25 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Mississippi continues to remember the four people with ties to the state who were among the 2,977 Americans killed that day.
Three of the four were killed when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, while the fourth was killed at the World Trade Center in New York City. Their names were Ada Mason-Acker, Jerry Dickerson, Joe Ferguson, and James Cleere.
Ada Mason-Acker
Mason-Acker, a Picayune native and 1973 graduate of Jackson State University, was working at the Pentagon when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the building.
Mason-Acker began working at the Pentagon in 1980 as a budget analyst for the U.S. Army.
She was also a member of the Alfred Street Baptist Church Choir in Alexandria, Va.
Mason-Acker was survived by her husband and two children.
Jerry Dickerson
Dickerson grew up in Yazoo City and graduated from Durant High School in 1978.
After graduating from Mississippi State University, Dickerson became a systems analyst and a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army.
He was working at the Pentagon when the terrorist attack occurred and was killed when Flight 77 crashed into the building.
Dickerson was survived by his wife and two children.
Joe Ferguson
Ferguson, another Durant High School graduate, was a childhood friend of Dickerson.
After graduating from the University of Southern Mississippi, Ferguson became the director of geography education outreach at the National Geographic Society.
Ferguson was a passenger aboard Flight 77, which was headed to Santa Barbara, Calif., for a sponsored field trip. The plane was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon, killing everyone on board.
Ferguson was survived by his mother.
James Cleere
Cleere was a 1964 graduate of Hattiesburg High School who later moved to Iowa, where he became vice president of Seabury & Smith, an insurance company.
Cleere was in New York City for a meeting at one of the World Trade Center towers. He was staying across the street at the Marriott Hotel and in his room when the first plane struck.
Cleere called his wife, who was at home in Iowa with their three children, and assured her that he would be OK. The two remained on the phone when the second plane struck the World Trade Center. It was their last conversation.
All four Mississippi natives killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are honored at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum at the former World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan.