In memory of

Matthew M. Flocco

Petty Officer Second Class · U.S. Navy

1979 2001
Newark, Delaware The PentagonSeptember 11, 2001

Lived in Arlington, Virginia. Worked at U.S. Navy. Served with Navy Command Center, the Pentagon.

United States of America

Their life

Aerographer's Mate Second Class, United States Navy - a weather man, which he had wanted to be since he was a boy watching the Weather Channel.

He and some friends walked into a recruiting office on a lark in his last year of school, and his mother said the more he listened to the recruiter the more he wanted to go. He enlisted straight after graduating.

He ran every other day and went home to Delaware at weekends to play softball in a community league. He had been moved off the night shift only days before; otherwise he would not have been in the building at that hour.

The weekend before, he was home from Fort Myer. He hung about with his friends and played horseshoes, and on the Sunday there were sweet pepper omelettes and then the drive to the station. The train was late, so his mother had a few extra minutes with him on the platform. When it came in she gave him one last hug.

His parents have hung his dress blues and his pea coat in the front window at home. His father said: we are just so proud of him, and we are going to miss the hell out of him. I learned more from him in the past three years than he ever learned from me.

How they died

Killed at the Pentagon on the morning of 11 September 2001, when American Airlines flight 77 struck the western face of the building at 9:37. A hundred and twenty-five people inside and fifty-nine aboard the aircraft were killed.

The Pentagon

September 11, 2001

American Airlines flight 77 struck the western face of the Pentagon at 9:37. A hundred and twenty-five people inside the building were killed, and fifty-nine aboard the aircraft.

They were military and civilian alike - officers, analysts, budget staff, contractors, a group of schoolchildren and their teachers travelling on a National Geographic trip. No police officer died here.

The nation afterwards set aside Arlington's own rules of eligibility and buried the civilian dead in national ground, together with the remains that could not be identified, in Section 64. It had decided that on this day the distinction did not apply.

Everyone taken by The Pentagon →

September 11, 2001

September 11, 2001

On a clear Tuesday morning, four airliners were taken. Two were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York, one into the western face of the Pentagon, and one came down in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after the passengers and crew went forward at the cockpit door.

Two thousand nine hundred and seventy-seven people were killed. Three hundred and forty-three were firefighters of the New York City Fire Department. Seventy-one were law enforcement officers. Eight were paramedics and emergency medical technicians. One hundred and twenty-five died at the Pentagon, military and civilian together. The rest - some two thousand four hundred of them - had gone to work, or boarded a plane, and belonged to no service at all.

None of them began that morning as heroes. A great many of them ended it as heroes: men and women who carried strangers down stairwells, who stayed with people who could not walk, who held a door, who went back up. Four men on a flight over Pennsylvania, who had thirty minutes of telephone calls and knew what had already happened, decided where their aircraft would come down.

At Arlington, the nation set aside its own rules of eligibility and buried the Pentagon's civilian dead in national ground. It had decided that on this day the distinction did not apply.

Everyone taken by September 11, 2001 →

Media

Portrait
Portrait 0 Views JPG 45 KB
Panel 2, 38 namesCHARLES A DROZ III LCDR USN RetPATRICK DUNN CDR USNEDWARD T EARHART AG1 USNBARBARA G EDWARDSROBERT R ELSETH LCDR USNCHARLES S FALKENBERGLESLIE A WHITTINGTONDANA FALKENBERGZOE FALKENBERGJAMIE L FALLON SK3 USNJ JOSEPH FERGUSONAMELIA V FIELDSGERALD P FISHERWILSON F FLAGG RADM USN RetDARLENE E FLAGGMATTHEW M FLOCCO AG2 USNSANDRA N FOSTERRICHARD P GABRIEL 1stLt USMC RetLAWRENCE D GETZFRED CAPT USNCORTEZ GHEEBRENDA C GIBSONRONALD F GOLINSKI COL USA RetIAN J GRAYDIANE HALE-McKINZYSTANLEY R HALLCAROLYN B HALMONMICHELE M HEIDENBERGERSHEILA M S HEINRONALD J HEMENWAY ET1 USNWALLACE COLE HOGAN Jr MAJ USAJIMMIE I HOLLEY SSG USA RetANGELA M HOUTZBRADY KAY HOWELLPEGGIE M HURTSTEPHEN N HYLAND Jr LTC USAROBERT J HYMEL Lt Col USAF RetLACEY B IVORY SGM USABRYAN C JACK

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Everything Matthew M. Flocco is tied to in the record. Scroll to zoom, drag to move, click a face or a label to open it.

No family is recorded with them yet.

What people have said 1

I did not know you, but I know what was taken that day. You are in my thoughts and prayers.

S. Vincent Anthony 11 September 2026

Everyone taken by The Pentagon →
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