Everybody of a certain age has the events of September 11, 2001 imprinted on their memories. It is one of those life events that people remember exactly where they were and what they were doing at the time the passenger jets crashed into the towers and into the American culture, such as it was.
There is nothing remarkable about my own recollections. I was getting ready to leave my home for the short drive to my office at [redacted]in west Houston. The small TV set was on in my bedroom, tuned to the news as it always was while I prepared to go to work. I had just finished putting my contact lenses in and was heading to the bedroom to turn off the television, grab my purse and car keys and leave the house.
As I approached the TV, I heard the newscasters talking about a plane that had just flown into the World Trace Center in New York. I stopped and looked at the TV screen and sure enough, smoke was billowing out of the upper portion of one of the twin towers. The voices from the television were speculating that a private plane had hit the tower. “How idiotic,” I muttered as I watched for another moment before switching the TV off and leaving the house.
One of my closest friends, [redacted] and I had just discovered and quickly fallen in love with Manhattan two months before, in July. Both of us being musical theater geeks, we had talked for years of going to see shows on Broadway and had finally done it that year, resolving to return. We had spent five days staying in midtown Manhattan, seeing shows, doing traditional touristy sightseeing and reveling in the nightlife until the wee hours of the mornings. The weather was kind to us, providing a July cool front that gave us clear skies, low humidity and highs in the low 80s that lasted for our entire stay. This weather afforded me the opportunity to take a clear picture of the World Trade Center and its surroundings from atop the Empire State Building. I did not know at the time how I would come to cherish that typical tourist photo.
My drive to work on September 11, 2001 was short as usual. I was fortunate to live very close to my office building and this was all by pure coincidence. Houston’s first cool front of the autumn had come early and this morning was bright and pleasant. The sky was cloudless and the sun that glinted off of the glass buildings gave promise to more brisk days ahead. I had the radio tuned to a pop music station in the car, and as a song ended, the DJs began discussing the plane that had flown into the World Trade Center. The talk was somewhat light at first, as it still appeared that someone had just made a very stupid mistake.
The radio station went to another song. Just as I was only yards away from pulling up to the gate at [redacted]’s pleasant wooded compound, the song on the radio stopped suddenly. The male DJ said “We have just gotten word that the second tower in the World Trade Center has been hit by an airplane.”
“Terrorism,” I said aloud immediately. That cinched what had been nagging at the back of my mind since I’d left my home. I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge that possibility and I still didn’t. But there was no way to hide from it now. I proceeded to swipe my card at [redacted]’s gate, park my car and head to my office where I worked as the supply traffic and logistics manager for international chemical plant construction. The morning had just begun to feel strange.
Upon arriving in my small office on the third floor, I heard bits and pieces of conversations about the towers. I greeted co-workers and we talked quietly about it in the hallways, at the coffeepot, speculating on what had happened, wondering who had done this, knowing deep down that the answers would be no surprise to any of us.
The radio in my office was tuned to the classical music station that I listened to most of the time at work. I sipped coffee and read through my e-mails, responding to a couple of them. The radio gave initial chaotic reports about the situation in New York, interspersing them with classical music selections. I hadn’t been at the office for an hour yet when things began to sink in. One of my co-workers went down the hall past my open office door stating that the Pentagon had been hit by an airplane. “No, John, it was the World Trade Center,” I said.
“I just heard that the Pentagon’s been hit, too,” John responded. Just then, the song playing on my radio stopped abruptly. An announcer’s voice said, “We have word that an airplane has crashed into Pentagon. All U.S. airspace has been closed.” I was sitting at my desk and felt as if the floor had dropped out from under me. For a moment, it was very quiet and there was a stark clarity to everything around me. The realization began to dawn. Our nation was under attack.
On the television set in the elevator bank, I watched with a large crowd of co-workers as the first tower in New York crumbled and fell. Feeling nauseated, I went down to the little park in the back of the building to have a cigarette. I had never seen the smoking area so crowded before. I looked at the expressions on people’s faces and suspect mine probably had the same dazed, bordering-on-frightened look as I saw on everyone else.
Just as I arrived back at the elevator bank on the third floor of our building, I saw the second tower fall on TV. The crowd watching was silent. We looked at each other. We shook our heads. We walked away.
Reports kept coming, some false, some true. There had been an explosion at the State Department in Washington. (False.) Another plane crash-landed in a field in Pennsylvania. (Heartbreakingly true.) Gas stations were jammed as people went to fill their tanks out of fear of further disasters. (I did not find this to be the case when I went to the nearby gas station.)
Some of Houston’s skyscrapers were evacuated. People went and collected their children from daycare centers all over the city. At lunchtime, [redacted] finally announced over the PA system that they were sending employees home. “This is not an evacuation,” the disembodied voice assured. “We are closing the building due to today’s events making it difficult to focus on business. Please drive carefully; people are distracted.”
At home, all I could do is stare at the big TV in my living room as they showed the morning’s terrible events over and over again. In mid-afternoon, I finally got my father in Virginia on the phone and was reassured that my sister, brother-in-law and niece in the DC area were safe. I had tried to call several times before, but had gotten a repeated message that all phone circuits were busy.
For a brief time, our nation united as one in its grief. Political differences were put aside and American flags sprouted everywhere. They flew from the fronts of people’s homes, they fluttered from the antennas of cars, they appeared as lapel pins on clothing and airports, shops and restaurants put large flags on their walls. Houston and the rest of the country was a sea of red, white and blue. There was an underlying defiance in this surge of patriotism and in nearly one voice, the nation demanded retribution on Afghanistan’s ruling party, the Taliban and on their co-conspirators, the terrorist group al Qaeda who had been swiftly identified as the perpetrators.
There's more, but this is wordy enough. ;-)
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