JACKSONVILLE, Onslow County \u2014 Twenty-five years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a Jacksonville native is marking his birthday with a personal connection to the day\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
Brent Whorton was born Sept. 11, 2001, moments after the first plane struck the World Trade Center\u2019s North Tower.<\/p>\n
Whorton now serves as a mass communication specialist seaman aboard the USS Arlington.<\/p>\n
The Navy ship is named in tribute to the 184 people killed in the attack on the Pentagon.<\/p>\n
Whorton said he did not know about the ship\u2019s connection to Sept. 11 when he was first assigned there.<\/p>\n
He said he learned about the USS Arlington\u2019s mission while speaking with his father.<\/p>\n
Whorton said his father stepped into a hospital hallway shortly after Whorton was born and learned the first tower had been hit.<\/p>\n
\u201cI discovered that it was a tribute ship,\u201d Whorton said. \u201cWhen I first found that out, I was actually talking to my father about it and thought it was like this divine providence that I should be here.\u201d<\/p>\n
The USS Arlington includes a tribute room honoring Pentagon victims.<\/p>\n
The room includes pieces of wreckage recovered from the Pentagon.<\/p>\n
Whorton said serving aboard the ship connects every crew member to the story of Sept. 11.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Jacksonville\u2019s Patriot Day Observance begins at 8:15 a.m. Friday, Sept. 11, at the 9\/11 Memorial Beam at Lejeune Memorial Gardens.<\/p>\n
The memorial includes a piece of steel recovered from the World Trade Center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Onslow County \u2014 Twenty-five years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a Jacksonville native is marking his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-396867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}