ODU Alum John Harper took care of the "heroes" after 9/11
September 07, 2017
John Harper
John Harper (M.Ed. '91) divides his life into two parts: before and after 9/11.
"I was a certain person before 9/11," said Harper, who is 55. "I was a very different person afterwards. It kind of changed everything about the way I am."
He's more grateful for family and friends. More appreciative of "the small details," like greetings from acquaintances. More aware of his mortality.
"We're all a living miracle, each of us," Harper said recently, "and the line between living and dying is very thin."
Harper is a substance abuse counselor in Florida. When 9/11 hit, he was supervisor of the dental clinic at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
During two tours at Dover between 2001 and 2006, he estimates that he helped identify the remains of more than 3,000 people, including soldiers from the Iraq war and the nearly 190 casualties, military and civilian, from the 9/11 terrorist crash into the Pentagon.
In his book, "Among the Dead: My Years in the Port Mortuary" (CreateSpace, 2016), Harper pays tribute to the victims and his teammates at Dover.
In an interview, Harper summed up his message: "Our team did the best that we could to take care of those heroes and get them home as quickly as possible to their families."
Harper, a master sergeant, served in the Air Force for 21 years.
He started at Dover in the summer of 2001. On the afternoon of Sept. 12, the bodies began to arrive.
"Black body bags seemed to be piled into any and every empty space," Harper writes. "We were literally surrounded by death."
His squad, rechristened the Dental Evidence Response Team, had to provide positive identification of the casualties, sometimes working 16-hour days.
In one of the most touching moments in the book, Harper recalls how he and his colleagues sometimes spoke to the dead service members. "One remembered talking to a female victim and letting her know everything was going to be OK," he writes. "Soon she would return home and be at peace forever."
In an interview, Harper added: "You try not to personalize it, but you were working intimately with these folks. Sometimes to humanize the situation was a natural reaction."
Harper was assigned to South Korea in January 2003. But he returned to Dover - "I felt I had to be back there with my team" - in January 2004.
"Soon enough our base and our mortuary team would be inundated with human remains," he writes. "It was not unusual to receive a dozen or more casualties a day, multiple times per week."
One summer day in 2006, while Harper was identifying the body of a female airman, he broke down. He retreated to the locker room, emptied his locker and decided that day to retire from the service.
Since 9/11, "I've been chasing a sense of normality," he says in the book. In an interview, Harper said: "I'm still working through some of this. Writing the book was a good experiment for me. It let me get it out."
Harper, who received a master's in counseling at Old Dominion while he was stationed at Langley Air Force Base, is a substance abuse counselor in Orlando.
"I was always interested in the idea of working with other people, helping them through their problems."
As usual, he will think back to Dover on 9/11.
"It hurts just as much every single year," Harper said.
A longer version of this article will appear in the fall issue of Old Dominion University's e-magazine, Monarch Extra, which will be available at www.odu.edu/monarchmag later this month.
