story11163.xml
Title
story11163.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2004-11-17
911DA Story: Story
September 11 was not just another day for me. My Uncle - my Mother's brother - had died of cancer a few days earlier, in Seattle. I was very fond of Uncle Jerry, a big, athletic skier and former ski patroller. I had joined the ski patrol at his suggestion - he thought it was a great way to learn to ski, because, he said, "you had to ski everything" to be a patroller. He was sixty when he died and I was devastated. I had been looking forward to ski-ing with Jerry in his retirement. Talking to Jerry about engineering was fun - he was an engineer at Boeing, having earned his PhD from the University of Washington. Initially I wanted to live in Seattle when I came to the United States from New Zealand, but I wound up in Boulder, Colorado.
So on September 11 I was not initially inclined to go into work. At about 9:30 AM I turned on the TV and saw a report that an aircraft had flown into the World Trade center in New York. I thought it was an accident, and unlike most other people I did not change that opinion when a report came in to the effect that a second aircraft had flown into the second tower. I was still preoccupied with Jerry's death and not inclined to pay too much attention to those around me.
Eventually the news reports begain to explicitly suggest that these were not accidents, but the work of a malign intelligance. I got dressed and went in to work so I could email my parents in New Zealand and tell them I was OK, although increasingly I was not sure that I was OK. This is how my mother learned of the attacks - she got an email from my sister, Ann Marie, stating that Ann Marie was OK and that if Mom didn't know what Ann Marie was talking about she should turn on the TV.
Most of my office was out at a work retreat which I had elected not to go to due to Jerry's death. We were getting emails from the military bases to whom we provide weather information, asking if they were secure from internet attack, wondering if a sensor outage meant that they were under attack.
I sent some emails and then wandered idly down to the front foyer, where there was a radio station reading the news. There was no music on the radio stations that day, and little in the days that followed, just news reports being read. By now it was clear that something was wrong, but it was not clear what. There were all kinds of reports. There might be another aircraft in the air under their control, whoever they were. One of the World Trade Center towers had fallen, but the other remained intact. The number of missing was projected in the tens of thousands. The Pentagon may have been attacked. Various buildings in Washington, DC, might be targets. It was suggested that it was a good idea to fill up your gas tank. There were unconfirmed reports that all air traffic in the United States had been grounded. It was suggested that it was a good idea to leave all available fuel for emergency service vehicles, who might need it. There were all kinds of reports, many of them conflicting, and all of them seemed to me to obfuscate rather than clarify the situation.
While I was standing in the foyer, one of our directors came up to me and asked if I was on the medical emergency response team. Because I was on ski patrol, I had some medical skills, and I told him that. He said that we had a visitor from Washington, DC who needed some help.
He took me out into the courtyard where a group of people were looking tense. One woman was smoking a cigarette - she seemed to be trying to suck the very life out of it. She told me that she was not feeling well. She had a few medical conditions. I took her to the first aid room where another medical responder and I gave her some oxygen and some water to sip until she recovered enough to go back to her meeting. Normally I would have called her an ambulance, but I did not because I did not want to drain the resources in Boulder. Later I found out that this was a good decision, that the ambulance services had been busy with people doing all sorts of nutty things, like driving their cars into ditches because they got so upset by the news on their car radio.
Eventually I wandered aimlessly back home. The local gas station had a long line of cars filling up their gas tanks. Eventually the station ran out of gas. I had decided not to buy any gas since I thought the emergency vehicles needed it more. At this point most people thought that more attacks were possible, even probable. You find out that a day of terror is limited to one day only after the fact. The TV was as disrupted as the radio was. It was clear that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had been attacked, but it not clear why, or by whom.
In the days and months that followed, there was every kind of rumor. It slowly became clear that an ill-defined organization based in Afghanistan was to blame. A web site devoted to debunking Urban Legends was brought to a near standstill by the numbers of people checking to see if their rumor had any factual basis. One rumor was that someone had a good friend who was dating a guy from Afghanistan, and the guy had suddenly vanished leaving only a note saying "Stay away from shopping malls on December 11". Shopping malls were held to be unsafe, as were ski lifts. There were concerns about upcoming New Year's Eve celebrations. There were all kinds of rumors about people being trapped in the remains of the World Trade Center buildings. As it happens a lot of the cabs in New York were driven by people of arabic descent, and there was a rumor that there had been no taxi cabs near the World Trade Center on September 11. It was thought possible that several large airline companies would go bankrupt.
For the next few months, the eleventh day of the month passed very slowly. Newspapers and internet browsers were opened only after taking a moment to prepare for news of "another one".
