The Days Forward

West Point Class of 1969

Suzanne Rice

The Good Life…until 9-11-2001

by Pat Wance

      A job change had us returning to northern Virginia from New Jersey in the early 90s and by the late 90s, we started to think about where we would like to retire…New England—no, too much snow, OK/Texas—only one of us would be going and it wouldn’t be me, PA—one of those stone homes near a lake or my fav…south to a coastal retreat. 

     We traveled to many of those places however, through an A-2 connection, found a great place, a 3-bedroom, rear unit condo with a lap pool (shared with the front unit neighbor), in Virginia Beach one block from the ocean (yay me). We purchased it in

A Spectacular Day at the Beach, Not Unlike 9-11

October of 2000. Still unsure if we would actually move there, we decided to put some sweat equity into it, visiting at least one weekend a month to steam off wallpaper, scrape popcorn ceilings and find contractors to make necessary changes. 

      As the winter ended, the spring weather made the VA Beach property more attractive and by summer, we decided to put our house in Vienna on the market and make the move permanent.

      There were 2 boxes that had to be checked;

  1. Services for our mentally-challenged daughter and as it turned out, once in the system we found success equal to what was available in Fairfax County.
  2. Denny was not ready to retire and after a brief job search was offered the position of executive director in a Norfolk law firm.

      We all know what it is like moving into a new place, and Denny spent many of his off hours getting us settled. The contractors completed their work. I was able to finalize Kelly’s transportation to her job at Eggleston Services, a non-profit that hires adults with disabilities. I knew that employment would be out there for an RN, but more sweat equity had to be put into our home and some of

Transportation to Kelly’s job

that fell on me. I spent my days painting every door, window frame and baseboard in the house. The doors alone took 3 coats. I didn’t complain because I was so happy to be living the dream of a beach house.

     The morning of 9-11, I was doing the usual morning routines (breakfast, seeing Kelly off to her waiting van, tidying the kitchen, laundry, etc.) and finally I could gather the newspaper from the previous day, a damp rag and retrieved my clean, beveled edge paint brush, great for “cutting.” 

     The telephone rang and Denny was on the line asking me if the TV was on. I had turned off one of the morning shows a half hour before. “What’s going on?” All he would say was turn on the TV. I saw one tower smoking and a few moments later the second plane slammed into the other tower. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I could hear people around him reacting to what they were watching, and some were upset—the Norfolk building they work in is credentialed as and also called the World Trade Center. It’s not a tower but still very distinctive to that part of the city bordering the Elizabeth River.

The Other World Trade Center – Norfolk, VA (downtownnorfolk.org)

     Suddenly, my euphoria of owning a place near the Atlantic Ocean came crashing down. Fear and panic were setting in rapidly. I felt exactly like I did when I heard, as a teenager leaving a high school class, that President Kennedy had been shot. What was happening? Are we at war but with whom? Who would do this to us, the USA? The World Trade towers were filled with businesses. Why would they be attacked?

     Then more news came in about the Pentagon and the sudden crash in Shanksville, PA with a similar plane.

     Like everyone else, I couldn’t separate myself from the TV. When the towers started collapsing, we all knew that sadness was next to follow. Even in the best of circumstances, the thousands of people in those offices could not escape in time. Perhaps, a few made it out. What about the first responders? Are they safe?

     So, my thoughts of painting a few more doors and maybe sneaking some moments on the beach later in the afternoon seemed unreasonable and inappropriate. On such a beautiful day both here and in NYC, how could this happen? Denny said many of the staff were upset and requested leaving the office which was understandable. We spoke to our son who was in his office building several stories above Fairfax, Virginia and he could see what he assumed was many people leaving their places of work. Usually, the traffic died down after 9:30 but now showed busy streets and highways.

     That was my experience on that fateful day and every detail remains clear. I still feel blessed that we could live where we do surrounded by great friends and neighbors. Walking near the surf usually brings a feeling of peace and serenity. That wasn’t happening for a long time. Those pictures of the falling towers, the damaged Pentagon and the scarred earth in PA are etched in our brains but time passes, and we still have to deal with the present.

