September 11, 2001
The summer of 2001 I was a newly college grad(finished with classes). I decided not to graduate until December because I was chosen to be an intern for Congressman James Hansen’s Committee on Natural Resources. I quit working for the Moab Helitack crew a few days before I was to fly out to DC. My parents took me to the airport on the 8th of September, and I flew into Baltimore. I started work on the 10th of September. The day was busy. I was assigned to the Sub-Committee of Public Lands and National Parks. The day was busy, I believe the 10th or 11th of September was the first day of the Congressional session. The Counsel for the Office (I’ll call her Martha) apologized to me that the day was so busy that no one had a chance to really set me straight as to my responsibilities. I was supposed to be to work at 9:00 but I came into work a little after about 8:40. I sat down at my desk facing the television, and started checking through my e-mail. Casey, one of the Committee Clerks had his desk next to mine, and he was watching CNN for some reason (we usually watched Fox News).
Anyway, as I was going through my e-mail and then started on a project, all of a sudden CNN broke into a commercial and you hear a voice over of the anchor saying, “This just in. You are looking at ... obviously a very disturbing live shot there—that is the World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center.” I remember CNN switching to Sean Murtagh, the network’s vice president of finance, who said in a live telephone interview, “I just witnessed a plane that appeared to be cruising at a slightly lower than normal altitude over New York City. And it appears to have crashed into—I don’t know which tower it is—but it hit directly in the middle of one of the World Trade Center towers. It was a jet, maybe a two-engine jet, maybe a 737 ... a large passenger commercial jet ... It was teetering back and forth, wing-tip to wing-tip, and it looks like it has crashed into—probably, twenty stories from the top of the World Trade Center—maybe the eightieth to eighty-fifth floor. There was no visual feed when Murtagh was talking, there was just a the picture, which was amateur---the CNN satellite was on top of the Tower.
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&day_of_9/11=dayOf911Anyway, we sat their stunned. At this point, we didn’t know if it was a terrorist or not. The feelings I first felt were disbelief and then fear. Fear of the unknown, uncertainty of what was going to happen next. We continued watching CNN, the days tasks forgotten. I went back to my e-mail, I had received an e-mail from my father, and I let him know I was okay. Casey and I debated back and forth whether or not it was an accident. We knew that Manhattan airspace was guarded tightly—Casey was convinced it was a terrorist, I agreed but didn’t know for certain. By 9:00 we were both e-mailing, taking phonecalls, but shortly after 9:00 we both were watching CNN and saw the second plane hit the South Tower. The next 45 minutes we spend e-mailing family and watching CNN.
About 30 minutes later the Legislative Director, Todd, walks into our office and looks out the window. He says, come here the Pentagon’s been hit. We see the smoke from our office window. One of our co-worker’s spouse was working at the Pentagon, and she was driven home by her boss, I believe. About 10 minutes after the Pentagon was hit, we were told the Capitol was being evacuated. I go down the hall to grab the other intern (Jackie) that lived with me, and Dina, the other clerk in my office and Martha went over to the Capitol Hill Club. We sit down at a table, and I see one of the buildings go down. We’re then told that the all of Capitol Hill is being evacuated. Martha says for us to go to her house. We walk over there, the weather is a beautiful early fall day, no humidity, blue skies, temps in the 70s or early 80’s. We sit down and turn the channel to CNN. As we’re sitting in Martha’s living room playing with her extremely fat cat (named General Beauregard-she’s southern) we start hearing fighter jets, helicopters etc overhead. A few hours later we see a bus full of troops drive down her street headed toward the Capitol.
We hear about Flight 93, and know without being told that the flight was headed towards DC.
Jackie and I stay at Martha’s until 3:00 pm. All the phones were jammed, but Marth made sure that we got a hold of our parents and told them we were okay. Martha didn’t want us to go on the Metro until we knew that there wouldn’t be anymore attacks. She walked us to the Metro and entrusted us into the care of a congressman from Ohio. I don’t remember much about that trip home except that Jackie tried to give the Congressman a Book of Mormon. We got home, all of our roommates were safe. Later on that evening, we walked a block from our apartment building to see the Pentagon burning (we weren’t across the street—about 1/3 of a mile away away maybebut could see it well).
The next day we all went back to work. Our co-worker Liz Howell found out that her husband was killed in the Pentagon, another co-worker lost a cousin up in New York. We had another co-worker see the plane hit the pentagon, a friend see it too.
A few weeks later we were off for 3 weeks because one of the anthrax laced letters was directly below our office.
I was able to go to New York for the first time on October 20, 2001. We were there to see the Yanks play Seattle. We took the ferry over from Staten Island and my first views of the city were lower Manhattan, looking a little shell shocked and a wisps of smoke. As we got off the ferry, we were overcome by an overpowering smell. Neither of us wanted to see the Trade Tower remains, but we took a wrong turn when we were in lower Manhattan and ended up having to walk by. We saw the church that nearly burned down, the Police Officers that were ushering people by and would yell if you didn’t leave—the feeling was of stillness—even with the sounds of the city in the background. We saw the first mementoes left there from thousands of people. At the game we heard Ronan Tynan sing God Bless America, saw the flag that was raised at the Trade Towers brought forward, and at the end of the game a recording of Frank Sinatra sing “New York, New York.”