story7413.xml

story7413.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-14

That Tuesday started out as any other day, but my children, huband and I were excited and packing. We were to go to Boston on the 12th to visit family. My husband called from his cell phone in the car just after 9 am and told me to put on the news. My children (aged 1 and 3) were watching Nick Jr. so I had no idea what I was going to see. The image, so horrific and strange, didn't make sense to me. My husband is a private pilot who trained here in South Florida at the same place the terrorists trained in Lantana. He knew it was no mistake that the tower was hit. We got off the phone and I continued to watch and saw the second plane hit. My phone rang again and it was my father. My step mother was at her usual post at Boston Logan airport that morning. She works for United Airlines. She loaded passengers on the very flight that I watched hit the second tower. Among the passengers were a handful of her friends, headed to Las Vegas via Los Angeles. They planned to be back on Friday and she was covering one of their shifts. My father told me what we had already suspected. The FBI was at Logan Airport with my step mother going through the flight passenger list and all of the other things that had to be done immediately. We knew there would be no trip to Boston the next day. But that was the least of it. My step mother was faced with the task of notifying all of the next of kin of the passengers of what had happened. She spent the next 10 days with the FBI going through all of the minutea of the morning of the 11th.

We made our trip to Boston two weeks later and have gone on with things as usual. I heard from a cousin in New York that 4 of my cousins were to be at the twin towers that day but for various reasons were not there. One cousin, a computer technician was to go there first thing, but at the last minute changed his schedule to go there in the afternoon. He had a clear view of the towers from his other clients office and witnessed the entire thing out a window before evacuating. Another cousin was working from home due to morning sickness that day. Cousin number 3 missed his train and did not arrive at all to the towers that morning. A fourth cousin was to have a job interview there that morning but had rescheduled to the day before. God held us all in the palm of His hand that morning. SOme people ask where God was during the entire tradgedy. He was there, where He always is, with all of us. At the towers and beyond.