Pandemic ‘21

Where were you?

September 10, 2021

Hard to believe it’s been 20 years since that fateful morning in September. Not a cloud in the sky. A crisp fall chill in the air. A perfect day.

Where were you? Driving to work. Making your bed. Walking the dog.

For me, it was the final week of my medical leave before going back to work after open-heart surgery that summer. I was 41, tanned, rested and ready to rejoin the rat race. Until I wasn’t.

I wouldn’t know this until six months later when my doctor diagnosed me with a form of PTSD and prescribed Zoloft, which helped and got me through the worst of my post-op anxiety. Better living through chemistry, as they say.

But we’re not here to discuss my mental health, then or now.

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I had arranged a breakfast date with my friend Cathy in Birmingham, a tony suburb of Detroit. I was feeling pretty good after six weeks of recuperation and thrilled to be getting out.

She wasn’t quite ready when I arrived, so I waited in her living room. It was about 8:30 a.m.

A few minutes later, my cell phone rang. It was my father, who was 79. Back then, 79 was not the new 69. Trust me.

Dad rarely called at this hour or any hour, mostly because he hated talking on the phone. “I’ll get your mother” was Jimmy John’s predictable line after hello, how are you, and do you need any money, Jin?

I answered. “Morning, Dad. Everything OK?”

There was silence at first, then he said words I’ll never forget: “Something’s going on, babe. A plane crashed into the World Trade Center.”

Stunned and a bit weak in the knees, I sat down on my friend’s sofa and turned on the TV. By now, it was almost 9. My father stayed on the line as we both watched breaking news reports.

ABC anchor Diane Sawyer was the first to announce to “Good Morning America” viewers that a plane had crashed into the WTC. It was true.

At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the WTC’s North Tower between floors 93 and 99. Reports said the plane was traveling at 466 mph and entered the tower intact, plowing to the building’s core, severing all three gypsum-encased stairwells, dragging anything combustible with it. A powerful shock wave traveled down to the ground and up again. Burning fuel ignited remnants of the aircraft. People below the severed stairwells started to evacuate, but no one above the impact zone could.

I can honestly say I had never known anyone who was in the World Trade Center on 9/11 and lived to tell about it. But I do now.

My friend and I went to the restaurant for coffee, but we were glued to the TV and couldn’t eat.

I checked on my parents throughout the day and into the next and the next. The whole 9/11 tragedy rattled me. Life would never be the same.

I can honestly say I had never known anyone who was in the WTC on 9/11 and lived to tell about it. But I do now.

Let’s call her Jane. Then a 40-ish Wall Street executive and mother of three, Jane worked on a floor below Flight 11’s first point of impact.

Rebecca and I had the pleasure of meeting and spending time with Jane and some mutual friends this summer. Now in her 60s, she doesn’t dwell on the past, choosing to look forward with hope and positivity. She makes it look effortless.

I can’t imagine being in her skin.

Twenty years later, she still gets questions. “Wow, you were there? That’s so amazing. Can you tell me about 9/11?”

Her answer is always the same: “No.”

I’m not even sure how the subject of 9/11 came up – we certainly didn’t ask – although we knew ahead of our visit some details of her ordeal:

Jane had arrived early that morning at her office on the 67th floor when the first plane hit the building. She saw large pieces of metal falling past the windows and smoke pouring out of the elevator. “We need to go, and we need to go now,” she told co-workers.

Evacuating a building in a crisis wasn’t new to Jane. She had survived the WTC bombing in 1993 and knew smoke was the biggest problem during evacuation.

On that late-February day shortly after noon, a bomb exploded in the North Tower’s basement parking garage. Jane had just stepped out for lunch. Six people died, and more than 1,000 were injured.

On 9/11, Jane knew they had to move quickly. Only when she saw firefighters walking up around the 28th floor did she realize that if they could get up, she could get down.

When she and others reached the plaza level, Jane could see the devastating and deadly impact of the disaster. She was two blocks away before she felt the rumble of the building’s collapse.

But it wasn’t over.

There would be three more plane crashes that morning:

  • 9:03 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower of the WTC between floors 77 and 85. All 65 people on board the aircraft died instantly on impact and unknown hundreds in the building.
  • 9:37 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon and started a violent fire. The section hit was mainly newly renovated, unoccupied offices. All 64 people on board were killed, as well as 184 Pentagon personnel.
  • 10:03 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 93 crashed due to fighting in the cockpit in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, southeast of Pittsburgh. Later, reports indicated that passengers had learned about the WTC and Pentagon crashes on cell phones, and at least three were planning on resisting the hijackers. Hijackers made their decision to down the plane before passengers succeeded in breaching the cockpit door. All 40 passengers died. The target was thought to be the U.S. Capitol Building or the White House.

The time between the first attack and the collapse of both WTC Towers was 102 minutes. A total of 2,977 people were killed in the September 11 attacks. The victims ranged in age from 2 to 85 years old.

