For Michael Linnington, serving as Grand Marshal of Saturday’s New York Veterans Day parade is distinctly personal — because of a shared 9/11 history.
The CEO of the Wounded Warrior Project was inside the Pentagon in Washington, DC, when American Airlines Flight 77 struck, around 45 minutes after the first plane hit NYC’s World Trade Center.
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” recalled Linnington, a retired lieutenant general who served 35 years in the Army. “I just happened to be on the good side of the building that wasn’t hit by the hijackers.
And while he will lead the parade of 20,000 marchers along Fifth Avenue, between 26th and 47th streets in Manhattan, Linnington, 65, told The Post: “It’s not about me. It’s really about the veterans who serve, and about the 4 million who have served and sacrificed since 9/11.”
Nine months after 9/11, as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, Linnington was serving in Afghanistan, where he commanded the Army’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division. He later led the famed Screaming Eagles during Operation Dragon Strike, the initial advance into Iraq in early 2003.
“It was a really tragic time for the country,” Linnington said. “But in the 20 years since then, you know, 4 million young people have said: ‘Take me.’
“And 7,000 have been killed, 56,000 have been wounded, and hundreds of thousands [have] invisible wounds,” Linnington said of US soldiers since 9/11. “That’s why we do what we do at the Wounded Warrior Project.”
This year marks 20 years since the nonprofit’s founding as an altruistic effort to deliver backpacks to wounded vets at Walter Reed Medical Center in Maryland.
Decades later, Florida-based WWP runs longterm rehabilitative programs for vets from its 25 offices nationwide with roughly 930 full-time employees and thousands of volunteers.
Linnington left active duty in 2015 and joined the group a year later, shifting his focus from tracking terrorists to serving severely wounded veterans.
Now the New Jersey native and West Point graduate, who shares two children and three grandchildren with his wife of 42 years, plans to retire as CEO nonprofit in early 2024, but is relishing his curtain call to lead veterans from all branches of service through Manhattan.
“I don’t want our country to forget the importance of supporting our veterans,” Linnington said. “It’s critical because when they come home, they need community support to help them transition.
“I want young people to know that military service is still an incredible opportunity to serve your country, improve your way of life and contributing to something greater than yourself,” he added. “Kids in high school today weren’t even born when the towers were hit. So for them, we have to remind them how important it is to serve and sacrifice.”
Most returning soldiers, however, do not want to be “put on a pedestal,” Linnington explained.
“They see it as a personal commitment,” he said. “They’re normal, everyday citizens — they’re neighbors, they’re friends, family members, coworkers, community leaders. When they come home, some of them don’t even like the saying ‘Thank you for your service.’ They just want to be normal, everyday citizens.”
The men and women who commit their lives to protecting Americans domestically and abroad deserve nothing less, Linnington said.
“We owe them our support when they come home and take off their uniform,” he said. “We don’t owe them charity — we just owe them opportunities to continue to contribute, to be fathers, to be leaders, to have good jobs. We owe them a smooth reintegration into the communities where they settle.”
The public’s perception of veterans has changed drastically since the US invaded Vietnam in 1965, although there’s still room to grow even more positive, Linnington said.
“I think today, you know, veterans walking through an airport get thanked for their service,” he said. “They get their lunches bought for, they’re not shying away from wearing the uniform. And of course, during the Vietnam War, that was not the case — it was the opposite.”