A retired Army lieutenant colonel who coaches youth softball in Dublin watched the Pentagon burn on Sept. 11, 2001.

Carl Ey was 35 and serving as a U.S. Army major in communications at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., when American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. that morning. Fort McNair sits just miles from the Pentagon across the Potomac River. The attack killed 184 people: 125 inside the building and 59 passengers and crew aboard the plane, according to the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial.

In an interview with NBC4's Kerry Charles published Sept. 9, Ey described arriving at the Pentagon and finding an eerie scene. He saw "the big, black hole, a lot of combustion fires." While he walked toward the impact site, Pentagon workers fled in the opposite direction.

"I noticed a woman in a business suit in a skirt. She ran and she ran to the highway and she got there and a pickup truck stopped," Ey told NBC4. "She pulled off her heels, hiked her skirts up and leapt over the back of it, and I saw the men and women in business suits running in these utility vans, these plumbing vans opening up and people just jumping in the back of them."

Ey, who now lives in Plain City, helped set up operations at the Pentagon that day and did not return home until about 3:30 a.m. on Sept. 12, 2001. He remained on scene for roughly six and a half to seven weeks.

The images stayed with him. During one overnight shift, he watched recovery workers pull bodies numbered 33, 34, 35 and 36 from the building.

None of the girls on Ey's Dublin softball team, all 9 and 10 years old, were alive when the attacks happened. He told NBC4 that what he wants people to remember is the unity that followed, when "people loved being Americans, and were proud of who they were" and "American flags were everywhere."

The 25th anniversary falls on Sept. 11. Dublin's Washington Township Fire Station 93 will host a community memorial ceremony that day to honor the lives lost and first responders.