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Next to the Pentagon Watching Flight 77 Crash by Kevin Malecek
Posted: 9/10/02

It was a beautiful morning. The sun shown through my window shades as I looked at my alarm clock. It was 9:15am and my cell phone was ringing. I quietly said to myself somebody better have a damn good reason for calling this early on my morning off. As I looked at the caller ID, I saw it was Greg Gadren, a friend and the president of the Graduate Student Association at American University (I was Administrator/Secretary) at that time.
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"I heard a sound I will never forget as long as I live."
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After a light conversation, he said he was not going to go into AU today. I said that we had a University Homecoming meeting and the Eagle Roundtable dinner, and that it would look a bit odd if he did not come in. He said "terrorists have driven two planes into the World Trade Center." I replied, "oh yeah, that's funny." He said, "I am serious, turn on your television." I hung up the phone and turned my bedroom TV on to CNN. As I lay in my bed, I watched in horror as the towers burned. I remember thinking to myself, "I hope they don't collapse because tens of thousands of people would die." I debated getting up to take a shower and start my day, but was enthralled and drawn to the coverage. I live right across the I-395 interchange bridges behind Pentagon City, so I view two sides from the Pentagon from my windows. We are approximately a quarter to a third of a mile away, but we are the closest high rise to the Pentagon. As I lay there, I heard a sound I will never forget as long as I live. It sounded as if thousands of train locomotives past by my window. We have helicopters and planes heading to National Airport and other aircraft fly over the apartment all the time, but nothing like this. The moment was frozen in time. Immediately I thought, they are attacking something in Washington. Nothing would prepare me for what I was about to see. Sometimes I thank God I did not open my bedroom window and see the complete horrid scene and instead ran to the living room window to observe the tail of American Flight 77 burst into a collage of fire, smoke, and flames into the side of the Pentagon facing my apartment.

I had no idea what to do. The first, moronic thing that popped into my head was "call the news networks", but I figured they would have the story within minutes. I called Greg back and informed him that a plane had just hit the Pentagon. He was in disbelief and wanted to make sure I was not hallucinating. Greg later explained that his disbelief was due to the fact he had not seen it on the news yet. I attempted calling a variety of people, with ever increasing difficulty as the phone lines began to be tied up. I got a hold of my mother in Ohio to inform her that I was alright, but that I had seen the incident and was a bit shaken up.

Then, I heard Bob Franken on CNN say that another plane was heading for Washington. Being in a high rise near the Pentagon, and wanting to get out of the apartment for a bit, I decided to leave. The scene around Pentagon City was pandemonium. Packed neighborhood streets, people running and screaming, emergency and military vehicles streaming toward and around the Pentagon. Smoke was billowing out of the Pentagon and the air was dank with the smell of fire and smoke. I went to my parking lot and sat in my car, listening to the radio. I soon met a man hanging around that had come over from Crystal City, but could not go any further because the roads were packed. Jason Reimer, the SC Secretary at the time who lived two buildings away, met me in the parking lot and we decided to proceed back to his building that was farther away to watch the coverage.

At around 3:00 p.m., I returned to my apartment and was interviewed by two polite FBI agents, wearing the trademark FBI blue jackets with yellow lettering, when I walked into the building as to what I saw. They were so sketchy on the details of the Pentagon crash at this time, they were asking everybody coming in and out of the building if they had seen anything. I talked with my roommate, who works on Capitol Hill for a Congressman, who described his experience of thinking bombs were around the Hill, Capitol Police/Secret Service whisking his boss away and piling into a car with other staffers to get back to Virginia.

As the day ended, I went to dinner at an old friend's house, watched President Bush's speech, which we analyzed and said was the best speech of his presidency (to that point) and called several people in at home to let them know I was OK and prepared to go back to work as the President had dictated that Americans should do on September 12th.

Two other events I wish to comment on occurred September 13th and at the beginning of October. On September 13th, all of AU proper was forced to evacuate because of an unspecified bomb threat. I went up to campus and was most impressed with the behavior of campus officials while I picked up some of my friends rendered temporarily homeless by the threat. It was AU in its finest hour.

At the beginning of October, at the heeding of Mayor Giuliani, I changed my Fall Break plans to go to New York and help the city's economy. As I made the pilgrimage to Ground Zero, I was amazed at the kindness and caring of the people of New York. I was horrified at the soot still remaining on shoes in shoe stores blocks away, the shuttered shops, and the smell of burning embers and twisted metal only yards away. But in all that carnage, while I saw a demoralized, saddened populace I still saw a determined spirit on the faces of the Americans of the crowds: a spirit that I hope will live on in our hearts for a long time to come. Kevin Malecek is a graduate student studying Political Science. He is the president of the Graduate Student Association and lives near the Pentagon.