Go to the “Never Forgetting What We Lost on 9/11” main page.
I did not know Angie Houtz very well, even though we went to the same church, Church of the Apostles in Fairfax, Virginia. She was fairly new to COA, lived in Maryland, and probably went to a different service than I did. But our mutual friend, Frank Gallo, told me I should get to know Angie, informing me that she was now leading the church’s participation in The Grate Patrol, a ministry of meals and friendship to the homeless in DC that I had started around 1983 and led for ten years.
Angie was a pretty, very friendly young woman, and totally devoted to Christ. She had an infectious faith that affected all who knew her, whether at church, at work, or on the steam grates of Washington where she offered soup, sandwiches, and hot chocolate – as well as a listening ear and a gentle word of prayer to DC’s street people.
I was looking forward to getting to know her, but I never got the chance. Angela M. Houtz was a civilian employee for the U.S. Navy was killed on 9/11 when the jihadist terrorists plunged American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.
Salutatorian of her graduating class at Maurice J. McDonough High School in Pomfret, Maryland in 1992, Angie was awarded a full scholarship in the humanities program at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). She then interned with the Office of Naval Intelligence in Suitland, Maryland, and was offered a permanent position when she graduated. According to the Pentagon Memorial Fund website, Angie “was recommended for a position in the Pentagon, working for the Chief of Naval Operations Intelligence Plot, where she also served as the Naval Intelligence Watch Officer in the Navy Command Center. Following this assignment, she returned to work at Suitland and the Office of Naval Intelligence, working there until her most recent appointment as Senior Analyst at the Pentagon.” Angie came back to the Pentagon in October 2000, after the bombing of the U.S. S. Cole to become the senior day analyst at the Chief of Naval Operations Intelligence Plot (CNO-IP). It was the third-ranking job in the 28-person unit and Angie was the youngest person to have ever held the position.
On the mirror of her bedroom dresser, Angie kept a Bible verse. In a January 20, 2002 tribute to the victims at the Pentagon, “The Last Watch,” staff writer Richard Leiby describes the verse as “a quotation from an Old Testament leader who set about rebuilding a great wall to protect Jerusalem, who put watchers on his wall, and refused to leave it.” Rear Admiral Richard Porterfield, the director of Naval Intelligence, who called the CNO-IP team members that died at the Pentagon “the Magnificent Seven” told Angie’s parents that the verse would appear on a memorial at the National Maritime Intelligence Center in Suitland. The verse was Nehemiah 6: 3, “I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down.”
A great tribute to those in Naval Intelligence who were killed at the Pentagon by Richard Leiby, Washington Post staff writer, is “The Last Watch.”
The Pentagon Memorial is a tribute to the 125 military and civilian personnel and the 59 passengers and crew of American Airlines Flight 77.
Website of the memorial to Montgomery County, Maryland residents who were killed on 9/11, and close-ups here.
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