When I saw this story in my morning newspaper (a NYT paper) I thought it could have been slanted even more negatively against Bush. The upcoming TV stories should be interesting.
9/11 and the following days were weird here in Sarasota. First, they scrambled to fly the President out of the local airport and some folks were concerned that he might be a target here in our town. My wife teaches school and some of the parents picked up their kids early out of fear.
And most people outside of the area don't know this, but we had a strong hit from tropical storm Gabrielle on 9/13. Many people lost their power for four or five days (very frustrating when you know your country is under attack).
On a personal level, I was eating lunch with my elderly mother in her home on 9/12 when she began to have what appeared to be a heart attack (turns out it wasn't). I called an ambulance and rode with her to the hospital. In the emergency room I sat next to her bed, watching split screen news coverage of the fallen Twin Towers and storm coverage of the approaching Gabrielle. I thought, "Terrorists. Tropical storm. Heart attack. What's next?"
It was a time like no other.
At the time, I lived in El Segundo, California. It's mainly an aerospace community, right next to LAX airport. So close, in fact, that when I was home, I could routinely hear the planes power up as they started to head down the runway for takeoff. It was so quiet for a few days (because of the planes being grounded) that I was praying for some noise. It was eerie. I lived behind a pub, and hardly anyone was there. It was Tuesday, so no talk about football...except for maybe the Redskins, Giants and Jets...no talk about baseball...they didn't play for a while, either. And since it was not long after Labor Day, many of the streets still had the patriotic signs and flags up.
I literally lost it almost everytime I saw one, or heard the National Anthem, or God bless the USA. I still tear up, thinking about it now.