story7883.xml

story7883.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-18

I returned home from taking my 5 year old to school and laid on the couch to try and get some rest when the phone rang. It was my mother (she was calling from Maryland about 60 miles south of DC)an she said are you watching tv, I said no why? Turn it on she said a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center. We stayed on the phone on the line with each other watching in horror we watched the second plane hit and then it was not an accident but an act of terror we were being attacked. We were still on the line when the third plane hit the Pentagon, the very building that my father Marvin Roger Woods works in. I let her go so she could try and get a hold of him. She could not. I called my husbands office and got an urgent message sent to him. He was at a seminar. He phoned me back and I told him we could not find my father. He had just finished doing some communication work in my fathers office so he still had the blueprints. He said he would go to his office and get them and come home. As soon as he arrived and we were able to located where the plane had crashed, he just looked up at me I knew it was not good. The plane had crashed right through my fathers office there was no way he could have survied. We got the news that he was offically unaccounted for at 1:30 in the morning and by 2 am we were on our way to Maryland. We laid my father to rest in Arlington Cemetary in a spot that is in the shadow of the wall that was hit on October 23, 2001. It has been a year of ups and downs. I still can not seem to heal its very hard being without him.

But, Everyday I thank god because my husband was scheduled to be in my fathers office that day but due to eye surgery his travel schedule was pushed back a week. Not only did I lose my father I almost lost my husband as well.