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CHARLESTON, W.Va.—John C. Allen will never forget how the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, changed our nation and impacted his career.
Allen was an avionics engineer in Georgia when he watched on TV as an airplane flew into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. A few people were watching together and “we thought it was a movie” because it didn’t make sense that this was coverage of an event happening in New York City, a few hundred miles up the East Coast of the United States.
A former member of the U.S. Coast Guard, Allen says he was too old to rejoin the military in 2001, so when he learned about a new agency focused on transportation security that was born from the ashes of debris from the World Trade Center, he looked online and applied to join the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Now, decades later, he is TSA’s Federal Security Director for the state of West Virginia, working mainly from West Virginia International Yeager Airport, making him the highest-ranking TSA official in the state.
As a common practice, Allen meets with every employee during the onboarding process and throughout the year to talk about 9-11. “I talk about the reason why TSA is here, and just how vital being an anti-terrorism security professional is,” he says. “I like to share my journey through TSA with all the employees because I believe that it fosters professional development, pride and comradery since I started out in the same job they have and worked my way up. It also helps with the understanding of exactly why our mission is so important and the opportunities available for every member of the workforce.”
Allen was a member of the second class of TSA employees. He started as a member of the mobile screening force at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, which was the first airport to be federalized. He later worked at LaGuardia, John F. Kennedy, Greensboro, Long Island MacArthur and Albany International Airports, moving up the ranks each time. He has been at Yeager Airport since September 2016.
Early in his TSA career, Allen was working at Albany International Airport and one afternoon I went and got my tattoo,” he recalls. He shows his 9/11-themed tattoo proudly on his left shoulder. “I decided to get it as a tribute” to those who were murdered by the terrorists. “Being a native New Yorker, I knew people associated with the New York Fire and Police Departments and wanted to honor their service as well as all the victims on that fateful day with a message of hope and strength.”
The tattoo shows a Polish eagle pulling barbed wire off a tattered U.S. flag. Allen is part Polish, and he says he chose the Polish eagle to commemorate the supportive actions that were taken by Poland after 9/11. To Allen, the tattoo “showed that we would recover from the attack.” And it ensures he will never forget those who perished on that fateful day.