story10621.xml

story10621.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2004-05-23

It was my second day on the job as the new Training Specialist, and I was sitting with a upper-level manager being briefed on what their division did. The phone rang. He excused himself and answered it. It was his wife, who was telling him about the first plane hitting the WTC. He told me after he got off the phone, and I thought, "What a terrible accident."

That was until the second call came from his wife a few minutes later. Then we both realized that this was no accident. We continued on with our meeting as best we could, not realizing the significance of what had just happened.

As soon as I was done, I went back to my office where TVs were on, and everyone was standing around looking at the images of the burning towers. It was unbelieveable.

When the towers collapsed, the whole day became surreal. I felt a sense of sadness and of rage. I also knew that this was the start of war. I thought, "When they figure out who did this, it will be bad for them."

My wife called, saying "They're using our own planes against us!" She urged me to come home right then, and I now wished I had, but it was my second day on at a new job, and since no one else was leaving, I was afraid to leave.

The rest of the day was basically useless. I went out in the field to observe an appraiser work on appraising property, and this appraiser was a HAM operator, having a portable unit in his car. Around 4pm in the afternoon, someone came on the radio, and was chatting happily about his day outdoors until someone else must of clued him in as to what was happening. He asked, "What's going on?" The appraiser and I both said it about the same time---"Boy is he in for a shock."

I remember riding around with that appraiser for a couple of hours more, and unbelievably, I saw, freshly spraypainted on a wall near a freeway entrance ramp, "Die you American pigs." I couldn't believe it. The enemy was among us. Like any patriotic American, I would have liked to meet up with that person right then.

I work only a few miles from Love Field, and I drive directly under DFW airport's southern flight paths (Hwy 183). I will never forget how empty the sky looked. We are used to having quite a few commercial airliners flying around. The sky was clear, and I could only imagine that this was what the sky looked like before man had created airplanes.

As I was standing outside at the end of the day, talking to some fellow employees, I heard jet engines. I knew nothing was supposed to be flying, so I spun around to see 2 F16s zipping across the sky over downtown Dallas.

At the end of that week, while planes were still grounded and the skies were clear, I saw a small private propeller plan pass overhead heading southwest near my house in Fort Worth. I thought that was odd, since there should be no planes in the air. Before I finished that thought, 2 F16 screamed over the trees in pursuit of that plane, and of course caught up with it in seconds.

911 was a major shock to me, and I worry that Americans will forget how significant an event that was in our history, allowing ourselves to be lulled back into a complacency that could allow another event like 911 to happen.