I Don't Want to Forget 9/11: The Memories

Image by Bill Biggart

When I started this blog I made it a point to always write about things I thought my audience of HR and salespeople would be interested in. I told myself to avoid politics, and trivial matters. Since I am an expressive person and I enjoy writing, I allowed myself to use the blog for humor once per month with a joke page (the jokes were also the most popular section of the email version of my newsletter), and once per year between Christmas and New Years (when most people aren’t doing serious business) I could write an article about anything I wanted.

This article is an exception to this.

My mom was born in 1922. My dad was born in 1925.
All my life I heard about where they were when:
-1929 stock market crash and the depression
-Pearl Harbor was attacked
-D-Day
-Atomic bomb dropped
-VE and VJ day
-President Kennedy was shot
-Man landing on the moon

As I got older I thought I had lived through some events that were the equivalent of the events my parents lived through:
-President Reagan got shot
-Pope John Paul II was shot
-The space shuttle Challenger exploded
All of the examples I could come up with my parents shrugged them off. Sometimes they did that with words like “…but it doesn’t compare to…,” or “The country was (or was not) the same after that.”

I realized later why they said those things. The events they lived through were events that literally changed the world. The 1929 crash brought on the depression. That in turn helped lead to WWII.
Pearl Harbor tuned the tide of the entire war and subsequently the Cold War and our superpower status. Man landing on the moon represented human beings our first true point where science fiction became science fact. My historic events were important events, and there was a shock to world, but they didn’t have the turning point type of change that their events did. The sense that we’ve reached a new threshold.

That changed on 9/11/2001. Events on that day clearly changed the world. We now have a clear line of demarcation between the pre and post 9/11 worlds. I can now join the conversation with my parents as an equal. 
News Reports of 2nd Plane Hitting Towers

I'll never forget that day.
I'll never forget driving to work listening to Bob and Brian on my car radio talk to their sports reporter Steve Czaban. As I was parking my car Steve said a plane had flown into the world trade center.
Brian, a licensed pilot, was bewildered and tried to understand and explain how that could happen. No one at that time had said it how big the plane was. They were thinking it was a small plane like had hit the world trade center (henceforth WTC) several years before (anyone remember that?).
I got into our office and turned on the radio and told my co-workers what had happened and said I thought it was a terrorist attack. One of my co-workers and I went to the Irish bar next door where we knew they had TV's and were open early.

I'll never forget arriving in time and looking at the screen with the burning north tower and seeing the helicopters and planes flying around and then seeing the second plane hitting the south tower. I don't know how long I must have sat at the bar with my mouth open in an incredulous gaze, but I do know it was long enough that I asked the bartender for a Coke. I remember her looking at me with a "are you serious" look and not taking my money.

I'll never forget seeing the antennae at the top of the tower wiggle and standing up on my bar stool and yell "the building is falling down" and everyone stop talking and watch as the first tower collapses. I remember saying "if the first one fell the second one will come down any minute too!" Unfortunately I was right. I sat there long after my co-worker left to go back to our office.

I'll never forget hearing the news announcer saying that there were unconfirmed reports of another hijacked plane heading towards Cleveland. After the towers fell I remember asking over and over to the TV "what about the Cleveland plane?!"

I'll never forget walking out from the dimly lit bar into a bright sunny morning and seeing the lines of people coming out from the taller buildings 1-3 blocks away. An order had been given to evacuate all the tall office buildings. Many of those workers had parked in the lots around my office building. I remember seeing everyone walk past me or walking to other parking lots with a glazed dumbfounded look. We were all in shock. I also remember looking up because I heard the sound and saw an F-16 fighter fly over the city. 
I remember noticing that I wasn't hearing or seeing the usual commercial airliners flying over downtown or the lake. That silence was eerie because for the next few days we didn't hear planes. When we did it was a fighter aircraft. 

I'll never forget calling my mom and asking if she had heard from my sister who lives in the Washington DC area. I knew she was probably safe, but I also knew that sometimes she would drive on the highway that runs next to the Pentagon. 

I'll never forget going back to my office. My dad always said that in sales before leaving the office make at least one more sales call because odds are you will sell something or set an appointment to sell something. I remember looking at the phone and my laptop and thinking "nobody is buying anything today," and walking out to go home where I watched the coverage for many hours before going back to work and picking up some things.

I'll never forget trying to get my money in a 401K to rollover to a different account and a manager saying that I had to be patient regarding getting my money because all the people they used to deal with were dead.

I'll never forget later going to my job at our baseball stadium and being taken to an office to have my picture taken for the FBI. I made some joke about my lack of a record. My supervisor told me it wasn't for a criminal check, but rather since we worked at a potentially highly visible target the photograph was for the FBI files so they could identify my body in case of my death in an attack.

I'll never forget paging though a picture book of the attack and seeing a collage of several shots of people jumping off the burning building. Their various poses making me wonder just what was going through their mind, knowing they were going to die. Seeing the images of photojournalist Bill Baggert, who died that day but created stunning images that were only uncovered when they found his cameras next to his body. Then I got to the back of the book and seeing an image from one person's camera of the debris falling on top of them. Who ever the photographer was, it was their last shot and the last thing they saw.

I'll never forget going to the airport several years later to pick up my wife from a business trip for the first time after we were married and being mad because I couldn't meet her at the gate. That may seem a very minor thing when compared to those died and the loss their families feel. My point is that we were ALL affected by that day's events in some way, shape, or form. Thanks you freakin' terrorists.

I'll never forget the stories of the heroes who sacrificed themselves to save others that day; or the soldiers, sailors, and airmen who have sacrificed themselves for us since. Thank you!

I'll never forget.

Thank you.
Ev