The Yearly Reminder

This day is always extraordinarily difficult for many. A yearly reminder of so much lost, so much grief experienced and so much visitation of one of the worst days of many of our lives, collectively as a nation and even a world that abruptly changed in a matter of hours.

Those of us who were directly affected often share those memories of that day. Today, I spoke to a woman who recounted that 9-11 is a very difficult day for her. She witnessed the chaos in downtown D.C. as she was evacuated from her building and went into the street to find thousands of people walking out of the city, cars crashing into each other and complete panic. She spoke of the fear she felt as she couldn't get a hold of her brother who worked at the Pentagon.

I understood exactly what she meant. As we spoke about that day a knot formed in my stomach as a visceral response to what I also experienced that day twenty-one years ago.

I’ve told this story many times, but it’s worth telling again. I was in Miami for a conference. I had been out clubbing with my colleagues at a Cuban bar about a mile from the hotel. Around midnight, I hailed a cab and was taken back to the Lowe’s Miami South Beach. That Monday had been a glorious day all day. I had talked our organization’s lawyer’s wife into spending time on the beach with me, even going into the warm clear water during a September that was full of shark attack stories on the East Coast. Just a beautiful fun day all around.

I woke up the next morning and somehow the t.v. was on Nickelodeon. I just left it there as I had to shower and get ready for the day of workshops, minding our booth, making connections and pitching our agenda. I got out of the shower into a robe and got a call. It was from one of my Board members who was also at the conference.

“Are you okay?”

I said “Why?”

He said “We’ll be right up, turn on the news.” He knew my husband worked at the Pentagon.

I saw it and began dialing furiously, my hands shaking, my mind not really understanding the gravity or fullness of the entire situation. Just video on the television. My Board member and another member of my organization arrived and I opened the door just as my husband answered our home phone.

“Oh my God! You’re home?”

“Yes, I got home about a half hour ago.”

His drive from the Pentagon to our house was over an hour, he had left the Pentagon not long before the plane hit. In addition, his office was on the other side of the building, the side facing the Potomac, a floor above Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s office. He was not there when the plane hit and only learned about it once he got home.

I told him “We may have difficulty communicating over the next couple of days, but know, I will get home one way or another.”

I immediately reserved a car because I knew there would be no planes flying anywhere for a while. The conference itself came to an abrupt halt as attendees were trying to figure out how to get home. It took one of my friends from Colorado over a week to get home, he couldn’t find a car to drive and had to wait to snag one. Later in the day, there was a meeting of the attendees from D.C. and we discussed chartering a bus. About forty people in all. Each person weighing in with their “what-if’s” none of which made sense to me.

I pulled out a $150 in cash from my wallet and laid it down in front of the organizer and said “I have a car. But I prefer not to have to drive the twenty-four hours to D.C. so here’s my money for the bus. If you can’t make up your minds, it doesn’t matter to me because I already have a rental car.” And I walked out of the room. They decided to rent the bus because I am pretty sure none of them had been quick enough to rent a car.

Once that was secured, I ran into a reporter who was beside himself to get home as he had his wife, child and a new born baby and they lived less than a mile from the Pentagon. I told him “I have a car. Why don’t we go to the airport and let me see if I can turn it over to you.” And so we did and he went on his way.

The charter bus loaded up on Thursday morning and I had a seat next to one of my best friends at the conference and off we went. A grueling 24 hour drive. At one point in South Carolina the bus stopped at a truck stop and we went in to find food and there was a shop with Mexican Blankets. I bought two, one for me and one for Jane, my friend. That bus was cold. One by one, people on the bus saw the blankets and went back into the truck stop to get their blanket.

As we drove up 95 into D.C. and onto the Beltway, the bus went by the Pentagon. It was still smoking. Another woman I knew began crying, her cousin had been in that building when it was hit. We wound our way to Union Station and D.C. people disembarked. I got out to stretch for a minute while the D.C., Northern Virginia, Southern Maryland people got out.

As people were unloading their bags I heard someone speaking angrily to another person. I turned and it was this prominent D.C. attorney interrogating a dark skinned man asking him “Who he was and where did he come from? When did he get on the bus?” The attorney’s voice was accusatory and confrontational.

