story906.xml

story906.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-07-18

I was flying with my eight year old son back home to Cleveland from our vacation in Ecuador. On our flight to Miami, just south of Cuba, the pilot came on the p.a. system and informed us that "something terrible had happened in the U.S." and that our flight was immediately being diverted to Grand Cayman Island. I was paged in the Grand Cayman airport. Our travel agent had somehow tracked us down. She was the one who told me what had happened in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania. And when she started telling me about the planes flying into the World Trade Center, I started shaking and I couldn't stop and I could barely hold the phone. We spent four days in Grand Cayman before we could get a flight out and then spent another two days trying to get home from Miami. But we made it home.

I saved our plane tickets that were dated September 11, 2002 for my son. Someday I think he'll realize what a trip we had.