September 10, 2004

Remembering

Today is another one of those beautiful super clear blue sky days we are occasionally blessed with this time of the year. It’s the kind of day that naturally makes you smile want to exclaim to anyone who will listen that it’s a beautiful day!

Except it reminds you of another beautiful super clear blue sky day.

And I’ll never forget that day. I was working at a very nice rural corporate campus. We had TV’s tuned to some news network in the cafeteria and some of the maintenance guys were eating a late breakfast when the story broke. One came by my office and said that an airplane had hit the world trade center. When I asked what kind of airplane and he said it was a small commuter plane. Having worked in aviation, I had flown the VFR corridor through New York (1000’ and below over the Hudson River) and I knew how easy it would be to turn a little “bug smasher” into the city. It wasn’t until after the second plane hit that we found out that it wasn’t a “bug smasher,” but a 757. And suddenly a interesting news story was suddenly so much more.

Then came news of the Pentagon strike. And we slowly realized that we were being systematically attacked. We were at war.

The internet ground to a halt from all the people trying to get to news. We instead went to the cafeteria. Unfortunately, we had some VIP’s visiting and our facility manager didn’t think it was a good scene to have more than half of the employees in the cafeteria watching TV and ordered the TV’s turned off. An hour or so later, realizing the gravity of the situation, the TV’s were turned back on. I wasn’t like anyone was doing any work anyway.

I remember thinking about what an incredibly tough engineering feat it was going to be to fix the towers. I was assuming that they would eventually get the fire under control and the remaining damaged upper structure would have to be removed and rebuilt. It didn’t occur to me that the entire tower could collapse until it did. And then the other one fell.

I remember going for a walk with one of my co-workers and friend. He had a family and expressed concern for their safety. We noted the lack of vapor trails in the sky and when we heard a helicopter somewhere in the distance it just fed our fear of what was to come.

They let us go at 1:00. On the way home, my girlfriend called and wanted me to come over – she didn’t feel like she could be alone. I went over and we sat on her couch and watched TV and cried. After 2 hours of that we couldn’t take it anymore and turned the TV off and went for a long walk. The city had an eerie quiet hush. We walked until it started to get dark and we realized we were hungry. Walking by a retirement home on our way home an elderly resident sitting on a bench asked me if I was going to go sign up [for the military] tomorrow. I said if they’d take me, I’d go.

I still feel that way.

Regardless of what you think about our present situation, it’s important to never forget how you felt that day. For if enough of us forget, extremists will certainly provide us with another reminder at the cost of even more innocent lives.

I know that every year around this time, on any one of a handful of beautiful super clear blue sky days, I’ll remember…

Posted by Clancy at September 10, 2004 9:05 AM