      When I read about the days after Pearl Harbor and during WWII, the one thing that I admire was how the country pulled together as a whole. The American people were united on so many levels and I envied that sense of togetherness in a common cause. The days and months after 9-11 brought that same feeling of camaraderie. Flags were everywhere, people bowed their heads and prayed for lives lost and the safety of the first responders.

Flags Everywhere to Remember the Lost

The NY firefighters and rescue teams were joined by teams from other parts of the country. All of them had the support of the American people. It is evident that some good did come out of that tragic time and lasted for a while. 

     My experience on that day was not dramatic and maybe not worthy of being shared but it is what I remember. We did not lose anyone close to us from that day, thank God. And, in fact, know of a fellow who once worked with Denny and was coming to work late at the WTC because of a dentist appointment. He happened to see the first plane hit a tower, turned and left the area as fast as he could. 

     We still live on this great street, take our Lab Abbie to the beach so she can retrieve her baton in the ocean and occasionally enjoy sitting with our feet in the sand, usually with friends. Abbie is getting older but so are we and I feel blessed for our lives here. I’m certain none of us, who were aware of what was happening on 9-11 will ever forget it.  

Abbie at the Beach on a Better Day

      

9-11 from the Hudson Valley – 2001

by Bob Jannarone

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

     We lived in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York in 2001.  We had retired over a year before from our jobs at West Point and were looking forward to our first Elderhostel* program in about two weeks, in Philadelphia; and a tour of a riverboat that was to dock at West Point, thinking we might want to go on it sometime.

     Linda and I were having a leisurely breakfast, listening to a local radio station that had trivia questions for which I won a prize almost every month, when the phone rang.  It was our daughter Barbie, calling from the Rochester, New York area.  She told us that one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City had been hit by a plane.  So, we went to the den and turned on the TV.  Soon we saw that the second tower had been hit.  

     We knew that we were watching history in the making.  Soon I had several thoughts.  The first was that I had been there many times, taking the train from Salisbury Mills/Cornwall and then the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) train from Hoboken, New Jersey into the city one Friday every month and getting off at the World Trade Center stop.  From there, I went to 26 Broadway (the Federal Building) to my post as an Individual Mobilization Augmentee as an Army Reservist for the New York District, Army Corps of Engineers.  Later, I didn’t have to walk as far, as I was assigned to the North Atlantic Division Headquarters, just across the street north of the World Trade Center.  Sometimes I ate lunch in the Customs House cafeteria at 1 World Trade Center.

     My boss (another Army Reservist) at Division Headquarters had been scheduled to have his monthly duty there in 1993 when a bomb had been set off in the parking lot underneath the World Trade Center.  He had his plans changed the day before that.  He usually parked his car there, so he avoided that disaster.  I wondered if there had been some damage to the Post Office building where Division was housed at this time.  There was, it turned out.  Division moved to Fort Hamilton not long after that.

     My next thought was for my brother, Jack, a United Air Lines pilot.  I called many times, sometimes not getting through, sometimes with no answer.  It wasn’t until late the next day that he answered the phone by saying, “I’m home, I’m safe.” **

     My wife’s mother and her sister, who lived near us, had been visited by her cousin and his wife for the last several days.  We had the four over for dinner the night before.  The cousin was flying back to Atlanta that morning.  He saw that the first tower had been hit while on his way to Newark Airport.  When he found out that all flights were canceled, he had to rent a car and drive to Atlanta. 

     That night there was an impromptu gathering at St. Thomas Church.  It was packed just like Easter and Christmas.  Would that it always were so.  

     We knew that one of the Folk Group members worked at the World Trade Center.  On Sunday, we found out that he had car trouble on the 11th and didn’t go to work.  We also found out that a fireman who lived in Cornwall had died at one of the towers.  His funeral Mass was a St. Thomas, attended by at least a hundred firefighters in full regalia.  There is a memorial bench at the traffic circle in Cornwall, “Lest We Forget.”

     About ten days later, having had word from Eldershostel that the program would still take place, we took a train into New York.  When we got to the subway and Penn Station, we saw hundreds of missing persons signs plastered on every wall. 

