, which was standing straight up,” he explained.
One victim, Palermo said, had cupped his ID badge over his chest, as if to preserve it for his family members to be able to identify him. He and his team even found a speeding tickets that one of the terrorists had gotten just days earlier.
Palermo said that despite the utter horror of the task he and his colleagues had to do, there was a lot of support from the public. “We never had to worry about food, clothing. You walk in, and they had these lunch bags with kids’ messages on them,” Palermo said. “I kept that, and our helmets with all our original stickers that we made.”
Palermo was among those gathered at the Lexington Fire Department this past Friday morning to mark the somber 25th anniversary of 9/11 and to support an old friend, Lexington Fire Chief Ty Dickerson, who has championed the annual commemoration.
Palermo told The News-Gazette that he hasn’t wanted to talk about 9/11 much since it happened, but now, he feels ready because of the immense pride he has for how he was able to help.
“I’m so proud of my fellow agents,” Palermo said. “Out of all the things that I did in the FBI, that was the most satisfying thing I ever did.”
AT LEFT, Joseph Palermo holds a photo of himself at the site where a plane crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, killing nearly 200 people. Palermo was one of the people with the grim task of helping recover victims for their families. ABOVE, a collection of memorabilia from the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon takes a hallowed position in Palermo’s trove of relics from his time with the FBI. (Allie Goolrick photos)
