story1113.xml
Title
story1113.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2002-08-19
911DA Story: Story
September 11, 2001
I Never Wept Before Today
I am in Boston on business. I work for a software company, as an application consultant. This means that I customize our software for our customers. Yesterday I arrived at Logan airport in Boston from Minneapolis ? my home. I came to do, what we call, a knowledge transfer for a customer and a partner. But that is not important. In fact, my whole notion of what constitutes important has been radically challenged.
At about 9:00am est my wife called my on my cell phone. I was in the middle of my presentation and I simply sent the call to my voice mail. Immediately, however, I received another call from her and then I knew something was important. I answered the call and my wife began to describe events that, little did we know, would only continue and intensify in their horror.
After I got off the phone I, and seemingly everyone else in the office, headed toward the break room which had a big screen TV. There I saw images that will be forever burned into my memory.
I saw the one of the two 110 story World Trade Center Buildings with a gaping hole about 2/3?s of the way up belching flames. Just several minutes later that building, what is largely regarded as a symbol of the U.S. economic way, collapsed all the way to the ground. A passenger jet liner that left from Boston?s Logan Airport destined for Los Angeles, California crashed, as a missile, into the trade center tower. The jet liner, laden with enough fuel was a guided missile in the hands of what is in all likelihood, a terrorist.
The horror of this event was inexplicable. But it only increased in scope and magnitude. 21 minutes after the plane crashed into the Trade Center Tower, another jet liner, laden with fuel for a trans-continental flight missiled into the second of the trade center towers. The results were the same but the effects, the horror, and the fright that this second intentional crash generated were exponentially greater. Both towers are now gone.
2 hours later another jet liner, having taken off from Washington Dulles airport bulleted into the Pentagon. One section of the center of our National Defense department was completely lost. A bit later another jet liner crashed into a rural field 80 miles outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The thought is that this flight was destined for another target in New York or Washington D.C.
This is so overwhelming, yet the events of the day had not completed. World Trade Center building 7, a 40 story building, damaged severely by the collapse of the other two buildings, itself collapsed.
The day saw 4 hijacked passenger planes with passengers and crew aboard, used as guided missiles; apparently at the hands of a highly synchronized terrorist attack against the United States of America.
The collateral damage, that is, the damage not directly attributed to the impact of the plane/missile was even more than the direct damage. As the trade center towers collapsed, rescue personnel and civilians were trapped and many killed.
Mouth agape, I watched all this unfold on a big screen TV in Boston; 1200 miles away from my wife and family. Only several minutes had elapsed since the initial phone call from my wife. As the tragedy unfolded, all air travel in the United States was suspended, the financial markets closed down, baseball was cancelled. Nearly everything we take for granted was violently and quickly brought into sharp focus and not taken for granted any longer.
The rest of the day has taken a surreal and dreamlike sheen. Because we couldn?t go anywhere, we tried, lamely, to pick up the ?knowledge transfer? where it had left off. The banality of our metadata discussion stood in bleak contrast to the events that unfolded and continued to unfold as the ramifications of the attack swept over us.
When I finally got back to my hotel I was overcome. I have never actually wept before, but broken, overwhelmed, and scared I sobbed on my hotel bed. Tears streaked down my face and I buried my face in my hands and wept. I wept at the magnitude of the devastation, I wept and cried out to God on behalf of our nation and those directly impacted by the destruction of the attack.
There are those who are saying that the price of our freedom as a nation, as we know it, is the possibility of these kind of attacks. That possibility was realized today. What remains is the analysis and answering to the questions of balance between freedom and security.
Casualty numbers are not in, nor are they important. The numbers great or small do not change the magnitude of what has happened and how the United States of America has been compromised. Yet this is but a taste of daily life in some other parts of the world, especially the middle east.
It is not late, I am getting tired and may try to sleep.
I doubt I will though. This is the Pearl Harbor of Generation X. A terrorist attack on America. Images haunt me, on this day, my Pearl Harbor day, a day I will remember like Boomers remember the assassination of JFK, the day I wept.
September 12, 2001
Today I saw F-15 fighter aircraft flying protective sorties over the city of Boston. This was no air show, it was not a tribute to a downed pilot. They were flying for defense. Never thought I?d see air defense flying over a major U.S. city. Yet there they were.
