For many years after the Sept. 11 attacks in Washington, D.C., Mark Schoenrock said he could still smell the burning jet fuel from American Airlines Flight 77.

“It was just such an overpowering sensation,” Schoenrock, a former Lone Tree resident and survivor of the Pentagon crash, told The Denver Gazette. “You know, all of your senses are just totally overpowered.”

Although he said he’s eventually “gotten over” it, he still remembers the day clearly — and the split-second decision that saved his life.

Schoenrock was an active-duty Army officer serving as the inspector general for the state of Colorado when he and 13 others from the Colorado National Guard arrived by military aircraft in the nation’s capital on Sept. 10 for official business.

On the morning of Sept. 11, the tall, slender Nebraska native walked the halls of the Pentagon where he had once been an executive officer in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army and helped plan the renovation of the Pentagon’s first wedge, which had just been completed. 

The other passengers that Schoenrock had accompanied to Washington had meetings elsewhere in the city that day.

In between meetings at the Pentagon, Schoenrock looked at his watch.

It read 9:35 a.m.

He had wanted to visit the E ring, the outermost corridor of the five-sided building where he once worked, just to see what it looked like and what had changed. 

But as he made his way to the E ring, something happened.

“I just had this, you know, really strong feeling come over me not to go out to the E ring, although my meeting was there,” Schoenrock said.

Stopping just short of the C ring, the middle corridor, instead of going to his meeting, Schoenrock turned right.

At 9:35 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon’s outer ring, taking the lives of all 64 passengers and crew aboard, as well as 125 individuals in the building.

Schoenrock was a mere 100 yards away from where the Boeing 757 struck.

Meanwhile, just over 1,000 miles away, another Colorado Army officer, Holly Peterson, had just arrived at the Orlando International Airport for her flight back to Denver after vacationing at Walt Disney World with her husband and 3-year-old son.

“We were in the airport waiting for our flight,” Peterson said. “Suddenly, everyone’s looking at their phones, and they’re looking up at the (airport departure) screens.”

No announcement or information was provided to passengers.

Then the airlines began canceling flights.

The Federal Aviation Administration had begun the first-ever unplanned shutdown of U.S. airspace, ordering all aircraft to land at the nearest airport.

Confused passengers in the terminal began asking questions no one could readily answer.

Peterson noticed that people were beginning to rush the rental car counters.

“There were big lines for the rental cars because it became clear that nobody was flying that day,” she said.

Back in Washington, evacuations of the Pentagon had commenced, with both military and civilian personnel spilling onto the lawn. Emergency responders arrived, helping personnel locate and pull survivors from the damaged structure.

“We got out there in the yard, and you know we were trying to help people that were coming out, and all kinds of things,” he said. “You know it was just hell on earth.”

Had he not followed his gut, “I’d have been right at the point of impact,” said Schoenrock, who lost seven friends that day. “They lost their lives that morning, and I think about them constantly; I mean, it never really goes away.”

Back in Florida, Peterson said she waited close to an hour to get a rental car, planning to drive back to Denver.

Still without a clear picture of what was happening, Peterson and her family hit the road, piecing together the story from radio reports.

While en route to Denver, Peterson, who now lives in Thornton, asked her husband to go through Cincinnati.

“I just wanted to see my family, and make sure everyone was OK,” Peterson told The Denver Gazette.

It wasn’t until she reached her family in Ohio that Peterson saw the full scale of what had transpired that day.

Schoenrock described the scene, knowing that the plane had just been fueled at Dulles International Airport.

“The thing (plane) was pretty much fully loaded with jet fuel, and so there was just this really big fireball,” he said. “And for years after that event, I would wake up in the middle of the night, and I could smell that jet fuel burning.”

Schoenrock and his fellow passengers departed Washington on Sept. 12, only because they were aboard a military aircraft.

“I can still remember that morning,” he said. “We were taxiing, out there at Dulles Airport, and you know, looking at row upon row upon row upon row of civilian commercial passenger jets — they were all just sitting there — and I just had this overwhelming feeling that morning; you know, thank God I’m still alive.”

Peterson eventually made it back to Denver and her job.

Twenty-five years later, Schoenrock, who is currently seeking a seat in the Nebraska state Senate, said the nightmares have stopped and that retelling the story of Sept. 11 has become therapeutic for him.

If there’s one thing he would stress to everyone, Schoenrock said it is to remember that “every day is a gift.”