story3255.xml

story3255.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-11

I was rushing to work that day. I had just dropped my 5 month old son off at daycare. Traffic was horrible and I had to be at a 8:00 am (CST) staff meeting. Our department was planning to have a brainstorming session to help us establish our 12 month goals. I was running late due to the heavy traffic and took a different exit thinking it would be faster - but it wasn't! Anyway, I had a local radio station on and the DJ said, "What the he__!!! Did you see that - a plane just hit the World Trade Center! He was reporting about it in disbelief when just minutes later - he said - Oh my God! The other tower has been hit! What is going on?? By this time I was at my parking ramp in downtown Minneapolis. They were still trying to piece together what was going on - at first I thought these were probably small Cessna planes or something - but then they said they were both commercial airliners!! I began walking to my office through our downtown skyway system, and called my husband at his office. He had just been in a conference room where there was a television and he saw everything and said this is terrorism. I remember immediately feeling frightened and sick to my stomach. He said the people working in those towers above where the planes hit would not be able to make it out. I got to my office - and found that 3 of my coworkers were also running late to this meeting. I recall as people in the office heard what had happened that there were gasps of disbelief and fear. Everyone was trying to log on to the internet, but the servers were so slow you couldn't get on. We tried to find a television, but couldn't locate one. When all my department coworkers got to work, we realized none of us were going to be able to concentrate on goal setting - it seemed so trivial all of a sudden. I just had this yearning desire to go to my infant son and hold him and hug him and protect him from all of this. Within the hour, a meeting was called and we were told that our building was being evacuated. We are in a high rise and very close to Minneapolis' tallest building, IDS Center, and they were evacuating that building and others around it for safety reasons. At that time, there were other planes that were in the air, unaccounted for, and potentially could be striking other metropolitan areas. I called my daycare provider, who was weeping - her son was scheduled to leave for the Marine Corps that very day. She was already having a hard time 'letting go' of him and then this had to happen, and she was afraid that now he is going to be serving in a war effort. I left work and went and picked up my son. We went home and I held him and loved him and I had this undying thirst to watch whatever I could on television. It was all so horrible I could not stop crying. I looked at my beautiful and innocent son and cried for him and this world that my husband and I brought him into. Would it ever be the same? What will his life be like? How can we protect him from evil? I thought and prayed for all the people in New York City and all those that lost loved ones or didn't know where their loved ones were. It was a day when material things or wealth did not matter - just having your loved ones close by was enough. I will never forget it.