I tend to remember terrible days with startling clarity, whereas happy memories become vague pretty quickly. I hate that.
I remember my grandfather's funeral vividly (age 9), but I don't remember my sweet 16 birthday party hardly at all.
I wanted to bring that up because I have crystal clear memories of what I was doing almost exactly 17 years ago, on September 11, 2001.
I think it was a Monday or a Tuesday. According to one source, Britannica, there were more than 3,000 people killed in New York and the plane crash in Pennsylvania, and that also includes more than 400 police and firefighters. More than 6,000 people were injured.
I was alive when JFK was assassinated but I was a baby, so I have no memory of it. I remember the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and the attempt on Ronald Reagan's life, but none of those events were as meaningful or as life-altering as the 9/11 attacks.
I went in to work on that mild, sunny day in September 2001 and got there around 8:45. I was a paralegal in the legal department of a large hotel company here in Atlanta. I had heard on the radio that there had been a weird event in New York, a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center, but I just thought wow, what a freak accident. I went to my cubicle and put my things down, but there was a buzz all around the company -- you could feel it, in the air. TV's were on in conference rooms. I asked somebody what was going on and they said go in the small conference room. I walked in and saw the second plane crash into the World Trade Center, and watched in horror, for more than an hour. Nobody was working. Some people were crying. Some were frantically trying to call friends or relative in New York. Around noon, were told to just go home, and we would be notified about working the next day. I left and drove home.
I was walking Lola the other day and reflecting on the eerie silence of the drive home that day.
I was working just a short drive from Dobbins Air Force Base and a slightly longer drive from Hartsfield, one of the busiest airports in the world. There were no planes in the sky that day, though. I drove home feeling the weight of that silence.
I went by the bank and got out a couple of hundred dollars in cash, as my mom had instructed me, and then I stopped at a gas station and filled up my tank. Mom had lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis and she had very calmly but forcefully told me to get cash and gas before going home. I had plenty of food in the condo.
I remember when I went inside and paid for my gas there was a box of American flag decals, and I bought one and put it on the back of my car. On my drive through a residential part of Dunwoody there were already many flags flying in front of the middle class homes I passed, although I didn't see a soul, and almost no cars.
I had decided to stay off the interstate going home because nobody knew if or where there would be more attacks..
I got to my condo and changed out of my work clothes and flipped on the TV. I watched the coverage, on and off, the rest of the day. I had just bought a new printer for my computer and I spent part of the afternoon setting it up. I remember having to just turn off the TV after a few hours because I didn't want to see any more people crying or bodies falling from buildings. It was too overwhelming.
I talked to Mom and my brother several times that day.
The next day I had not heard anything to the contrary so I went to work. There were people who had stayed up literally all night watching CNN. There were attorneys running around, meeting here and there, coordinating the company's response, because one of our hotels was very close to ground zero and we were letting police and firefighters bunk there and trying to get them fed and taken care of. I was proud to be working for that company.
The memory of that is so clear, most of it, and yet two things stand out.
One, I felt so sorry for my mother, because I could hear the anxiety in her voice when we talked. My father had died 5 years before, and Mom had done really well living alone in Augusta. The upkeep on that big house and pool were substantial, and yet Bruce and I felt like that was the right place for her, because there were so many friends and family members all around. The 911 attacks triggered terrible memories for her, though -- of not only the Cuban Missile Crisis, but I think, too, of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when she was a child. The big difference was on 9/11 she was living alone. She didn't have her father or my father to lean on. (She came through just fine, though, FYI.)
Part of the frustration of those types of events is you feel helpless. There was nothing I could do to help the families of those who died that day. There was very little I could do to help my mom.
Another big emotion was fear. We were all afraid there would be more attacks. We were all wondering if we were safe, or if we should try to go somewhere. I live about 217 miles from the nuclear plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and just 150 miles from the Savannah River nuclear plant. I am also close to Dobbins Air Force Base and Fort Benning, Georgia, in Columbus. So if anyone was going to nuke one of those places I would be toast.
The next time I went to Augusta to see my mother, I remember my mom and brother and I had a lot of discussions about disaster preparedness. I was glad to know my brother was only about an hour from Mom and he could get to her pretty easily.
Although terrorist attacks became a daily concern, life went on.
Later in September I co-hosted a Henderson Family get together, a picnic in Roswell. We all talked about how thankful we were to have family nearby. Lots of us Henderson descendants [my paternal grandmother was a Henderson] live here in the Atlanta area. In October, Mom and I went to Folly Beach for a long weekend. I was also writing screenplays at that point, hopeful to be able to get one produced.
If you had told me on 9/11/01 that within another 3 years I would change jobs, adopt a little girl, and buy a house a short time later, I would have been flabbergasted. (It's probably for the best that we cannot see into the future.)
The past 17 years have been very busy for me personally, and for the country. So many changes, both good and bad.
Terrorist attacks happen all the time, all over the world. They have been happening for a long time, now. Unfortunately I don't think that will change any time soon.
Flying is far more aggravating now because of 9/11. I was reading just today that those plastic tubs you put things in at the airport, to go through the scanner, are crawling with bacteria and germs. Yuck.
In general, the world feels like a much more scary place since that day 17 years ago. I am far more aware of the fact that in some places in the world Americans are hated and folks wish to harm us, simply for being American. I hate that. However, I think that there are far more people that like us than there are haters out there.
When the 9/11 attacks happened, I had a cell phone, but it stayed in my car and I only plugged it into the cigarette lighter and used it on rare occasions. The minutes were quite expensive. Mom insisted after 9/11 that I get a phone I could keep in my purse, charged up, so she could call me. I did that not long afterwards. I would never have dreamed that now I carry a tiny computer in my pocket all the time and I routinely text friends, take photos with the phone, and more.
I think it's important for us to teach our children the significance of 9/11, because it was a pivotal day in world history. I also think it's important, though, for us to explain that it taught us, as a nation, to be more vigilant. We have to be. We are still a strong country, though, and we weather our storms and keep going. No terrorist, from within or without, will ever destroy the American spirit. We are stronger for surviving -- that's the message we need to emphasize.
