Twenty-Five Years On: Gonzaga, 9/11 and a Generation Called to Serve

It may be surprising to some, but 25 years have passed since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. A quarter century has passed since those events set in motion geopolitical shifts that influenced countless events and lives in the years that followed.

In the aftermath of the attacks, the United States embarked on the Global War on Terrorism, launched wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, transformed the Armed Forces and introduced a myriad of domestic and international policies that changed global standards and norms.

But while the geopolitical consequences of Sept. 11 are well documented, there is another story, one closer to heart and home, worth telling: the effects those events had on a generation of young Americans who passed through the halls of Gonzaga's Army ROTC program in a post-Sept. 11 world.

The events of Sept. 11 shaped a generation of Gonzaga ROTC students by creating a call to military service, while Gonzaga's Jesuit and humanistic education helped form how that generation understood and carried out that service.

Twenty-five years later, I asked fellow Bulldog Battalion alumni where they were that morning, how Sept. 11 shaped the years that followed, and where their service has taken them since. These are their stories.

The Unsung Work

Dr. Amanda Carnes (’05) has spent nearly two decades in service to people far from home: as an Army physician in Honduras and Afghanistan and later as a Doctors Without Borders volunteer treating refugees in Cairo. That arc of service began, unexpectedly, in Fall 2001.

Carnes was a first-year student when Sept. 11 happened, having joined Gonzaga’s ROTC program at her parents’ advice. As juniors and seniors began deploying to Afghanistan and later Iraq, she continued her studies, wrestling with what her own commitment now meant.

After graduating, Carnes commissioned, attended medical school at the University of Southern California and went on to serve in Honduras, complete residency at Fort Bragg in Family Medicine, serve at Fort Wainwright, and become the inaugural brigade surgeon for the Army’s newly formed 3rd Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB), deploying to Afghanistan in 2019.

After completing her service obligation in 2021, she carried that same commitment into civilian medicine with Doctors Without Borders in Cairo, treating migrants and refugees, many of them survivors of torture or sexual violence. Today, she is an OB-GYN resident at the University of Washington.

Dr. Amanda Carnes leading medical training with soldiers.

Carnes traces the throughline of that service back to Gonzaga’s Jesuit tradition of servant leadership.

“A foundation,” she said, “that taught me to see humanity in everyone I treat, whatever the circumstance.”

Asked to define a hero, she did not name one person.

“I think about people doing jobs that aren't glamorous, who do them faithfully, day in and day out. It’s thankless, steadfast work, and nobody recognizes them, but they keep going.”

Perhaps that is the quiet truth of it. The people who do this work rarely think to call it heroic. They simply show up again the next day and the day after that, making the world a better place.

Whether or not she would claim the word, Carnes has spent 20 years living her own definition of it, showing up and faithfully helping one patient at a time.

A Summons to Service

For Col. Doug Simmons (’03), the legacy of Sept. 11 was never meant to rest in memories of destruction alone. It became, for his generation, a summons to service.

“Our country depends on citizens who choose to serve,” Simmons said. “That service may take the form of a uniform, a teacher in a classroom or a nurse and doctor in a hospital.”

Simmons was a Gonzaga cadet on the morning of Sept. 11, eating breakfast in the COG when the newscast broke through the routine. He watched alongside fellow cadets as the Twin Towers burned and fell. Like an earlier generation remembering where they stood when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, he knew instantly he would never forget that morning, though he could not yet know how deeply it would shape the decades ahead.

What prepared him for that journey, he said, was Gonzaga itself. Simmons recalled that “mentors like Lt. Col. (R) Westfield and the Army ROTC cadre taught me leadership’s practical demands: waste no time in rehearsal, accept responsibility, care for your people, act amid uncertainty. Gonzaga's Jesuit faculty reinforced something equally essential, about life grounded in meaning, compassion, reflection and service to others.”

Across 23 years of military service, Simmons has returned to those lessons repeatedly.

Col. Doug Simmons (seventh from left) during Operation Cobalt / Spartan Shield (c. 2025)

“Ethics, resilience, compassion and selfless service are not abstract ideals,” he said. “They guide difficult decisions, sustain me through adversity and remind me of whom I serve.”

Gonzaga, he added, taught him that leadership depends not only on competence but on conscience, the discipline to recognize others' dignity even when fear or uncertainty narrows the view.

Now, as a new generation takes up that same responsibility, Simmons believes the question Gonzaga first posed to him is theirs to answer.

That question has echoed differently for each Gonzaga alumnus who lived through that morning, shaping careers, convictions and quiet commitments in the years since. For Lt. Col. Robert Coleman (’09), it changed the course of his life almost immediately.

Prepared to Lead

For Lt. Col. Robert Coleman (’09), Sept. 11 arrived on an ordinary morning. He was an early riser, heading to high school in Marina, California, when the scope of the attacks became clear. Terrorism and war, once distant concepts, suddenly became realities.

“After 9/11, wearing a uniform became my goal,” Coleman recalled.

That goal took shape in 2005, when Coleman enrolled in Gonzaga's ROTC program, drawn to both an education and a life of uniformed service.