Wall of Missing Persons in NY Subway

We also saw Army National Guardsmen with rifles and Amtrak Police everywhere.   

     We took the train to Wilmington, Delaware, then a rental car to Ocean City, Maryland, where we stayed with one of Linda’s friends from her youth.  In those two cities, everything seemed to be business as usual.  

     At the Elderhostel program in Philadelphia a few days later, very few people had canceled.  When we got back to New York City, we tried to enter the subway, but people were streaming up the stairs.  There had been yet another bomb scare, as apparently there had been every day for three weeks.  There had also been bomb threats daily at the Empire State Building. 

     Soon after we got home, we got a call from the riverboat cruise line.  The ship was not going to be allowed to dock at West Point but would instead dock at Bear Mountain.  We went, and were very impressed, and now have cruised with them several times.

Docked at Bear Mountain (circleline.com)

     Did we learn anything from September 11?  We have read several books by Jonathan Cahn, showing our relationship to ancient Israel, and how we, like they, have turned our back on God.  The events of September 11 are only a warning.  According to him, our leaders have only spoken of defiance.  But unless we repent and turn back to God, we will suffer the same fate.  

* Elderhostel was a low-cost educational program using college dorms for adults 55+.

** It turns out that Jack was on standby waiting to be called back to flying. As we know that call didn’t come for some days while aircraft was grounded around the country. Instead, Jack went up to the Air National Guard base at Stewart Field in Newburgh. It was a staging ground for emergency responders moving into the World Trade Center site. Jack asked what he could do to help; he was sent to the Mess Hall to peel apples for cobbler for lunch dessert and later worked in the serving line where he could talk to the first responders and even a Forest Service crew from Oregon there to help.

9-11 from Oklahoma – 2001

by Dave Himes

       On Sept. 11, 2001, my wife and I were visiting my mom in Lawton, OK on the occasion of her 80th birthday just two days before. My dad had passed away some years earlier. At the time I was a captain at Northwest Airlines, and we had flown into Oklahoma City a few days earlier “pass riding” on one of my company’s airplanes. Our plan was to reverse that process in a few days to return to our home in Florida. My wife turned on the TV that morning and informed me that an airplane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. The “little airplane, tall building, bad weather” scenario came to mind. It had happened very occasionally in the past… a tragedy for a few but little more. Soon video of the second impact showed up and it was obvious we were witnessing something entirely different. Then came the announcement that all civil air traffic was grounded indefinitely. We would not be flying an airliner back to Florida. I opined that we’d have to rent a car for that trip. At my wife’s insistence, I called out to the Lawton airport (about the only place you could rent a car there) and the only agency still with cars was Hertz. I planned to pick the car up the next day and hit the road. Once again, my wife was more in tune with the unfolding disaster than I and insisted that we pick up the car ASAP. We headed for the local airport in my mom’s car and got the last rental car in Lawton, OK just before it left for Dallas. Apparently, all the national rental car companies were ferrying everything they had in that part of the country

Rental Cars from Lawton to Dallas (best places)

to Dallas to deal with the thousands of stranded airline passengers at the two big airports there. The smaller markets were stripped bare. 

      We hit the road the next morning so I could be in place for my next airline trip. As we now know, there was no hurry on that score.

Planes grounded in Gander, Newfoundland, 9-11-01  (CNN)

When the airlines were finally allowed back in the air a couple of weeks later, I was assigned a trip out of Dulles airport (IAD) near Washington, DC. The government had allowed the airlines to position crews and airplanes the previous day. My crew and I stepped off the hotel van at the airport into a solid wall of people both inside the terminal building and out. We knew where the employee entrance through security was but getting there resembled football practice on a hot afternoon. I sure could have used my classmate Charlie Jarvis, an amazing Army running back, as a lead blocker. We finally got to our airplane and the next few days were repeats of that experience. Our military training gave us the confidence to keep the planes in the air even under these most unusual and difficult circumstances.  Getting back to normal airline flying was a long-term process with the eventual creation of the TSA in November 2001. My fellow airline pilots that were actually flying on Sept. 11 had a lot of interesting stories.   