I marveled at certain parts of Jane’s story about that horrific day.

The surprising calm. The acrid smells. The intense heat and smoke. The twisted logic used to make sense of the madness. The unspeakable sights and sounds.

And the jarring reality that two planes hit the building you worked in, and then it collapsed.

When we came home from our visit, the reporter in me wanted to know more. So, I googled Jane. Not surprisingly, she was considered the reason most of her co-workers made it out alive.

In one online interview, she addressed the reason she doesn’t talk about that day. Not surprisingly, it’s not about her:

“I keep saying to people, there aren’t words big enough, or deep enough, or sad enough to really express to you what it was like. You don’t want me to be able to give that to you. You don’t want me to be able to kind of put that burden on you. And it is a burden.”

I’ll leave you with something Jane said in a 2011 book on the aftermath of 9/11:

“You really just want to go back to September 10. You just want everything to be the same. One of the things I remember about that morning was how blue the sky was. It was brilliantly blue, no clouds. It just had that little chill in the air that you get in the fall. It was absolutely perfect out. And now, every time I see that kind of sky, that’s what I remember. I remember September 11.”

Tomorrow, take a minute to look up at the sky. Remember where you were on 9/11. And never forget.

Retired print journalist and blogger.❤️🐾

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20 Comments

  • Julie M Sayers

    September 10, 2021 at 8:43 pm

    Your writing gave me chills and an appreciation for the similar weather we are having now. I was teaching third grade, and the school secretary came in and told me privately what was happening. We were not, under any circumstances, to turn on our televisions. As the day went on, child after child was picked up by his or her parents. Out of 25, I had 12 students left by the end of the day. Those students were bewildered by then. I will never forget those sweet innocent faces! Such a sad day!

  • gramcracker8191

    September 10, 2021 at 10:31 pm

    Dad called me, too. Two men were installing glass coatings on the west windows of our house to soften the blazing sun that was so strong we could hardly sit in the rooms without sunglasses. I turned on the TV, and within minutes we were sitting on the couch speechless, holding hands and praying. I often think of that day and wonder at the contrast between our choice to minimize the brilliance of sunshine when so many people’s lives were plunged into darkness through no choice of their own.

  • Gloria

    September 11, 2021 at 8:20 am

    Thanks, Jennifer. I was home watching “Today.” I feel knots in my stomach every time I see news coverage about 9/11 to this day. Remembering all those lost that day and continuing to suffer today.

  • Kathie Grevemeyer

    September 11, 2021 at 12:43 pm

    I was living in Greensburg, PA, in a condo. I was watching “GMA,” it was almost over and “Regis & Kelly” would be on after. I was in my nightgown, had had breakfast. Seeing Diane and Charlie’s expression kept me sitting there, and then the news a plane might have gone into the Twin Tower, next, confirmation of that, then seeing the second plane. I don’t think I moved all day, except to go to the bathroom. I had a cousin, a United flight attendant, and called her husband in Colorado. He confirmed she wasn’t on that plane. I had a young cousin working at the Pentagon, and his mom said he wasn’t at work that morning. Next, where in the world was Shanksville, PA? Couple of hours west of me. Didn’t understand what was there to destroy until I realized the plane was heading for D.C. Unbelievable. Whenever 9/11 is mentioned, my mind goes back to that lazy morning that became part of my memories as the President Kennedy assignation, Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy. Hard to believe how the years have gone by so quickly, yet it seems like yesterday.

  • Maureen Dunphy

    September 11, 2021 at 1:27 pm

    Very fine blog posting, Jen! I was in a neck brace and on pain killers–as well as the phone–talking to an insurance agent about an unexpectedly awful car accident I’d been in the night before. In the middle of a sentence–his sentence–he excused himself and hung up on me. No sooner had he hung up than my husband, who never called from court, called as he was watching a TV set in a back room of the court where he was supposed to be arguing a case, to tell me to turn on the TV. I did. You captured the day well. Especially, the sky. September skies still make me remember. It took me several years to untangle the PSTD of the accident + 9/11. My mom was telling me this morning about having watched some of the 9/11 coverage this morning. One thing the psychiatrist cautioned me against was watching such coverage, and superstitiously I have avoided it these last 20 years, but the images still play over and over in my mind every year at this time, especially under the blue of a September sky.

  • Cynthia M Guerrieri

    September 12, 2021 at 9:52 pm

    Touching post, Jen. I was living in FL, and a UPS guy came up to our gate and said a plane just hit the World Trade Center. Of course we turned on the TV immediately and for the entire day. We were called to pick up both children from school immediately. They were closing down in case other events followed. Still makes me teary eyed to think of it. Just watched the “60 Minutes” episode on the anniversary from the view of the Firefighters and the 243 lost in NY. So very, very sad. Horrific is a fitting word. Beyond words, and yet I knew no one personally who was lost that day.