Changed by 9/11: Teresa Rizzuto, Commissioner, MacArthur Airport [VIDEO]

A decade ago, Teresa Rizzuto was station manager for United Airlines at Newark International Airport. Unbeknown to her on the morning of Sept. 11, she was about to be in the midst of the terror attacks on New York and Washington.

Flight 93, one of the four U.S. airliners hijacked that morning, departed Newark at 8:42 a.m., 40 minutes late and just four minutes before American Airlines Flight 11 would hit the World Trade Center.

While Rizzuto and her colleagues were watching and reacting to the events unfolding in lower Manhattan — just miles from Newark International — she received a page at 9:25 a.m. that Flight 93 was “missing.” The plane would soon crash in Shanksville, Penn.

In an exclusive interview with Patch, Rizzuto, who currently serves as commissioner of Long Island MacArthur Airport, recalls the events of 9/11 and the friends and co-workers she lost that day.

In video photo credits: Flight 93 memorial flag, Chuck Wagner via honorflight93.org. Photos of Flight 93 hijackers Saeed Alghamdi, Ahmad Ibrahim A. Al Haznawi, Ahmed Alnami and Ziad Samir Jarrah courtesy of the Federal Bureau of Investigations through fbi.gov.