SULLIVAN - As television's multichannel universe fills with wall-to-wall replays of catastrophe on the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, at least two families 600 miles apart in Sullivan and Clifton, Va., will be reaching anxiously for their remote controls.

And turning the tube off.

Ruth Godwin, who lives in Sullivan, has no desire to watch endless footage of passenger jets smashing into buildings on the nightmare day she lost her son, Capt. Jack Punches. He worked for Navy intelligence in the Pentagon and died when American Airlines Flight 77 hurtled into his office at 350 mph at 9:40 a.m. The impact and resulting fireball killed 184 people - 59 passengers and crew on the plane, and 125 people in the building including the 50-year-old Punches, a father of two.

"Every day is Sept. 11 for me - I don't need to watch it again on TV," said Godwin, 76.

"I prefer to remember how Jack lived his life, not how he died."

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Janice Punches is the teenage sweetheart from Pana who was married to the captain for 28 years and still lives in the home they shared in Clifton, Va.

Her children, Jeremy, 25, and Jennifer, 29, will be both be working and so mom is faced with spending at least part of the anniversary day on her own. She plans to leave the TV dark on Monday and head to nearby Chestnut Grove Cemetery in Herndon where her husband is buried.

"It's going to be hard," said the 55-year-old widow. "I'll probably go with a friend. My family and I wanted him in Chestnut so he would be close to home. We didn't want him buried in Arlington because we want to be able to go and visit him when we want to and, a lot of times, when there is something official going on at Arlington you can't get in there."

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Family and country were what mattered in the life of Jack Punches. He grew up in Tower Hill surrounded by women - after her first marriage ended, his mom married Leon Godwin when her son was two, and her new husband had two girls of his own, Shirley and Kaye. In the coming years they would be joined by sisters Janet, Ilena and Debbie, to create a family everyone in it recalls as boisterous, fun, and full of affection.

"My brother would sit at night and make up a roster for the track meet us kids were going to have the next day," recalled Ilena Godwin, 49, who now shares a beautifully decorated Victorian house with her mom. "We had a baseball diamond, a football field, a track field and we played together and grew up together. Boys came over but we were always together as kids. Our house has always been - and probably always will be - full of family and friends."

Her brother was the only guy in the class of 12 graduating from Tower Hill High School in 1969; he ended up taking all 11 classmates to the prom. His small-town schooling became the launching point for an extraordinary career that saw Punches endure and accomplish much: to help pay for college, he entered the Navy ROTC program while earning an engineering degree at the University of Missouri. Fellow students protesting the Vietnam War threw garbage at him when he turned up for class in uniform.

His military career would involve tough assignments piloting P-3 submarine hunter aircraft during the Cold War while he logged some 7,000 flight hours and 50 carrier landings. He held command positions during the Persian Gulf War but colleagues recalled how he always put his family first. Assignments that would have put him on the flight path to much higher rank were turned down because they would mean too much time away from the wife and kids.

He retired from the Navy in 2000 after a career of 28 years but later that year was back working for Uncle Sam again, this time flying a desk in the Pentagon where he helped lead a team coordinating Navy efforts in counter-drug and emergency relief operations.

"I've heard him say so many times that there was never a morning he didn't walk out of his house in his uniform and not feel proud," said his mom. "He said his family was the only thing he loved more than his nation; and those were not just words to Jack; he meant them."

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Punches often returned to his Central Illinois roots, coming back in May 2001 for a Tower Hill alumni dinner at which he gave a speech honoring local servicemen. Much to his surprise and delight, he was chosen as alumnus of the year.

Punches had family throughout the area and remained particularly close to Leon Godwin, giving the eulogy at his father's funeral in March 2001. He would stop by in Sullivan to say hello to the family of his biological father, Jack Punches Sr., who remained fiercely proud of his son until his death at the age of 78 in October 2005. The captain always enjoyed a special relationship with his paternal grandparents, Floyd and Marie Punches, and visited regularly. They attended a memorial service in Virginia in October 2001 for their grandson and Marie, described at the time by family as ill and grief-stricken, would die in November of that year.