I walked over and said “Joe! This is Dinesh Kumar! He a reporter for Communications Daily. He got on the bus with us in Miami, and I’m the one who told him there was a bus! What is wrong with you?”

It was me and two other women who got back on the bus to go to the end of the line, Baltimore-Washington International Airport. The women still had a journey to get to Pennsylvania, because they had flown out of BWI. I called my husband and waited. In my greasy hair, my worn out sun dress and my Mexican blanket. I don’t know that I’ve ever had a better site than his car arriving to pick me up. He said “You look like a refuge.” “I am” I answered.

The next few days were hell. Everyone was afraid. Everyone. I went to work the next week and when I would walk outside my office at 11th & G, two blocks from Pennsylvania Avenue, no one walking by was talking, not one person. Everyone was just walking along silently.

In an incredible miracle, my sister and her husband drove to us from Chicago. My nephew had a wedding in Chicago on September 18th, one my daughter and I were planning to attend, but of course did not. My sister and brother-in-law drove from Chicago to be with us. It was an amazing act of courage because here in the D.C. Metro, we had no idea what was coming next. It was a balm to our souls.

At one point, we decided to go to the Pentagon. At the Navy Yard across the street was a make shift memorial of photos, signs and flowers. Going through those tributes was shattering; pictures of the loved ones lost, love letters and tributes. A Navy officer came up next to me as I was reading a tribute. He had tears in his eyes. I looked at him and asked “Was he your friend?” He shook his head “yes”. And I gave him a large hug.

Life was unreal for weeks. Finally in mid-October we went to a friend’s wedding, it was the first time we actually did anything other than grieve for a month. About that time, the streets of D.C. began to have people walking down the street talking and laughing with each other. I noted it. And realized that healing was happening.

Bit by bit, normalcy returned. But the way we were before 9-11 will never return. We will be reminded of it every time our bodies are scanned when we fly. Every time we have to take off our shoes at the airport. When we apply for our “secure I.D.” When we are constantly reminded “If you see something, say something.”

Last year, I asked my grown children, who had been teenagers at the time, to accompany us to the Flight 93 Memorial for the 20th anniversary. My son and his girlfriend came down from Boston, my daughter drove with us up to Johnstown. I got us all separate hotel rooms and we trekked the fifteen miles down to Shanksville. We were sitting in a parking lot about three blocks from the entrance when we saw the President’s motorcade go by.

It was an important trip. And Flight 93 has a special place in my heart. While I’ve been to the 9-11 Memorial in New York City and the Pentagon Memorial, and both are very moving, Flight 93 was the flight where everyone on board knew what was coming. And they sacrificed their lives to make sure that plane did not hit the Capitol. They knew they were going to die. They made 28 phone calls home to say goodbye. You can listen to the voicemail recordings at a bank of phones in the memorial.

I was told that my children and my son’s girlfriend did not know all the details of Flight 93. They were in high school and grammar school. They did not know about its descent upside down into a farmer’s field in Shanksville. They did not know of the heroic struggle the passengers made and their long goodbyes to their families and loved ones. The plane and its inhabitants are still in that field, buried together.

There was an orchestra playing Dvořák’s New World Symphony. Years after his death someone put lyrics to that beautiful masterpiece. “Coming Home, Coming Home…Lord I’m Coming Home.”

Listening to that open air orchestra play that symphony as we walked down the long promenade to the tribute wall and field made me cry. And it again, steeled my resolve to never forget that day in September when the sky was blue and the clouds were beautiful and the weather was so fine. That day, that changed our country forever.

Note: On September 12, 2001, my husband put on his BDU's and came downstairs. My son, on seeing him, asked "Where are you going?" He responded "I'm going to work." My son said "But the building's still on fire." "Yes, I know" said my husband "I have a duty to report." I've thought of that many times and have always felt it was an important moment for my son. That moment taught my son more about "duty" than a thousand conversations ever could have.

Another Note: My son's father told my son "We'll go to Canada." When my son told me this, I told him "Listen Son...We either came over on the Boat or We met the Boat...We're Not Going Anywhere."