Crime & Safety

Lilburn Remembers 9/11: Judy and Dave Adanich

Because of the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, a Lilburn couple has become passionate about fire safety, and together they volunteer about 40 hours a week to the county's fire department.

Dave Adanich was only a day away from retiring after 38 years with AT&T, where the television was always tuned to the news. He remembers looking at the screen and seeing a plane flying into one of the twin towers.

"I'm going to kill those guys," Adanich remembers thinking about his co-workers. "They've got the TV on a movie channel." After all, this couldn’t be real, could it?

In the nightmarish hours and days that followed, Adanich and his wife, Judy, listened to President George Bush exhort the nation to get involved, to step up and help our country.

Find out what's happening in Lilburn-Mountain Parkwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

“Where do I fit? What do I do?," Judy remembers thinking. 

"As a country, we were totally unprepared for that," she says of the terrorist attacks. "We just never saw anything like that. It was a wake-up call." Officials were telling us to be prepared, she said. "Well, how?" She asked. "There's nothing in place for that."

Find out what's happening in Lilburn-Mountain Parkwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Soon after, Dave began taking Community Emergency Response Team training, and then Citizen’s Fire Academy and Citizen’s Police Academy classes. Over time, working with the fire department became the Lilburn couple’s passion. Now, they each volunteer about 20 hours a week with the Gwinnett County Fire Department, doing clerical and administrative work.

Judy, 61, is president of the Gwinnett Citizen’s Fire Academy Alumni Association, which works to educate children on fire safety and dealing with fire emergencies.

The couple figures they’d still be pursuing their hobbies of making stained-glass windows, reading and volunteering for this and that, as they always have, if 9/11 hadn’t happened.

“Working with safety is different,” Judy said. “And we’ve become passionate about fire safety.”

Editor's note: This is the first of a series of articles on how 9/11 has affected Lilburn citizens. Please email theresa.waldrop@patch.com to tell your 9/11 story.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

To request removal of your name from an arrest report, submit these required items to arrestreports@patch.com.