I Never Wept Before Today
I am in Boston on business. I work for a software company, as an application consultant. This means that I customize our software for our customers. Yesterday I arrived at Logan airport in Boston from Minneapolis ? my home. I came to do, what we call, a knowledge transfer for a customer and a partner. But that is not important. In fact, my whole notion of what constitutes important has been radically challenged.
At about 9:00am est my wife called my on my cell phone. I was in the middle of my presentation and I simply sent the call to my voice mail. Immediately, however, I received another call from her and then I knew something was important. I answered the call and my wife began to describe events that, little did we know, would only continue and intensify in their horror.
After I got off the phone I, and seemingly everyone else in the office, headed toward the break room which had a big screen TV. There I saw images that will be forever burned into my memory.
I saw the one of the two 110 story World Trade Center Buildings with a gaping hole about 2/3?s of the way up belching flames. Just several minutes later that building, what is largely regarded as a symbol of the U.S. economic way, collapsed all the way to the ground. A passenger jet liner that left from Boston?s Logan Airport destined for Los Angeles, California crashed, as a missile, into the trade center tower. The jet liner, laden with enough fuel was a guided missile in the hands of what is in all likelihood, a terrorist.
The horror of this event was inexplicable. But it only increased in scope and magnitude. 21 minutes after the plane crashed into the Trade Center Tower, another jet liner, laden with fuel for a trans-continental flight missiled into the second of the trade center towers. The results were the same but the effects, the horror, and the fright that this second intentional crash generated were exponentially greater. Both towers are now gone.
2 hours later another jet liner, having taken off from Washington Dulles airport bulleted into the Pentagon. One section of the center of our National Defense department was completely lost. A bit later another jet liner crashed into a rural field 80 miles outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The thought is that this flight was destined for another target in New York or Washington D.C.
This is so overwhelming, yet the events of the day had not completed. World Trade Center building 7, a 40 story building, damaged severely by the collapse of the other two buildings, itself collapsed.
The day saw 4 hijacked passenger planes with passengers and crew aboard, used as guided missiles; apparently at the hands of a highly synchronized terrorist attack against the United States of America.
The collateral damage, that is, the damage not directly attributed to the impact of the plane/missile was even more than the direct damage. As the trade center towers collapsed, rescue personnel and civilians were trapped and many killed.
Mouth agape, I watched all this unfold on a big screen TV in Boston; 1200 miles away from my wife and family. Only several minutes had elapsed since the initial phone call from my wife. As the tragedy unfolded, all air travel in the United States was suspended, the financial markets closed down, baseball was cancelled. Nearly everything we take for granted was violently and quickly brought into sharp focus and not taken for granted any longer.
The rest of the day has taken a surreal and dreamlike sheen. Because we couldn?t go anywhere, we tried, lamely, to pick up the ?knowledge transfer? where it had left off. The banality of our metadata discussion stood in bleak contrast to the events that unfolded and continued to unfold as the ramifications of the attack swept over us.
When I finally got back to my hotel I was overcome. I have never actually wept before, but broken, overwhelmed, and scared I sobbed on my hotel bed. Tears streaked down my face and I buried my face in my hands and wept. I wept at the magnitude of the devastation, I wept and cried out to God on behalf of our nation and those directly impacted by the destruction of the attack.
There are those who are saying that the price of our freedom as a nation, as we know it, is the possibility of these kind of attacks. That possibility was realized today. What remains is the analysis and answering to the questions of balance between freedom and security.
Casualty numbers are not in, nor are they important. The numbers great or small do not change the magnitude of what has happened and how the United States of America has been compromised. Yet this is but a taste of daily life in some other parts of the world, especially the middle east.
It is not late, I am getting tired and may try to sleep.
I doubt I will though. This is the Pearl Harbor of Generation X. A terrorist attack on America. Images haunt me, on this day, my Pearl Harbor day, a day I will remember like Boomers remember the assassination of JFK, the day I wept.
September 12, 2001
Today I saw F-15 fighter aircraft flying protective sorties over the city of Boston. This was no air show, it was not a tribute to a downed pilot. They were flying for defense. Never thought I?d see air defense flying over a major U.S. city. Yet there they were.
Collection
Citation
“story1113.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed January 25, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/9230.