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| Birthday Girl After Drive From Hell |
I find it hard to believe that it's
been seventeen years since the 9/11 attacks. That's more time than between
World War 2 and when I was born. I was at the Pentagon that beautiful September
morning that turned so ugly. I publish the same words here(see below) each year
so we don't forget there are still wolves out there and we can never become so complacent
to think otherwise even with the very distracting domestic situation we're
living under these days.
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| My View for 3+ Hours Yesterday |
I got a first-hand look at what has
become the standard Panamanian protest technique yesterday on my trip back to
David from Las Lajas. The Panamanian teacher's union is upset about lack of
government support in getting them to some of the most remote areas of Panama
where they're required to teach. Yesterday they closed down the Inter-American
Highway for three+ hours. I know this because I was sitting in the backup for
all of that time. There are no alternate routes. I felt bad because it was my mother
in law's birthday as we sat there with nothing to do but wait. After that very
long wait when traffic finally did get moving a number of drivers had left
their cars so it was like a slalom course as the thousands of cars got moving
again – right into the most ferocious thunder storm I've ever seen in Panama and
that is quite a statement in itself. During the time cars started inching
forward the truck directly in front of me must have tapped the small car in
front of him. The truck driver got out to look at the damage and the small car
then purposely backed into the truck with a lot of force at least three times
doing a lot more damage to himself than the truck. It was a good indication of the
level of frustration involved.
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| Finally Started Moving |
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| Right into looming Storm |
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| Dinner with my Favorite Panamanian at El Fogon Helped |
Our normal one hour trip from the
condo turned into a five hour odyssey which had me in a less than stellar mood
and looking of a couple of teachers to punch. A quick trip for dinner at El
Fogon and then returning to find the house full of my wife's family assembled
to extend birthday wishes helped a lot to assuage the frustration of the drive.
Two hours of consistent laughter will do that for you.
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.
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| 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 protestors 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.
