So today is September eleventh. Of course nobody calls it that – we all call it nine eleven. It has been seven years since the 09/11. There wasn’t much talk of the terrorist attacks today. There was the dedication of the memorial at the Pentagon, which obviously generated some news coverage. But in terms of Twitter and just general conversation today it didn’t come up much. Maybe it’s a good thing that it doesn’t weigh on our minds as much now – at least for some people.
Micah said this morning that he thought it would be interesting to hear where people were on 09/11/01. I’ve probably told “my story” dozens of times but I’m not sure I ever wrote it down. Here goes.
On the morning of 09/11/01 (it was Tuesday, right?) I drove to work in my 1988 white Honda Accord. Our office was in Clarendon at the time (the building doesn’t even exist anymore) and it was about a 20 minute drive for me. Back then I often brought my dog Scout to the office with me – but I don’t remember him being there that day. I parked under the building (it was up on stilts) and walked up the flight of stairs to the second floor.
On the ride in I had been listening to the radio and there had been no mention of anything. When I walked into the reception area of our office (if you can call it that – i was pretty sketchy) my brother, Brian, was walking out of the room where he sat (the office had basically two large multi-person rooms, a conference room, a kitchen area, a small lounge/tv/darts room, a nook for the servers, and a fairly useless reception area) and into the TV room. He said something like, “turn on the news, Drew says there’s something going on in New York.” Or maybe he specifically mentioned the World Trade Center – I don’t remember. The story was that Drew (Brian’s friend who worked in Charlottsville, VA) was on a conference call (or someone Drew works with was on a conference call) with someone working in the WTC when the first plane hit. I have no idea if that’s even true – that’s just how the story has been told. Anyway, Drew had IMed Brian so Brian went to flip on the TV.
At that point I guess the first plane had just hit. We saw a long distance shot of the WTC with smoke rising – it must have been a camera from NJ – it was far away. There wasn’t any on-scene reporting, I think it was just a voice over by the news anchor. At that point they were reporting that it was a small plane that had hit the building. We watched for a while, talking about what could be going on. Then, as we were watching, we saw an explosion. Initially, like many people, due to the camera angle we thought maybe it was related to the first airplane – that the explosion was in the same building as the crash.
As my mind was registering what I saw I was also thinking about what I thought I had seen right before the explosion. I thought I had seen a small plan flying in the distance behind the buildings. I had assumed that it was trying to get a look at the original accident and that it was probably a government plane. It didn’t take me long to realize that what I had seen was a plane flying into the building and causing a large explosion. I’m not sure how long it took before we realized that this wasn’t a small plane but a 767.
At that point I immediately assumed something bad was happening. That this was being done on purpose. Strangely, the news people kept speculating that it could be a navigational problem. Maybe some radio somewhere wasn’t working right and it was guiding planes into the building. That seemed ridiculous to me. It was a beautiful, sunny, bright blue clear sky day.* For all their technology and automation, planes are still flown by people – by pilots – and a pilot would not fly into a building on a clear day because a computer told him to. Eventually the news folks started to conclude that the planes must have been hijacked. (My dad later told me that as soon as he heard about it he knew the pilots weren’t flying the planes – a pilot would not fly a plane into a building.)
So by this point we’re all starting to wonder what is going on. I called my mom. My dad was a pilot for United Airlines. On the morning of 09/11/01 he was piloting an Airbus 320 from Seattle to L.A. My mom was worried and so was I – we had no way of getting in touch with him, he was in the air.
Not much long after that came the reports of a situation a the Pentagon. The first reports I heard said that a helicopter had crashed at the Pentagon. It wasn’t long before we started hearing emergency vehicles streaming past our office.* Our office was about 2.5 miles from the Pentagon. If you were going to drive from the Pentagon to Arlington Hospital you would drive past our office. I’m not sure how long it was before they were reporting that it was actually an airplane that hit the Pentagon.
I think it was about that time that the news report on TV got crazy. At one point they reported a car bomb at the State Department. They said that there was a fire on the National Mall. They said that up to 10 airlines were unaccounted for.
My dad was still flying around up there. I tried to call my mom. The lines were busy. A while later my mom called me. What was Pop’s flight number? Had we heard from him? Were we sure he was in the air, maybe his flight was canceled? After a quick chat with mom I want back to watching TV. She called back two seconds later – oh, she had meant to call my other brother. We were all a bit frazzled.
Then my wife called me. She had been out at George Mason University and was driving into DC for a meeting. She was hearing about things on the radio but didn’t really know what was going on. I told her to just go home – nobody would be going to a meeting in DC today. She was worried because she didn’t have the number of the people she was to meet with. I assured her that nobody would expect her to make a meeting in DC.
In fact people were streaming out of DC. Outside our office dozen of people in suits and business clothes were walking home. The metro was packed or closed or something – so people were just walking.
My wife’s dad works at Naval Research Labs and sometimes has meetings at the Pentagon. We didn’t hear from him for a while but eventually got news that he was heading home but was just stuck in traffic.
I think while I was on the phone with my wife I watched the first WTC tower fall. I truly couldn’t believe what I was seeing. For me, like for many, I think watching the first tower fall changed the day from terrible to truly unbelievable.
Strangely, my specific memories from about that time start to fade. We kept watching the TV. I remember watching the second tower fall. At one point we ran up the stairs and kicked open the door to the roof so we could see the fighter planes flying over DC. The news reports were all over the place so it was hard to say what was going on.
Eventually I decided to head home to be with my wife. It must have been early afternoon. I don’t remember when I heard about the crash in Pennsylvania. I don’t even remember when we got word that my dad’s flight had been diverted to Seattle and that he was fine – I think it was around 2pm and I guess by then we felt fairly confident that he was okay. (By the way, he was in the air when the hijackings happened and his story is quite amazing – at one point he worried he had hijackers on his plane. I’ll tell his story another day.)
I guess that’s my 9/11 story.
* Strangely (or maybe not) there are two things, that to this day, always remind me of 9/11. Even now, whenever I hear sirens on emergency vehicles (especially if it’s a lot of them at the same time) a part of me looks around and wonders if they’re going to just another emergency or if something bigger is going on. Also, on those perfect sunny days, where the sky is bright blue and there are no clouds, when the temperature is just right and you think to yourself, “my this is an amazingly beautiful day” – every time we have one of those days I think about 9/11.
