Today is the 19th anniversary of the horrendous attack on the US. I am sure many have memories of where they were and what they experienced on that fateful day. This is my experience.
In March of 2001 I had become the product manager for the upgrade of some of the Early Warning Radars to support the Groundbased Missile Defense program. My teams job was to oversee the Raytheon subcontract to be sure we were delivering to the government a working system. As such we were required to provide briefings to the government on various aspects of the progress.
So on September 10th, we flew to Washington D.C. to Washington Reagan airport in preparation for a meeting that was scheduled to start the next day. The next day, in the late afternoon, I was scheduled to fly to Colorado Springs from the same airport.
So the day started normally, just like many others when I traveled. I woke up, cleaned myself up, had breakfast in the concierge lounge, grabbed my bag, and then checked out of my hotel, the Crystal City Marriott, before heading to work.
The meeting started at promptly at 8:00 am and after the preliminaries we were the first group up. I had my lead systems engineer giving a briefing. He had gotten no more than 5 minutes into the briefing when the government lead raised his hand and announced that we had to pause the meeting for a moment while they conferred with the program office. a few minutes later he came back in to tell us that a plane had struck the one of the World Trade Center towers and they were awaiting further guidance. It was just minutes later that he came back in and told us the meeting was cancelled as a second plane had struck the second tower.
Needless to say we were all shook and also a little confused regarding what the plans were going forward. After a bit we heard that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon. This was truly disturbing as we were only a metro stop away from the Pentagon.
I became worried about my boss, who had gone to the Pentagon for a classified meeting on another program. I was later to find out that his meeting had been in the Annex a mile from the crash site. He had his meeting cancelled when they came into the room announced the attack and then told everyone in the room, both government and civilian, were being drafted to help search for survivors. Sam was only at the site for a moment before all civilians were directed to leave as they now had sufficient help for the search and rescue efforts. So Sam just headed back to our offices where I was located.
After our meeting ended all we could do was find tv’s and watch in shock as the towers came down, hearing about the Pennsylvania crash, and all the images of the destruction everywhere. While we were watching, we all began to try and call home. It took several attempts as the cell towers were overloaded. I finally got through to my wife letting her know I was alright. By the time I got through to her, she had already heard about the attacks through our oldest daughter.
By this time they had grounded all aircraft for the foreseeable future which meant I was stuck in DC with no place to stay. So I decided to head back to the Marriott to see if I could get a room.
Entering the subway station was like entering a different world this time. You could smell the smoke and see the haze from the Pentagon crash and everyone around me looked to be in a daze. When I exited the subway at the Crystal City stop, the first thing I noticed was all the pilots and other people that were just standing around trying to figure out what they were going to do. The smell here was just as bad.
I went into the hotel and the front desk was pure chaos. I could see that I wasn’t the only one needing to find a room. So when it got to be my turn at the front desk, I tried to get a room and was denied. From their explanation I could tell that they were still confused just as much as the rest of us and the full import of what had occurred hadn’t settled in yet. Their reason for not giving me a room was that they were full as they had several people scheduled to check in that day. So I tried to get on the waiting list and was told no they already had too many people on the list. Oh-oh looks like I could have a problem.
So I did the only thing I could think of at the time, I went back to work where I ran into my boss. I described my problem to him and he took me back to the hotel and let me store my stuff in his room with an understanding that if worse came to worse I could stay in his room as he had 2 queen sized beds. While we were in his room we turned on the tv to follow the story as it unfolded. While there I looked out the window, as his room overlooked the Richmond Highway. It was bumper to bumper traffic as everyone tried to get out of the city and back home. After several hours we decided to go downstairs to see if things had changed. Before leaving the room I looked out the window a second time and the Hwy was deserted. Not a single car and during my time looking out the window not a single car came by. It was eerie.
Downstairs Sam had made friends with one of the front desk people and chose her to talk to in order to see if we could get a room for me. It was interesting to watch the exchange. When we first made the request for a room, she told us no. Sam kept talking to her, describing the situation and eventually she said she would add me to the list, but she couldn’t promise anything. Sam talked to her a little longer and Bingo! She checked me back into my old room, which I am sure made Sam very happy.
Going out into the subway a little later, I was shocked again. The subway was deserted now, just like the Hwy, all those people standing around earlier were all gone and the haze was gone as well. Unfortunately the smell was still noticeable.
So next thing I needed to do was to get a flight home. This was another strange experience. Beginning on the evening of 11th, I got a phone call from Boeing Travel that they had booked me on a flight out of Washington Reagan for the following morning. Every morning the flights were cancelled.This went on for days.
On the 12th I went back to the Boeing offices as I thought it would be better to work around other people. My heart broke when I climbed into the elevator and saw that the picture of a man that had worked somewhere else in the office building had been on one of the planes out of Boston. And then on top of that, one of the engineers for one of our other Raytheon teams stopped to talk to me because he was really shook up. It turned out that one of the planes that had been hijacked in Boston was the plane that he always took when he flew home. So if we hadn’t had that meeting in DC he could have potentially been on that flight that day.
The effort to get home continued for several days. Finally on Wednesday night several of us had decided we had been in DC long enough. It was time to drive home. So I called one of the office administrators (OA) and asked her to reserve us a minivan for the drive home. As flights had just begun to start up at some airports, I also gave her our route and asked her to check airports along our route, just in case we could stop somewhere and get home a little quicker. So we planned to leave at 8:00 am the next morning. That night one of the group had managed to get himself on a Delta flight out of Dulles Airport, through Atlanta, to fly home to LAX. So he was dropping out of the drive.
Thursday morning came and the 3 of us remaining went and picked up our minivan and headed out. About 2 hours into our drive I got a call from my OA telling us she was able to book on a flight from Pittsburgh, through St. Louis to LAX. We were ecstatic and headed to the Pittsburgh airport. We got there, turned our van in and then proceeded to wait around for what was supposed to be a several hour wait.
While standing around we noticed that there was a direct flight scheduled to leave in the next 2 hours that was direct from Pittsburgh to LAX, so I told everyone to go get in line for that Southwest flight while I called my OA. I told her to book us on that flight if possible and quickly as we were already in line to check in. The line moved slowly and I was beginning to worry that we were going to have to get out of line. But just before we became the next group to walk up to the counter, I got the notice that we were booked and on the flight.
So we got our tickets and went to the gate to wait, and wait, and wait. The flight was getting delayed as they were still trying to round up a crew to man the flight. While we were waiting we decided to go get something to eat and ended up at place that served big New York style pizza. One of the guys asked for a knife and fork to eat his pizza and was informed that the airport had directed that they could no longer issue any silverware to customers.
Finally we were able to board our flight for our journey home. Like normal the pilot went through his preflight speech. But this time was different, as he acknowledged that these were difficult times we still needed to listen to the flight attendants and obey the rules. He ended his little speech with:
“basically this means we won’t take any crap off anyone”.
The other passengers and I all applauded. Funny thing was, that during meal service they brought everyone their tray and I couldn’t help but remember our experience with the pizza as I unrolled my napkin. After it was unrolled, I couldn’t believe my eyes, whereas the pizza shop couldn’t give us anything, the airlines gave a full set of steel silverware!
Now 19 years later, I find that the experience still affects me on this day. Thinking how so many innocent lives were destroyed and so many other lives were turned upside down that day. This morning while reading about some of the memorials I cried and prayed that nothing like this ever happens to anyone again.
Central Coast Senior 