In the years that followed, Coleman served as a platoon leader in Kandahar, a company commander and a staff officer. Reflecting on that service, he noted how sharply his generation's wars differed from those before it.

Coleman credits Gonzaga's humanities education with preparing him for that ambiguity, teaching him restraint, historical awareness and empathy long before he needed them in the field.

“Courses such as Vietnam: War and Christian Morality, taught by Dr. Ron Large, prepared me for that environment,” he said. “ROTC soldiering and leadership skills proved equally essential in Afghanistan.”

Today, Coleman serves as a congressional aide in Washington, D.C. It is a different kind of service, but one still shaped by the lessons of the classroom and the battlefield alike. His path, from a California high schooler watching the Twin Towers fall to an Army Officer shaping policy on Capitol Hill, reflects the same throughline as so many of his fellow Bulldogs: a Gonzaga education and the resolve of a generation that answered a single morning with two decades of service.

Returning to Where It Started

For Lt. Col. Mike Omodt (’03), Sept. 11 changed the course of his life.

A second-year ROTC cadet at Gonzaga, Omodt had just returned from a morning workout when his mother called and told him to turn on the television.

“My brain couldn't register what I was seeing because one tower had already fallen,” Omodt recalled. “After I watched the second tower fall in real time, I ran down to AD045, the ROTC Department in College Hall.”

His immediate thought was to lower the flag to half-staff.

“I thought it was important that the flag be immediately lowered to half-staff,” he said.

Before Sept. 11, Omodt was committed to ROTC in part because its scholarship helped make his Gonzaga education possible. Afterward, his motivation became more personal.

More than two decades later, the memory remains with him. Every time Omodt sees the Gonzaga flagpole, he thinks of that day. For 20 years, he also has kept a black-and-white poster of the World Trade Center beside his desk, inspired by a similar image he saw during a visit to a headquarters in Afghanistan.

“It was a constant reminder of why we do what we do,” he said.

Now, Omodt's own journey has come full circle. After 20 years of military service, he has returned to his commissioning source, Gonzaga University, where he now serves as Professor of Military Science for the Bulldog Battalion. The once eager young cadet who saw military service as a calling is now a decorated veteran, drawing on two decades of experience to prepare the next generation of cadets for lives of leadership and service.

Lt. Col. Michael Omodt currently serves at the ROTC Professor of Military Science at Gonzaga University.

His story illustrates the lasting impact of ROTC formation: A student enters the program with a desire to serve and leaves prepared to lead, then, years later, returns to help prepare those who will follow.

That spirit of service and remembrance continues this Sept. 11, when cadets and cadre of Gonzaga's Bulldog Battalion will climb 110 flights of stairs on the bleachers at McCarthey Athletic Center as part of a Patriot Day observance.

For Omodt, the event is both a remembrance of the moment that changed his life and a reflection of the purpose that has guided his service ever since.

“It's a somber opportunity to reflect and remember,” Omodt said.

My Own Story

Like my colleagues, I too was inextricably changed, though I couldn’t have known it at the time. Those events sent me on a path of national service, eventually taking me to the war-torn orchards of Afghanistan’s Arghandab River Valley and beyond.

Gonzaga prepared me for that path. The Jesuit tradition, rooted in the 16th Century, proved as relevant as ever. It gave me the intellectual, physical, and spiritual foundation to face difficult circumstances and serve others.

Maj. Patrick Constantino on duty in the Balkans.

Today, I continue that service in the U.S. Army Reserve, where I liaise with foreign civilian populations, local governments and humanitarian organizations and train a new generation of soldiers. I've also carried that commitment into civilian life. I founded a nonprofit dedicated to expanding educational access through scholarships and later launched a scholarship program at the University of San Francisco specifically to support ROTC cadets pursuing service in the Army. I was once a cadet myself, uncertain of the road ahead. Now I help other cadets find their way down it.

That, in the end, is what Gonzaga gave me, not just the tools to serve once, but the formation to keep serving, in whatever form that takes, for as long as I'm able.

Men and Women for Others

While each story is unique, there is a consistent throughline. Young men and women, caught up in global events and shaped by the Jesuit tradition at Gonzaga, found themselves playing a small part in events far greater than themselves.

Sept. 11 called them to serve. Gonzaga prepared them to answer.

That tradition calls its students to be men and women for others and to pursue Magis: to do more, to do better and to seek the greater good. For this generation of Gonzaga graduates, that formation met a defining moment.

Twenty-five years later, the world has changed. Wars have begun and ended. A new generation has grown up knowing Sept. 11 only as history. And those young men and women who once walked the halls of Gonzaga are now scattered across the country and the world, raising families, building careers and continuing to serve in ways visible and unseen.

Sept. 11 shaped a generation. Gonzaga shaped how that generation served. Twenty-five years later, that story is still being written.

About the Author

Patrick Constantino (’09) is a U.S. Army Reserve Major and Civil Affairs Officer who earned his commission through Gonzaga's Army ROTC program. He deployed to Afghanistan in 2012-13 and has since served in multinational exercises across Europe and Asia. He holds a B.A. in International Studies from Gonzaga and an MBA from Oxford University's Saïd Business School and works in the San Francisco Bay Area technology sector.