Her heartbroken husband, married to her for more than 70 years, outlived his wife by six months and died in May 2002 at the age of 95.

Ilena Godwin says the tragic ripples from 9/11 reached far and wide and, while she doesn't care to watch those TV images any more than her mother, she understands the urgent need never to forget.

"Part of me does believe it should all be played again and again and again," she added. "Because it's something we should never lose sight of; I don't want to watch it, but I don't want it and all the pain it caused to ever be forgotten, either."

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In Washington, D.C., the remembering is being done officially with a vast monument under construction outside the Pentagon. Janice Punches was among the family members who helped choose the design. But she's now eased away from too many intense meetings with fellow grieving wives, spouses and children, because she finds it can help keep the pain alive rather than heal it.

"Looking back today, I never thought my family and I would get to the point where we are now, and by that I mean that we are healing about as well as we can heal," she explained. "We still miss Jack terribly and I still go out to dinner once a month with my support group but there for a while I was going two or three times a week and I wasn't healing, I was constantly sad. An emotional scab would start to form but then I would just go and rip it off again. For myself, I had to back away a little."

There are meaningful mementoes linked to her husband everywhere she looks, however. While she is speaking on the phone, she says Merica, a golden retriever, is curled up at her feet. The dog takes its patriotic name from America without the "A" and was bought in May 2002 at the urging of friends who thought it would help cheer her up. She has another 13-year-old golden retriever called Jellybean who mourned her husband as keenly as any family member. "It was so sad, she would wait and look every day for him to come home again," Punches said.

She says her children continue to do well and, both now married but no grandchildren yet, they have gone on to build successful lives for themselves. Jennifer is enjoying a career in advertising and her brother, a business major, switched orientation radically after his father's death and studied "bio-terrorism" for his master's degree.

"He wanted to work in Homeland Security and, while he's not actually in that department, he is now working for the government," said his mom. "He is very patriotic and definitely wanted to do something for his father, who would be very proud of him."

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So, five years on, just where is America at in the eyes of those touched so directly by the tragedy of 9/11?

Janice Punches sense of security was shattered so badly she didn't think she would ever have the courage to get on a plane again. She drove all the way back to Sullivan for the funeral of her husband's grandmother but, within six months of 9/11, she had gathered the courage needed to fly. With her parents now living in Shelbyville and so many relatives back here, it was a practical necessity.

She's under no illusions, however, that we live in a more secure world. "If it's going to happen, it's going to happen," she says of catastrophe. "I used to think that was a crazy statement but now I really believe that if it's your time to go, that is when you are going to go."

The other day she was out somewhere and encountered a 10-strong group of foreign-speaking young men gathered at the bottom of an escalator, and felt instantly afraid. "I was worried, I wondered what they were doing," she recalled. "And then I thought 'There used to be a time when I would not have even noticed them.' I don't think we'll ever feel safe again."

She's also concerned by what's happening to the country her husband spent so much of his life protecting. She worries about everything from the economy to gas prices and is anguished by the steady toll taken by the occupation of Iraq.

"We're in a mess," she said. "It chills me. I read the obituaries everyday of all these boys dying over there I just feel so sad. I think we should bring them home and leave those crazy people alone over there."

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Back in Sullivan, her mother-in-law has similar views. She believes the effort to corner Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan - whom she regards at the chief architect of her son's death - was left unfinished when the military was ordered to switch its attention to Iraq. "I feel resentful we still don't have bin Laden," she said. "I want him brought to trial."

Her support for the men and women who wear their country's uniform remains "forever 100 percent" but, like her daughter-in-law, she thinks Iraq is a disaster. "Soldiers follow orders, they go where the government sends them," she said. "And I sure do have some questions for the policymakers who sent them to that mess in Iraq."

She also reads the obituaries of the fallen and wishes, if only for a moment, she could talk to each and every mother whose son comes back in a flag-draped casket. "I know there are no words to help a mother with a broken heart, none," she added. "But I would like to just tell them that I understand your heartache, I really, really, understand it."

Tony Reid can be reached at treid@herald-review.com or 421-7977.