9-11 Near Philadelphia – 2001

by Bernie Tatro

     I was at work as Director of Marketing for Jerome Medical in a New Jersey suburb of Philadelphia. Someone received a call about the first attack, and I brought up CNN on my PC to get details.  There was general shock among the employees. After the attacks on NYC, I thought this might be a first attack on major cities around the U.S. and suspected Philadelphia might be on the target list. I called my wife at home (fortunately about 20 miles from Philly, so probably not on any target list), and I suggested she fill available containers with water in case supplies were cut off. I was concerned that this might be the beginning of attacks on infrastructure, so water, power, etc., might be at risk.  In any case, “Plan for the worst; hope for the best.” I also asked her to stay in the house, but she said we needed food, and so went for groceries, which was her normal routine, anyway. 

Philadelphia Reacts to the Attacks

     As we now know, things got worse as the second tower was hit, both towers fell, the Pentagon was hit, and brave passengers fought the terrorists and sacrificed their lives bringing the plane down in Pennsylvania.  Everyone remained at work, but we were all depressed and distracted. Meanwhile, available ambulances from Philadelphia and elsewhere raced to New York to help. I lived about 5 miles from the office and had no difficulty getting home, or to work the rest of the week.  Fortunately, I had no need to go through Philadelphia; don’t know how it was there.  The only noteworthy thing about driving was courteous behavior.  Drivers waved to each other and readily yielded right-of-way.

     The following weekend, I attended a business meeting. Fortunately, it was within driving distance, so I was not affected by the grounding of commercial airplanes. When I returned home on Sunday, I found all my neighbors gathered together in the yard of the house next door.  There was no occasion, other than a desire to just “be together.” We were kind of an extended family, and it was comforting to be together.

      My father enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor.  I think after this I knew how he felt.

9-11 In Northern Virginia – 2001

by Glenn Porter

     As a Department of Defense contractor, I arrived at HQ Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) at 9:00 A.M. to sign a new contract scheduled for 9:30 A.M. – it was supposed to be a good day.  We walked into the conference room, and everyone was watching the burning World Trade Center North Tower in New York City on TV. Three minutes later, my heart and lungs felt physically crushed as I watched Flight 175 crash into the South Tower. Our meeting was canceled but no one left – we continued to listen and watch in disbelief, silence, and tears as the news tried to keep up with the events of that morning. One of our team arrived 5 minutes late and shouted that an airliner had just passed low over our building. It turned out to be Flight 77 that then crashed a few seconds later into the western façade of the ill-fated Pentagon, a little over a mile to our east.  

Map Shows Glenn’s Location at the Red Dot Just Below Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall and His Daughter’s Location in the Open Space Just West of the Air Force Memorial in Relation to the Pentagon (Google)

     Almost directly between my location and the Pentagon, my daughter was working in Wing 7 of the Navy Annex just across Route 27 from the Pentagon.  She was entering a conference room when the plane hit and had to grab the doorframe as the building shook so much.  She and others then went outside and saw the Pentagon burning. 

View from Outside Wing 7 of the Navy Annex

     All who worked there were told to leave immediately (as were many in the area), but she could not get to her car as it was in the parking lot nearest the Pentagon.  She started towards home with a friend by car.  Many of my company’s employees worked in Government buildings, and we spent the rest of the day accounting for each one, including one who worked in the Pentagon – thankfully all were safe.  Because of the overwhelmed phone and cell systems, we didn’t get confirmation until late in the day.  I tried to get my daughter but couldn’t connect.  After our daughter took buses and got rides from other friends, she finally showed up at our house in the late afternoon.

     My wife and I took our daughter back after midnight to get her car (figuring the security perimeter would have been reduced by then). I used my retired Army ID card to be allowed through law enforcement checkpoints to reach her car.  Before leaving, we stood together on the shoulder of Route 27 facing the still burning western Pentagon façade, emblazoned in lights, workers and vehicles in action everywhere, with the iconic huge American flag illuminated and hanging down – at that moment I felt an overwhelming sadness, a boiling anger and a feeling that things would never be the same again.  My family remembers my anger.  God bless all who died that day.