Soldiers’ Handwritten 9/11 Journals, Kept by a Flight Attendant, Now a Living Archive

Ahead of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, a flight attendant shares soldiers’ handwritten words from post-9/11 troop flights in a growing digital archive.

BELLEVUE , WA, UNITED STATES, August 31, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — BELLEVUE, WA, UNITED STATES, August 28, 2026 — As the nation marks the 25th anniversary of the horrific terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, one flight attendant is expanding the next chapter of a story she began sharing years ago: journals handwritten by U.S. troops on the actual charter flights that carried them to war, and home again.

Paula Gibson worked those charter flights for World Airways, both before and after 9/11. On one early flight, watching the soldiers around her, she found herself thinking about her own disappointing New Year’s Eve — until it struck her what theirs actually was: packing for war, leaving their families, not knowing if they would come home. She took out her own personal journal, flipped it over and opened the back cover, offering it to a soldier along with a pen. He took it, wrote, and passed it on to the next soldier, and the next — moving hand to hand down the aisles. When it filled, she started another, and then another. She has kept those journals for more than twenty years.

Now, ahead of the 25th anniversary, Gibson is publishing those entries — in the soldiers’ own handwriting, transcribed and shared — in a living digital archive: In Flight: Journal Entries from 9/11 Troop Movements (inflightjournalentries.com). The project builds on her previously published book, InFlight EnRoute & In Thought, Volume 1, expanding it into an ongoing collection that will continue to grow with new, previously unpublished entries.

At the center of the project is “Find Your Entry” — an open call to the service members, and the contractors and media who often flew beside them, who wrote these pages, along with the families and friends who love them. Readers are invited to look for their own handwriting or initials, or those of someone they served or traveled alongside, and reach out.

“Everyone wants to know how you are,” Gibson said. “These pages should not just sit in a box. Their stories have kept going — and now have a place to live on. People want to know…I want to know… where they are and how things are today. I really want the family and friends these were often dedicated to, to have the opportunity to see what was written on those long flights overseas, with nothing but the hum of the plane to keep them company.”

The archive is live now at inflightjournalentries.com. Weekly posts will continue publishing with entries from those flights, alongside newly submitted stories and updates, but as a tribute, they will go out daily for the week leading up to September 11, 2026.

About:
In Flight: Journal Entries from 9/11 Troop Movements is a living digital archive of handwritten journal entries written by U.S. service members, along with the contractors and media personnel who often traveled alongside them, aboard charter flights carrying troops to and from deployment in the years following 9/11. Started and cared for by Paula Gibson, a former World Airways flight attendant who carried the original journals for more than two decades, the project transcribes and publishes the entries in their own words at inflightjournalentries.com.

Media Contact:
Paula Gibson
stories@inflightjournalentries.com
inflightjournalentries.com

Paula Rae Gibson
In Flight: Journal Entries From 9/11 Troop Movements
Stories@inflightjournalentries.com
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Written By: EIN Presswire