9/11 siblings cling to this answer

They knew he was gone because he didn’t answer the phone.

It was 15 years ago this morning. The world seemed to stop for the family of U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Johnnie Doctor Jr., 32, of Allendale. He was killed when a passenger jet plunged into the Pentagon, but for a long while he was listed officially as “missing.”

They knew it was his remains they buried almost two months later at Beaufort National Cemetery because of DNA testing — and his Masonic pin retrieved by the Navy. The gold chain was gone. And so was the well-spoken, well-dressed, well-mannered brother with the Colgate smile.

From the beginning, his sister, JoAnn Doctor of Hilton Head Island, did most of the talking, working two cell phones and a land line to field all the inquiries from the media, friends and family.

She talked to me last week about what 9/11 means as she prepared to drive north for today’s memorial observances for the 184 victims of the terrorist attack on the Pentagon. She goes almost every year.

Her family of five surviving siblings and the single mom who raised them still clings to a simple answer to the 9/11 questions. What they cling to is each other.

“We tell each other more often how much we love each other,” she said.

‘Service in the yard’

Evelena Walker Doctor refused to believe her son was gone, saying he was on a ship in the Mediterranean.

But her yard quickly filled with people. Both sides of the family has preachers and deacons and mothers of the church. Her father’s mom was a Holiness evangelist.

“We had a service in the yard,” JoAnn said. “We were well covered.”

In the afternoon, Navy personnel, including a chaplain, arrived in vans to tell his mother the Johnnie was missing.

Johnnie Doctor’s wife, Andrea, and her two children came south from their home in Washington.

And on Oct. 20, 2001, the gym at Allendale-Fairfax High School, where Johnnie was a baseball star, was filled for a homegoing service with Pastor Queen E. Singleton presiding and Bishop John F. Bowers the eulogist.

As Johnnie was laid to rest among all the white stones in Beaufort, the family was surprised by a parade of Masons.

“There were 50 or 100 of them, marching,” JoAnn said.

The next year, the family marched in Allendale’s Cooter Festival Parade, their float featuring a large picture of Johnnie on each side. They handed out little American flags.

“He loved the Navy,” JoAnne said. “And he loved his family.”

‘Real hard’

On the first anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, JoAnn got to tour the rebuilt area where her brother was at work.

He joined the Navy in 1986 right out of high school. He got to see the world from a hometown that offers virtually no opportunity.

On this morning with clear blue sky, he was standing in a room full of computer screens representing all corners of the globe. He was an information systems technician first class assigned to the office of the Chief of Naval Operations.

Since then, he has been memorialized with a bench at the Pentagon.

“It’s beautiful at night,” JoAnne said.

She said there is still a “solace room” at the Pentagon for family members. The Navy still takes care of family members, she said, as does a group called Voices of September 11th.

The government compensated his widow, who has remarried, and the siblings are part of a class-action lawsuit against terrorism financiers filed by the Motley Rice law firm in Mount Pleasant.

JoAnne was drawn closer to her brother because she served eight years in the U.S. Army. She is a motivational speaker and advocate for the victims of domestic violence and HIV. She serves on the Beaufort-Jasper-Hampton Comprehensive Health Services board. She is about to finish an undergraduate degree at the University of South Carolina Beaufort and plans to get a doctorate in psychology.

“I want to be Dr. Doctor,” she said.

She also wants people to remember her brother, a man known for mentoring, coaching youth basketball and always ready to give to others.

She helped organize a gospel sing two years ago, with special T-shirts, to honor the brother everyone assumed was out of harm’s way.

“To accept it was real hard,” she said.

This story was originally published September 9, 2016 at 4:49 PM with the headline "9/11 siblings cling to this answer."