People did odd things. The members of the United States Congress gathered on the steps of the Congress to sing "God Bless America", and it seemed entirely fitting. Travelling to New York was seen as a nearly heroic act. People were unusually irritable. There was a waiting list to buy an American flag from McGuckins, the local hardware store. I got a phone call saying that my flag had come in but I did not respond fast enough and someone else got it, and I had a temper tantrum since I wanted a flag. Everyone wanted a flag that fall. Relatively mundane events were reported in a very jingoistic way. When civilian air traffic returned over the United States, it was reported that "America's iron eagles are soaring again". The French government did not seem too supportive of some of the United State's military aims, prompting some people to attempt to rename french fries "freedom fries".
People seemed to alternate between being very, very irritable and extremely kind. At the time I was in a class learning to become an Emergency Medical Technician, and after the attack the instructor asked the class if anyone wanted out since there were a lot of EMT's killed in the World Trade Center. Nobody wanted out. There was tremendous respect for the firemen who had run back in to the World Trade Center buildings. There was a charity that made profits by selling New York Fire Department T-shirts.
My sister Ann Marie and I flew to Seattle for Jerry's funeral, at which I spoke. I am a nervous flier at the best of times and this was not the best of times. There was a large American flag hanging in Denver airport. Security at the airports was extreme but nobody complained. When we returned to Boulder, they called out passenger names on the public address system. It seemed to me that they were calling all a lot of arabic names, and I struggled not to think about that. I also struggled not to think about Uncle Jerry's beloved airplanes being used as missiles.
It was very difficult to accept that the people who had died in these attacks were people not unlike myself. The desire to take revenge was very strong, although there seemed to be nobody take revenge against. In this atmosphere calling french fries "freedom fries", or singing "God Bless America", were seen as dynamic actions rather than being auxiliary to the matter at hand, simply because it was unclear as to what, exactly, the matter at hand was.
The United States went on to attack Iraq, and have a divisive election, and that's another story. What peace I found came when my Ski Patrol reformed for the 2001/2002 ski season. There was a guy there who had been a firefighter in New York, and he had been with rescue three in Spanish Harlem and he'd lost some people. He seemed to understand about Jerry's death and pointed out that I had had a chance to say goodbye.
My flag flew from the flagpole at our little ski area if I was on duty, as I was the day the space shuttle broke up when it was coming back in for a landing. I heard the news from the patrol station at the top of the hill. We wondered if it was a defective heat tile on the shuttle or the result of some terrorist action, and then I skied down and lowered the flag to half mast.
I put in so much time on the patrol that year that I won volunteer patroller of the year. Although it took me two tries I was selected as a volunteer with my local fire department. I had to leave the department when my daughter was born, but in between my time helping people on the ski slopes and helping out out at the fire station the sadness that was somehow bundled up in Jerry's death and the terrorist attacks lessened. Now it is something I only feel occasionally, like a medal I won long ago that I take out of a box, turn it over a few times, and then put back in its proper position, whatever that is.
So on September 11 I was not initially inclined to go into work. At about 9:30 AM I turned on the TV and saw a report that an aircraft had flown into the World Trade center in New York. I thought it was an accident, and unlike most other people I did not change that opinion when a report came in to the effect that a second aircraft had flown into the second tower. I was still preoccupied with Jerry's death and not inclined to pay too much attention to those around me.
Eventually the news reports begain to explicitly suggest that these were not accidents, but the work of a malign intelligance. I got dressed and went in to work so I could email my parents in New Zealand and tell them I was OK, although increasingly I was not sure that I was OK. This is how my mother learned of the attacks - she got an email from my sister, Ann Marie, stating that Ann Marie was OK and that if Mom didn't know what Ann Marie was talking about she should turn on the TV.
Most of my office was out at a work retreat which I had elected not to go to due to Jerry's death. We were getting emails from the military bases to whom we provide weather information, asking if they were secure from internet attack, wondering if a sensor outage meant that they were under attack.
I sent some emails and then wandered idly down to the front foyer, where there was a radio station reading the news. There was no music on the radio stations that day, and little in the days that followed, just news reports being read. By now it was clear that something was wrong, but it was not clear what. There were all kinds of reports. There might be another aircraft in the air under their control, whoever they were. One of the World Trade Center towers had fallen, but the other remained intact. The number of missing was projected in the tens of thousands. The Pentagon may have been attacked. Various buildings in Washington, DC, might be targets. It was suggested that it was a good idea to fill up your gas tank. There were unconfirmed reports that all air traffic in the United States had been grounded. It was suggested that it was a good idea to leave all available fuel for emergency service vehicles, who might need it. There were all kinds of reports, many of them conflicting, and all of them seemed to me to obfuscate rather than clarify the situation.
While I was standing in the foyer, one of our directors came up to me and asked if I was on the medical emergency response team. Because I was on ski patrol, I had some medical skills, and I told him that. He said that we had a visitor from Washington, DC who needed some help.
