Five Years Ago Today - [Matthew]
Five years ago today, almost at the exact moment as I write this, the course of American history changed when terrorists hijacked and crashed three airliners on our soil.
So much has been written about the signficance of this event that I don't think anything can be added to it. Except this... our stories.
My recollection of that day is very simple and I will post it here soon. In the meantime, we would be honored if you would share your experiences on that day. A poem, a sentence, an essay, whatever.
There is power in words and in sharing stories. It is a central part of the human experience. I look forward to growing closer to our extended podcast community around the country and world as we hear these words and stories.
[end ping]
posted by Etcetera at 9:11 AM
4 Comments:
That day hit me HARD.
First off, I grew up NJ right outside NYC, so that was home for me. At that time though, I was living in Virginia working in Washington DC, a few blocks away from the Capitol. I worked in the DOT headquarters building then. I remember taking a break outside, it was a beautiful fall day. So when I was coming back in from break, I see on the TV one of the Twin Towers was hit by a plane. My initial reaction was "WTF????"
So I go back in the office and tell my coworkers. Then at the time the 2nd plane hit, I started hearing a commotion out in the halls. I go out to see a bunch of people around the TV just staring, no words. Then panic started to kick in. The image of the burning buildings just gives me the chills. So we're all out there and then the 1st building collapses. Now I'm REALLY freaking out. I couldn't get a hold of my emotions and figure out whether to just burst out crying or panic. (Just writing this is giving me chills remembering it.) Then came the news the Pentagon got hit. The Pentagon was only a few miles away from work. Then came the word that the buildings were getting shut down and we had to leave IMMEDIATELY. When I went out to the street, the scene was unreal. Fire engines blaring their sirens driving all around. Mobs of people outside on the street. It was similar to something from a movie like Deep Impact. Now I'm trying to call my wife but can't get a cell phone signal. All the streets were closed so there was no way of me getting back home to Virginia anytime soon. But the Metro was still running. I got on the train and took it back to the stop near my apartment complex. That train ride was terrifying. I kept picturing a bomb going off on the train or something. Combine that fear with my emotions replaying what happened on TV and thinking about all the people, I was an emotional wreck. I finally was able to make a cell phone call on the train to tell my wife to meet me at the stop. When I finally got off the Metro, I remember seeing my wife in the parking lot, going in the car, hugging her tightly, and I started bawling. When we finally drove back to our apartment complex, the atmosphere was different. No people jogging or riding bikes like you normally saw. No kids playing outside like normal. No one in the basketball courts. Just dead silence, except for the mom yelling to her kid to get back inside right away. It was eerie.
Changed? That day changed me like you wouldn't believe....
9/11 Heresy
My daughter was nine-months old and neither of my sons were born (or conceived for that matter). I remember waking my wife after switching on the television in the front room - it was a small window of time between leaving work and starting seminary.
I joined the event between the first and second towers as everyone debated whether there was some strange accident. But then the second plane hit and news of Pennsylvania and the Pentagon came through.
Strange. Surreal, is perhaps the right word.
And it remains surreal because there aren't normal categories for such events. We all created one on that day - and in the days following.
Then the categories got all screwed up as we tried to digest it, so I'm not sure what it all meant and what it all means.
Unlike more normal people like "Society's Elite," I didn't get freaked out, panic or cry. It was all distant. I observed: a voyeur from a safe distance watching far away events happening in places I've never been, to people I've never met.
The closest I ever got to the Twin Towers was a bus ride from JFK to Newark after leaving the Army. I've never been to Pennsylvania or D.C., so these images were all television and movie icons. Watching television and movie icons get blown up - on a television - doesn't feel real. I'm sure it's real, but it still doesn't seem as significant as the last time I saw my sister, some of the crap at work or church or local tragedies. I wept more for a friend who lost his daughter-in-law to a disease than I did for the nearly 3,000 people killed. (Statistically, about 150,000 other people died in the world that day.)
It's supposed to mean more and at a gut level I know it does. But it's all been obscured by being told to remember 9/11, heroic patriotism, Mayor Guilliani, newspaper editorials, by wars and terror alerts, magazines, books, movies, debates, talk radio and an ongoing need to look at the "changed" world. I feel guilty about not being impacted more, or thinking that "America lost it's innocence" that day when a few people with box-cutters and will power changed the flight path of a four airplanes.
i work nights, so i actually slept through it, i'm sad to say. i did wake up once to go pee, and overheard my roommate in the other room listening to the news. i heard President Bush talking on his tv and my roommate sorta going "yeah! you tell 'em!" or something like that. i didn't know what was going on and was too groggy at that hour to really care, so i went back to bed.
later, when i got up for real, i was hit by the gravity of the situation. i was in shock, numb. i went in to work and we didn't do one minute's worth of work. we all just watched the CNN and watched the planes hit and the towers fall...over and over and over and over again. i felt sick. watching the video of people covered in dust and soot, roaming the debris-littered streets in a panic.
but then i noticed how, right then and there, America (and a large part of the world) joined together. Gone were the political agendas and petty division. They were replaced with unity. I remember China (who not too long before we had been in a big stink with about a spy plane) expressing their support for us. Cuba was with us. Russia was with us. I believe even North Korea condemned the attacks. I remember thinking that this was a terrible tragedy, but if we could somehow keep this sense of unity, maybe all would not be lost.
And i'm sad to see the unity is gone today.
I was meeting with a few buddies for breakfast and prayer, something we did every Thursday morning. By the time we were paying at the counter, the lady said a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Not having seen any footage, I thought ‘how weird’, figuring a Cessna or some non-commercial airplane had some kind of malfunction. Right as we left, we heard a second plane had hit.
Getting into my truck, I turned on the radio. In the fifteen minutes it took to get back to my house, the airliner had hit the Pentagon. As I pulled into the driveway, I heard Peter Jennings’ chilling words: “It appears that America is under attack.”
For the next however long, I watched events unfold on TV, standing, staring dumbfounded.
When the first building collapsed, I think I sank down to my knees and breathed out ‘God save us.’
After some time, I decided to go to my phone sales job thirty minutes away. The boss opened the door to his house (where we were based). I don’t think we said anything. We definitely didn’t do anything, except watch TV.
A short time later, I realized what I wanted more than anything was to find Stephanie, now my wife, then my girlfriend. Nothing that had happened that day made sense, but at that moment, all I knew that I wanted to get to her as quickly as possible. And I did.
MP
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