I had to go back
outside today to correctly lower my flag in remembrance of September 11. It’s
so weird to think that it happened nearly twenty years ago but it is a day I
will never forget. As I do very year, I include below my memories from that day
when I was running by the Pentagon when it blew up. It’s important to keep
these memories alive for people who didn’t experience them because it continues
to influence our daily lives. Even in these divisive times I remember the
aftermath of a united country and that gives me hope.
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The Birthday Girl With All her Callers
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Before all that
though I want to tell you about my mother-in-law’s birthday surprise. My wife
and her siblings conspired to have all of her children, grandchildren, and
great grandchildren online to sing happy birthday for her. They told her they
were going to take a birthday picture of her and when she walked into the room
she was presented with three screens filled with the aforementioned descendants.
It was heart warming to see her eyes fill with tears at what she was seeing. The
callers ranged form both the east (us) and west coast of the USA as well as Panama
City.
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The View From Our End
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Getting the call
organized was a study in absolute chaos due to the limited technical ability of
the organizers as well the inherent chaotic tendencies of anything Panamanian planned.
As usual though they brought it together for a truly memorable event for my mother-in-law.
My Favorite Son hung in through the trials and tribulations of getting it
started despite suffering from a bad migraine. My daughter spent a lot of the
call chasing down the FBR who claimed to be camera shy (riiiiiiight!). The BRS
emerged as one of the true heroes of the call as she loved seeing all the different
people (and cats) assembled and kept saying “happy birthday”. A very good birthday
present which wouldn’t have happened outside of Pandemia and everybody’s increased
comfort with video calls. Now to my annual re telling.
The words below are the same I publish each year on September 11 to remember that day in 2001. I was assigned to the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. I remember a beautifully clear day where the oppressive summer Washington, DC heat was finally gone. We had recently dropped off my daughter for her freshman year at Boston University, my son was a junior in high school, and my wife worked at an adult day care facility in Northern Virginia. I was actually in a satellite office in Crystal City while our Pentagon offices were refurbished. My morning routine was to head out for a run along the Potomac River where there was a nice running trail. I ran around the Pentagon and glanced over at the helipad where I had taken several trips out of and then wound my way down to the river. I had just reached the river, on the opposite side of the Pentagon from the helipad, and turned south when I heard a very loud bang. There was always a lot of construction going on in nearby Crystal City so I initially thought that someone had used a little too much explosive for a new roadway. |
Red X is Where the Plane Went in, Blue Line is my Running Route that Day
Yellow X is Where I was When the Plane Hit |
As I continued my run I heard police sirens blooming from every direction. I reached a gap in the trees and could see a column of smoke rising from the Pentagon. I had just about reached the point where the running trail nears National Airport and I was greeted by a truly surreal sight. The airport, in reaction to the earlier attacks in New York City, was being emptied. People, with their luggage in tow, were wandering down the running trail with no real sense of where they were going, only that they had been ordered to leave the terminal. I gave directions to the nearest hotel to some and then headed back to my office, by now the sirens were almost deafening and traffic had come to a complete stop in both directions on the nearby George Washington Parkway. When I reached my office I learned the true scope of the disaster and watched the towers fall on a TV someone had set up in their cubicle. There were a series of follow up explosions as transformers blew up in reaction to the Pentagon disaster. A couple guys and I made our way over to the Pentagon to see if we could help with any evacuation but the area was already cordoned off. We helped the rapidly growing casualty collection in the south parking lot; there were a lot of dazed civilian workers. The military, even those wounded, were trying to help out; we all realized we had just gone to war. Eventually we were ushered away as more of the professional emergency workers showed up. I returned to my office and decided it would be a good idea to let my family know I was alive. I called my wife who had heard and was just about to go into full blown panic mode. I called Boston University because I didn’t have my daughter’s dorm room number with me and when I explained where I was calling from the operator connected me directly, even though that wasn’t usually allowed. I spoke with my daughter’s roommate who promised to find my daughter and let her know. A similar call to my son’s high school followed by a call to my mother’s house. I had to leave a message there since she out shopping and she later told me that was the best phone message she ever received because she had convinced herself I had been killed after hearing the news on the car radio.
All buses, my normal way home, were shut down at the Pentagon. Washington DC was shutting down and everybody was released from work at the same time. I went to the Metro station and waited while five different trains, packed to the gills, went by until I was able to squeeze into one. I rode it as far as I could and then walked up to a nearby mall where I could wait for my wife to come pick me up. I sat in a bar and watched the day’s events unfold on TV. One of the other patrons claimed to have been driving on I-395 and saw the plane plow into the Pentagon. He said he would never forget seeing the airline lettering so clear and so close. The plane went right into the area near the helipad, where I had run ten minutes before. After an hour the entire mall closed and I had to go wait outside a bookstore, also closed, for about two hours before my wife was able to get me. One of the most memorable and cherished things from that horrible day were the phone calls we received all that night as friends and family from around the world, knowing I was assigned to the Pentagon, called to insure I was okay. My wife was a little shocked the next day when I told her I was going back to work but I needed to, I was so angry. It didn’t help when I arrived at the Pentagon, smoke still rising with bodies still unrecovered, that I was greeted by a group of protesters reveling in the destruction. It took a lot of self-restraint not to kick some serious ass at that point. I was so glad Clinton was out of office because I knew he would have been incapable of making the tough decisions required by this act. He would have thrown a few cruise missiles and called it a day.
We, as a nation, learned that day that there are some people who cannot be reasoned with and needed to die; that was the only way to end the threat and that you couldn’t do it from a distance. I also remembered the way the country came together for a short time and I felt glad my kids were around to see it; to see what a united America was like. This eroded over time as the politicians felt safe enough to stop cooperating again, but it did happen. It was another object lesson for evil as well, don’t wake up the sleeping giant, when you do, be prepared to experience unprecedented wrath. These were my memories of the day when everything changed, but maybe not enough.
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RECURRING CHARACTERS
BR3 – granddaughter #3, BRS - Blog Reader the Sequel - second granddaughter; FBR - First Blog Reader - first
granddaughter, ABFA – Amazing Best
Family Athlete = my daughter in law; Wingman
– my son in law; Keene Friends 1 & 2
– friends since high school from my home town of Keene, NH; Soxfather - my brother in law; Great Aunt - my elder sister; Cantankerous Friend – friend since
grade school who likes to argue about everything, poses as radical leftist to
attract women; Pittsburgh College
Roommate – high school friend, also a “Minor Celebrity” in Pittsburgh; Deckzilla – our backyard deck which
grew to monstrous dimensions once my wife got involved in planning; Maine and Virginia Musqueteras – two
close friends of my wife – her US sisters, my wife is the 3rd musquetera
(musketeer); Riggins - also known as
the Grandpuppy, son's dog; PanaGals
– female relatives/friends of my wife from Panama; Panamanian/Latin Mafia – inevitable group of Latino friends my wife
accumulates wherever we have lived & their spouses; Neighborhood Mafioso - wife's close friend and Panamanian mafia
member, Favorite Panamanian - the
wife (of course); First Friday –
celebrations to mark the First Friday of the Week; Curbside Girls – close friends of my daughter acquired during her
single days in Brooklyn
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