"One day, we will think back on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and remember in crystal detail what we were doing when the first plane crashed into the north tower at 8:45 a.m.” The New York Daily News
I will never forget what I was doing on September 11, 2001. Not only the moment I learned that our nation was under attack, but also the moment I realized that it had been changed both physically and psychologically forever. When I arrived at work at around 9:50 that morning, a couple of employees were standing outside the building trying to make calls on their cell phones. I got to my desk, saw my co-worker Rob listening to his radio in his cubicle.
After checking email and sending a couple of IMs, I went downstairs to our technical lab where there was a television set. There, I found the technicians standing in front of the screen watching CNBC. One pointed to the cloud of smoke and told me that one of the tower had just collapsed. Very soon after, an announcement came out on the building’s speakers telling all employees to go home for the day.
On my way out of the garage, I spent about ten minutes sitting in my car waiting in line to get out of the garage. When my car got to the exit of the garage, I had to make a left turn to join the line of traffic leaving the AOL campus. As I sat there waiting for my turn, I heard on the radio that both towers had collapsed. I felt this incredible sense of sadness and helplessness while sitting in my car stuck in traffic and I did what was most natural to me at the moment, I cried. I remember looking straight ahead at the line of cars I was trying to merge with and spotted a convertible I was planning to get in front of. When I made eye contact with its driver and hesaw the tears on my face, he pointed his left index finger toward his ear and made a gesture as to communicate “this is insane.”
I ended up driving to Culpepper for lunch that day before returning to my apartment where I was able to see and smell the smoke coming out of the Pentagon from my window. A few weeks after that Tuesday morning I overheard a conversation where one person predicted that September 11 would become the most studied day in the twenty first century. I believe it. In the days since the attack, I became fascinated with many of the stories that were reported about what different people did that day. The story about the man who was on a floor above where the plane had crashed but made it to safety because he just happened to have chosen the one stairway that had not been destroyed by the wreckage. The man who walked out of the North Tower right around the time the second plane hit the South Tower without realizing that his sister was aboard that second plane. The sister was about to embark on a vacation to Los Angeles with her best friend and ironically the best friend was booked on a different flight, the flight that minutes ago flew into the North Tower.
As sad as I feel every September 11, I wish we never get to a point where we don’t pause to remember this awful anniversary for it serves as a reminder of what was taken from us. Our nation and its people were robbed of something, something that we have longed for since and can never be replaced.
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