He took me out into the courtyard where a group of people were looking tense. One woman was smoking a cigarette - she seemed to be trying to suck the very life out of it. She told me that she was not feeling well. She had a few medical conditions. I took her to the first aid room where another medical responder and I gave her some oxygen and some water to sip until she recovered enough to go back to her meeting. Normally I would have called her an ambulance, but I did not because I did not want to drain the resources in Boulder. Later I found out that this was a good decision, that the ambulance services had been busy with people doing all sorts of nutty things, like driving their cars into ditches because they got so upset by the news on their car radio.
Eventually I wandered aimlessly back home. The local gas station had a long line of cars filling up their gas tanks. Eventually the station ran out of gas. I had decided not to buy any gas since I thought the emergency vehicles needed it more. At this point most people thought that more attacks were possible, even probable. You find out that a day of terror is limited to one day only after the fact. The TV was as disrupted as the radio was. It was clear that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had been attacked, but it not clear why, or by whom.
In the days and months that followed, there was every kind of rumor. It slowly became clear that an ill-defined organization based in Afghanistan was to blame. A web site devoted to debunking Urban Legends was brought to a near standstill by the numbers of people checking to see if their rumor had any factual basis. One rumor was that someone had a good friend who was dating a guy from Afghanistan, and the guy had suddenly vanished leaving only a note saying "Stay away from shopping malls on December 11". Shopping malls were held to be unsafe, as were ski lifts. There were concerns about upcoming New Year's Eve celebrations. There were all kinds of rumors about people being trapped in the remains of the World Trade Center buildings. As it happens a lot of the cabs in New York were driven by people of arabic descent, and there was a rumor that there had been no taxi cabs near the World Trade Center on September 11. It was thought possible that several large airline companies would go bankrupt.
For the next few months, the eleventh day of the month passed very slowly. Newspapers and internet browsers were opened only after taking a moment to prepare for news of "another one".
People did odd things. The members of the United States Congress gathered on the steps of the Congress to sing "God Bless America", and it seemed entirely fitting. Travelling to New York was seen as a nearly heroic act. People were unusually irritable. There was a waiting list to buy an American flag from McGuckins, the local hardware store. I got a phone call saying that my flag had come in but I did not respond fast enough and someone else got it, and I had a temper tantrum since I wanted a flag. Everyone wanted a flag that fall. Relatively mundane events were reported in a very jingoistic way. When civilian air traffic returned over the United States, it was reported that "America's iron eagles are soaring again". The French government did not seem too supportive of some of the United State's military aims, prompting some people to attempt to rename french fries "freedom fries".
People seemed to alternate between being very, very irritable and extremely kind. At the time I was in a class learning to become an Emergency Medical Technician, and after the attack the instructor asked the class if anyone wanted out since there were a lot of EMT's killed in the World Trade Center. Nobody wanted out. There was tremendous respect for the firemen who had run back in to the World Trade Center buildings. There was a charity that made profits by selling New York Fire Department T-shirts.
My sister Ann Marie and I flew to Seattle for Jerry's funeral, at which I spoke. I am a nervous flier at the best of times and this was not the best of times. There was a large American flag hanging in Denver airport. Security at the airports was extreme but nobody complained. When we returned to Boulder, they called out passenger names on the public address system. It seemed to me that they were calling all a lot of arabic names, and I struggled not to think about that. I also struggled not to think about Uncle Jerry's beloved airplanes being used as missiles.
It was very difficult to accept that the people who had died in these attacks were people not unlike myself. The desire to take revenge was very strong, although there seemed to be nobody take revenge against. In this atmosphere calling french fries "freedom fries", or singing "God Bless America", were seen as dynamic actions rather than being auxiliary to the matter at hand, simply because it was unclear as to what, exactly, the matter at hand was.
The United States went on to attack Iraq, and have a divisive election, and that's another story. What peace I found came when my Ski Patrol reformed for the 2001/2002 ski season. There was a guy there who had been a firefighter in New York, and he had been with rescue three in Spanish Harlem and he'd lost some people. He seemed to understand about Jerry's death and pointed out that I had had a chance to say goodbye.
My flag flew from the flagpole at our little ski area if I was on duty, as I was the day the space shuttle broke up when it was coming back in for a landing. I heard the news from the patrol station at the top of the hill. We wondered if it was a defective heat tile on the shuttle or the result of some terrorist action, and then I skied down and lowered the flag to half mast.
I put in so much time on the patrol that year that I won volunteer patroller of the year. Although it took me two tries I was selected as a volunteer with my local fire department. I had to leave the department when my daughter was born, but in between my time helping people on the ski slopes and helping out out at the fire station the sadness that was somehow bundled up in Jerry's death and the terrorist attacks lessened. Now it is something I only feel occasionally, like a medal I won long ago that I take out of a box, turn it over a few times, and then put back in its proper position, whatever that is.
Collection
Citation
“story11163.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed December 19, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/10578.