story547.xml

story547.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-05-07

It was right about 9:00 am as I turned out of my apartment building and headed for work. My radio was tuned to the local talk radio channel and the news was reporting of a plan colliding with the World Trade Center. Since this station has news on the hour, I thought little of it until I realized ten minutes later they were still talking about the plane. Only now, they're reporting that two planes have impacted both towers of the World Trade Center.
I didn't believe it.
I thought they had their facts confused.
I changed to another station in hopes of getting some music to put some pep into the start of my day. The local rock-jock was crying and trying depserately to reach is parents who live in New york. This is when I realized that this was as bad as it sounded.
This is when I knew it wasn't an accident and started to get angry.
I turned on the local AM News Station and drove the rest of the way into work.
I heard about the Pentagon as I was pulling into a parking space at work at 9:45. I hit the brakes so hard that I locked them up and learned that you can skid a car at 10 miles per hour.
As I got out of the car, I looked up. The sky was perfectly blue. The weather was nice. I was in short sleeves and would have not wanted to go to work if it were any other day. That day, I needed to be at work where I have friends and an internet connection.
I looked up as I walked the 100 feet to the building and looked up when I heard the jet. The sound of jets isn't uncommon where I work. We're about 10 miles as the crow flies from CAK. I noticed that this plane wasn't right. It was lower than a plane landing at CAK normally is. It, also, didn't have its landing gear down. It startled me. I just figured that it was "one of those things" because things hadn't really sunk in yet.
Things started to sink in when I hit the phone area I work in. I was instantly greeted by co-workers asking if I had heard anyhting new. Most of them worked the normal shift and had been in the office most of this. I couldn't tell them anything they hadn't already known. I didn't have any new information from the outside world.
We managed to find three or four radios and put them in the phone support area. We managed to agree on one station so that we all heard the same thing and didn't have to fight to hear the news. We listend together like we were a single family and we talked with each other and were in disbelief together.
Throughout the morning, I was emailing people I knew to check on their safety and to gather news. A friend of mine who worked in Cleveland told me that a plane was shot down in PA. She is convinced that that was the same plane that flew over my head earlier. Another email came to me telling me the my Dad was grounded in Texas. An email from my sister. An email from my girlfriend, panic'd and scared having just left to go to college 3 weeks earlier. All emails of new news that his anybody's desk were forwarded to two dozen people. We were depserate for news.
At noon, my mom emailed me telling me that she would not be emailing me any longer but would call when she got home. The hospital where she works had decided to take their computer system out of the net. This scared me. This scared a lot of us.
I called my sister and told her that mom was no longer available via email and that (mom never said this but I assumed it) had gone on alert. I also wanted to check on her husband who is a firefighter. I wanted to know if they knew anything.
She told me that her neighbor, a man of some rank in the local guard, had called her a few minutes before the story broke telling her to turn on the TV and telling her that he was "called up." She was shaken by this because she knew something was happening before CNN started coverage.
She also told me the that my brother-in-law was ok and was under orders to stay in Akron. She also told me that, unless I saw the pictures, I couldn't understand.
At this point, the only pictures we had in our office were the thumbnails and realtime videos we could get from CNN or MSNBC.
When it came to lunch, Tony and I decided that we would go where we knew there would be a TV and an ashtray. We went to the local mexican restaurant down the road. What a bizzare and surreal thing it was to watch the footage on a TV the size of a twin mattress of a plan crashing into the WTC. It made it more bizzare when we realized that all of the words and voiceovers were in spanish.
By the time we returned to work, my mom was calling me. She was begging me not to go out that night. She was telling me not to buy smokes at the mini-mart down the street because it might get attacked. She was begging me not to do anything by go home and stay there. I told her that I would walk to the grocery and then go home. She told me to carry my baseball bat with me when I did. She was scared.
I did not tell her that my church had already planned a prayer and drum ceremony for that evening and delayed the start so I could join.
Later that night, after everyone had left work and it was me and another co-worker working the evening shift, I started to see news of high gas prices in some cities.
By the time I left work at 9:00, the line at the local gas station were already 50 cars long. Some stations raised gas prices. Others kept them the same. I pass 4 stations on my way home from work. One had already run out of gas, two had lines, one had raised its prices and had very few customers.
We prayed that night for peace and healing. We prayed that there were survivors that would be rescued.
After the prayer meeting, Jamie and decided to go to the local all night restaurant for some dinner. On a normal night, it should have been packed with college kids studying and people just talking. On the 11th, there was one other customer in the restaurant and both TV's were tuned the CNN. The volume was up on them. This was unusual.
On the way back home, I stopped to get gas. I thought it would be a good idea to top off my tank, "just in case". I pumped the station's last 10 cents worth of regular gas into my tank and filled the rest with premium. The price on the premium there was $1.00 less than the price for regular gas 200 yards down the street. The station with a higher price had a line around the block.
That was my September 11, 2001.
I did not cry on the 11th.
I still have not fully cried about this.
I am constantly finding stories from people that bring a tear to my eye over this.

About a month ago, my father and brother in law visited ground zero. I needed to go to pay my respects. I didn't cry then.
When we left the site the first night, we went down an ally searching for a bar. We all agreed that a drink was in order. We went to O'Hares. On the wall of the alley, in large spraypainted letters, was the work "Triage" with an arrow pointing down the street. That affected me. In battery park, the sculpture from between the two towers had been installed. It reomved all sense of perspective I thought i had about the size of the WTC towers. They had to be taller than I can imagine.
We did the normal tourist things. We went to Time's Square and Little Italy.
On the ferry back from Ellis Island, a school chior assembled and started to sing the Star Spangled Banner. I finally cried when I looked out and saw the Statue of Libery and where the WTC once stood. If anyone from the chior that visited Ellis Island on April 13 reads this, thank you.