9/11

What is it that makes big anniversaries special?  They feel different than other days, even other anniversaries.  The 10th anniversary of 9/11 is here.  This one is affecting me more than any other anniversary, except maybe the first one, and I expect others feel the same way.  I just wanted to take a bit to tell my personal story of that day.  I am very lucky, I did not have any friends or family who were harmed, but of course we all went through that terrible day together and share in the great pain of the worst day imaginable.  

The weekend before 9/11 was Labor Day and I was actually in New York with my friend Andrea visiting our friend Laurie.  While we were there we bought tickets for the double-decker bus tour.  It was an absolutely gorgeous weekend, perfect weather, and everywhere we rode we were on the upper deck.  The bus drives all over New York and I remember a lot of the places we stopped, but I have a very distinct memory of driving under the twin towers.  The bus route took us in between the two towers and passed right under the connector bridge – the bridge had a round mirrored bottom and you could look up and see a distorted image of yourself as you passed underneath.  I remember sitting on top of the bus, looking up at the bridge and the tall towers above it, and seeing a flash of sunlight cut through as we passed.  Beautiful image. 

At the time Laurie lived in Hoboken, NJ, and the afternoon I left we walked to the harbor and looked across to Manhattan.  I snapped two pictures of the island, one of the Empire State Building and the other of the World Trade Center.  Those snapshots are in a photo album in storage in Dallas.  I wish I had them to look at today.

The next week, the following Tuesday, I was getting ready for work.  I was in the shower and heard my phone ring; I remember thinking this was unusual, people didn’t call me at home at that hour.  I looked at my caller ID and saw that it had been Andrea, but she didn’t leave me a voice mail so I didn’t call her back right away.  A few minutes later my phone range again, it was my mother.  She asked if I had my t.v. on, I didn’t.  She said to turn it on, that we were being attacked by terrorists.  Those words, while I understood what she was saying literally, didn’t really make a true impact.  I couldn’t understand what this meant, I had no prior framework in my mind to take it in.  I turned on the t.v. and saw the burning buildings.  I threw some clothes on, I don’t think I really dried my hair, and ran to work.  At the time I lived and worked in downtown Dallas and my commute was only about 10 minutes.  By the time I got there, the Pentagon had been hit.  Only then did it really sink in what was happening. 

There was panic in the office.  Two of our senior engineers had traveled to New York on business and their meeting that morning was scheduled in one of the towers.  No one had heard anything from them.  Everyone was standing around listening to radios or watching what was going on online.  The south tower fell.  Flight 93 crashed.  The north tower fell.  Still no word from our engineers.  Our chairman, Fred Sewell, came on over the PA system and led the entire office in prayer for our two coworkers and our country.  I don’t remember his exact words, but I remember his voice.  Strained and prayerful.  People were stopped in the hallway, in their office, wherever they stood, bowed in prayer.   To me, nothing else touches such a moment like prayer.   

A while later a phone call came in to the front desk.  It was from no one we knew, but this person had a working cell phone.  He said he had two men with him, covered in dust, but alive.  Scott and Tom, I believe, were in the south tower, the first one hit and the second one to fall.  In the building, they didn’t know exactly what was happening – the fire alarm was going off.  They shut down their laptops and packed up their things.  Put their coats on.  Started making their way down the stairs.  I imagine at some point the urgency of the situation became more clear.  They did make it all the way down the stairs and outside.  After they got outside the tower fell, and they rushed into a nearby subway station for cover.  Amazingly, they had survived.  I don’t remember how long it took them to get out of the city or how they did it (I think they ended up driving a rental car), but when Tom arrived back in his office his team had taken large sheets of paper and completely covered up the windows of his office.  We worked on the 45^th floor and they drew pictures of houses and people and trees to make it look like he was on the ground floor. 

After we knew our coworkers were okay, I left the office and went back to my apartment and packed a bag to go to my parents’ house.  While I was walking down the hallway to my place, I heard a loud noise that made me cringe with terror.  For a brief moment I thought it was the roar of an airplane engine.  It wasn’t, it was someone rolling their suitcase down the old wood floors of my 1913 building, the sound echoing through the hallway.  I left and drove towards my parents’ house, and on my way I passed by four giant American flags that flew on the lot of a car dealership right alongside the highway.  They were at half-mast. 

I spent the rest of the day at my parents’ house trying to contact friends who lived in New York or D.C.  I heard from Laurie’s mother that she was okay.  I heard from my dear friend Casey in D.C., she was okay.  I got an email from Gretchyn, whose father worked in the Pentagon, he was okay.  In a day of so much death, I was incredibly grateful for this.  I then took two Tylenol PMs, I just wanted to sleep, to get away from it.  When I woke up a few hours later, it was already dark.  I watched the coverage with my parents for a while to catch up on what was happening.  That night my father and I walked outside and looked up at the night sky.  It was absolutely still and quiet.  Not a sound in the street, not a plane in the sky.  Never before had I experienced such a quiet sky, and I hope to never again. 

As I think back on the day and watch the coverage leading up to the 10th anniversary, it always strikes me that in a matter of hours, we saw the absolute worst and absolute best that we as humans are capable of.   Utter evil.  Absolute personal sacrifice to help others.  Both bring me to tears.

I miss my home country today.