story5757.xml

story5757.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-11

I had just arrived at work at 9 a.m. Our office had been temporarily moved to the 8th floor, and my desk was near the offices services department. I went in to take a fax, and noticed the T.V. was on in there, which was extremely unusual. I asked why it was on, and one of the men told me that something had happened at the World Trade Center in New York. I turned on my radio, and listened as the horror unfolded, not only in New York, but later about a mile away from my office, at the Pentagon. I called my boyfriend, an Anne Arundel County firefighter who'd just gotten off his shift, told him to turn on the TV, and he told me what was going on for over an hour.

After the second plane hit the Trade Center, Jim said to me, "I don't think that's the last of it." I told him I thought that whoever had done this probably wouldn't do anything further in NY, they'd hit somewhere else. Sure enough, about 10 minutes later, we heard the news that a plane had gone into the Pentagon. I hung up and ran up to our terrace on the 8th floor, and we could see the Pentagon burning. It was pretty much chaos after that, the town was closing down rapidly, the Metro unusable, and we were told to try to get home as best we could.

My older son somehow managed to get through on the phone to me from his office in Austin, Texas, to make sure I was all right. I assured him I was okay, just trying to get home, and finally got a ride with a couple women from work who lived not too far from me in Fairfax County. As we drove south on 395 past the Pentagon, it was so horrible to see the building I'd grown up admiring every Saturday as I went from my home in Alexandria to my piano lessons in Maryland with a big gaping hole in its side, and the heliport that I always hoped to see a chopper landing or taking off, no longer there. And Shirley Highway, that bustling, always busy thoroughfare from Washington to points south, was totally empty except for the few cars like ours that was leaving the city to try and find safety and solace in our homes with our loved ones, glued to the TV watching over and over the events of that horrible, terrible day. Now I know how my parents felt when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the loss of innocence and the feeling of security and freedom as we knew it. But we persevered then, and we have done it now. Our country is perhaps stronger than it was on September 10, 2001.