It was a normal September day, 20 years ago. The sky was a beautiful robin’s egg blue, that sky that is synonymous with September for me. Catlin was at high school. Al just left for jury duty. I turned on the Today Show, getting ready to walk into my home office and start my day, working for NPR.
Matt and Jane were puzzled, trying to figure out what kind of plane just hit the World Trade Center. They were saying that there seemed to be an awful lot of damage from just a small plane, but what else could it be? Moments later, as we watched the second plane fly into the towers, we realized exactly what it could be. A commercial airliner. The unthinkable unfolded before our eyes.
We soon found out about the attacks on the Pentagon and the downed airliner in Pennsylvania. I called my boss – and good friend – in DC, frantic with worry for my coworkers. He assured me they were fine – for now – and quickly ended the call. Al came home from jury duty. We decided Catlin was safer at school, a decision I’ve always regretted.
When the first tower came down, I thought our world was ending. I loved those towers, and watched the phases of their building with awe. I screamed aloud and sobbed when the second one fell. All I could think of was the people – all those people inside. The first responders, going up the staircases to rescue those who were trapped. Those who looked up from a phone call to register briefly a jet nose huge in their window before they registered nothing at all. Those who made it out, unbelieving that they were physically safe. Their mental safety was another matter.
It was the people who made this personal. Military personnel – we know they face real danger, danger that has the potential to take their lives. But moms and dads working in an office, going to meetings, grabbing their first cups of coffee, sitting in their seats on an early morning flight – those aren’t warriors. They aren’t in mortal combat. They are ordinary people.
They are us.
The personal stories are what I will remember from that long day. My PBS friend who was stuck in traffic and watched in disbelief as AA Flight 77 sheared off a giant light pole as it roared across the freeway in front of her and slammed into the Pentagon. My NPR friends – so many stories. One friend had been in an offsite seminar. For some reason, no one told them what had happened until the day was over. She said they emerged into DC streets full of chaos, so frantic that she expected to see a Godzilla foot rounding the corner. It was a scene from a horror movie come to life. Catlin had summer camp friends whose parents worked in the towers. Thankfully, all safely returned home – but many of their colleagues and neighbors did not.
That night, still shell-shocked, we went to our neighborhood Mexican restaurant for dinner. It was packed with people, surprisingly all wearing red, white, and blue. I felt very out of place in my peach shirt. The next day, those robin’s egg blue skies were empty. All flights over the USA were grounded. It was eerie. Silent. Forever changed.
I became almost obsessed with learning the stories of those who died. I read all the NYTimes series of articles about them. I ordered the 9/11 books when they were published. Alone in my office, I read story after story of survival and death. That’s actually when I started my jewelry business. I had to have another outlet for my spare time – something for my hands to do other than type in research points about 9/11.
This wasn’t something that was a one and done. The effects of 9/11 are far-reaching. It’s taken 20 years for our troops to come home from Afghanistan, and even that was full of trauma. Many of my NPR colleagues in DC turned their bottom lateral file cabinets into storage for their survival gear – their bug out bags, in case the unthinkable reoccured. I never again went in the subway – or any building – without a flashlight.
The Newseum in DC built a large exhibit devoted to 9/11, along with part of the broadcast tower from the top of the North Tower. We lost 6 broadcast engineers when that tower fell, including one from WNET-PBS. Our public radio station, WNYC, was a prominent part of that exhibit. Their staff were heroic, risking their own lives to continue reporting the day’s events and the aftermath, even after their transmitter went down with the North Tower, and their nearby offices had to be evacuated.
I flew back into DC shortly after flights resumed. Catlin was terrified for me to go. I wasn’t totally at ease with it myself. The downtown, convenient National Airport was closed – and the multiple headaches of navigating Dulles Airport and finally reaching downtown DC gave me something else to focus on besides fear. Dulles was filled with soldiers, automatic rifles at the ready. This was the beginning of the searches, random and not. Our world of flight was forever changed.
By some strange circumstance, a photographers’ convention was going on in NYC on 9/11. Some time later, the Smithsonian held an exhibit of their work, taken on that day. The best disaster photographers in the world were in the city, on the scene, documenting the events as they unfolded. The photos were chilling, almost unbelievable, as are so many of the day’s memories.
Everyone has a story about where you were on 9/11. It’s one of the epic events in our nation – along with the moonwalk, Kennedy’s assassination, the Challenger explosion. One of Mike’s and my earliest online conversations was about where we were on 9/11, and the impact it still had on our world several years later. He’d posted a photo on Facebook of an American flag flying proudly from the raised ladder of a fire truck at his oil rig in Prudhoe Bay. Mike and I differed dramatically in our political beliefs, but in the pride and love we had for our nation, we were the same.
Pearl Harbor belonged to our parents and grandparents. 9/11 belonged to us and to our children. I pray that they – and their children – never have another day like this to call their own.
Asking for God’s continued blessings and His healing hands on all Americans – at 62…and beyond.
At 62 