Where Were You On September 11, 2001?

[bob7947]

I was looking at a sample of memorial services being held today. Then I wondered what all of you were doing when you first found out about the attack on us on September 11, 2001. I'll start.

I was in the GAO building at 4th and G NW, Washington, D. C. I remember walking into my office and noticing how quiet things were. Someone walked past my door and asked me if I knew about the attack on New York. I went into a conference room where a TV was on and noticed that one of the WTC buildings was on fire. All of a sudden, a second WTC building was hit by an airliner.

The Comptroller General told everyone to stay in the GAO building because, as he told us, it was built like a "pillbox." Actually, the building was intended to be a warehouse for public documents. Supposedly, it was more sound than a typical building. While much of the city evacuated, I was sitting in my office watching the coverage on my computer.

Between 4:30 and 5:00 PM, I walked out of the building. As I left the building, I realized that I was one of a few people on the street. I seem to remember seeing an F-16 or 15 flying above where Arlington Cemetary was and seeing smoke from above where the Pentagon was. When I reached the subway platform at Judiciary Square I was nearly alone. At Gallery Place, I was nearly alone again.

[joel hoffman]

It was a Tuesday morning, I think. I was in the Delta Crown Room at Hartsfield Airport (Atlanta), waiting for my flight to Reagan Airport for a national Design-Build Meeting. We used to fly right by or over the Pentagon. A couple of us were standing around the bar, where the big screen TV was on, with the sound turned down. We happened to notice a fixed scene on TV showing smoke coming out of the window of a skyscraper, taken from the vantage point of another building. Was it the other tower, I now wonder? I couldn't tell that it was the WTC from the camera perspective shown. We turned up the sound and the announcers were discussing what they thought was a small plane collision with the building. At first we wondered if this was Boston or somewhere. Eventually, the announcers discovered that it was an airliner.

Shortly thereafter, I went back down to the gate, to catch my plane. The monitors there were showing canned CNN coverage of the news on a time delay and the event wasn't even on. I asked the Delta representatives at the gate if they had heard anything about an airliner crash into the WTC and they said no. We eventually boarded the flight.

The Captain came on to say that an Airliner had hit the WTC and that there was a hold on all flights!! Awhile later, he came back on to say that another plane had hit the WTC and one had hit the Pentagon - that there was a nationwide hold on all flights!! I called my wife, a school teacher in Huntsville, AL and told her to turn on the news - that there had been multiple airline crashes - must be terrorists. Soon after, the Captain said that the flight was canceled and that we should go back into the terminal. By then, the monitors at the gate were live. I remember going back up to the Crown room and seeing the Towers collapse, or at least one collapse - or perhaps it was at the Hotel that I ended up at. My timing of events is now foggy.

I don't remember how long it took, but soon we found out that the Airport was closed and were told to to leave the airport. I think I had already called the nearby Sheraton and was able to get a reservation for one night, thinking that we'd be able to leave the next day. Watching the Atlanta Airport evacuate was a chilling, somber sight. I caught a shuttle or cab to the hotel.

Soon, my wife called to say that all air traffic was shut down and that there was a national alert. We decided that she and our daughter would drive 3 1/2 hours to Atlanta and pick me up. They told me when they arrived that Atlanta looked like a ghost town and indeed it was - it was really an eeiry feeling all the way home that afternoon. We stayed glued to the TV.

A month later, I was in Washington D.C. for the same conference, which had been postponed and had gone to Arlington Cemetery. I was up at the Arlington House (the Custis-Lee Mansion). I noticed that there were several people congregated at the right front corner (as you look from the porch) standing in front of two tall cedar trees, taking photos. I walked over there and to my amazement, a huge American Flag was hanging from the Pentagon. The scene was perfectly framed through these two Arlington Cemetery trees at the Robert E. Lee Memorial Home. This was really a awe inspiring, special moment for me!

By the way, our Army Corps of Engineers' Headquarters is also in the GAO Building in Washington, D.C. I met Bob Antonio in the National Building Museum, across the street from the GAO building, shortly before he retired. Bob is a great guy...

[mjthomas]

I was working for the US Geological Survey in Reston VA at the time. Many employees had family members working at the Pentagon, so it was a very stressful time for them, as well as the US as a whole to be attacked on our soil. I later went to work as a contract employee for CACI to rebuild the Pentagon. Our goal was to have the construction done by the 9-11-2002, and we succeeded.

One thing I remember vividly was the traffic congestion on I-395 and I-95. I think I could have walked home and got there faster that day due to everybody fleeing from DC!

[dwgerard]

I was a Customs Inspector serving at the Port of Charleston, SC that day. I had just been accepted for a position as a Contract Specialist with the Navy and was scheduled to have my goodbye luncheon at 1100 on 9/11/2001. As I was working, my wife called to tell me that apparently a small plane had hit the WTC building, and to turn on the TV to see the results.

The whole office went into the lunch room and turned on the TV, talking about how a co-worker was scheduled to be at a meeting at the Customs House in NY, which was between the two WT towers. As we were watching, we witnessed in shock as the second plane impact the second tower. I looked at a friend of mine who was also an Army veteran and both of us said simultaneously "We're at war now!"

The next few hours were a blur, but I distinctly remember how my brain refused to acknowledge the first tower falling. It took a full minute before I could stop thinking it was just lost in the smoke and dust cloud.

Later I tried to cancel my goodbye luncheon, but my office supervisor decided to go on with it. Unfortunately many of my co-workers could not attend because they were clearing international aircraft that were ordered to the ground and happened to end up in Charleston. It was surreal to see aircraft from so many airlines stacked up on every corner of the airport.

The luncheon was very, very subdued, and the restaurant had a television on a stand in the dining room showing the news. Later that afternoon, the lack of aircraft taking off and flying overhead was very noticeable, particular since Charleston was enjoying the same beautiful weather that New York enjoyed that tragic day.

To this day I have a lump in my throat when I go into a Olive Garden for a goodbye luncheon, which seems to happen at least twice a year.

[here_2_help]

I was in Denver doing some consulting work for a telecom company. For some reason, I couldn't sleep that night and finally gave up early in the morning, and turned on CNN. The heads were talking about a plane that had just hit the Towers, and I remember thinking to myself, "either that's the world's worst piloting, or that was a terrorist attack." Then the 2nd plane hit and we all knew right away what was going on.

I was living in Herndon, VA at the time, so I called my wife, who was home with our nine month-old son, on leave from her job with a defense contractor near Langley. I was nearly 2,000 miles from home and she was worried, so she and our son drove over to a friend's house in Fairfax.

I went to the client's office for our 9 AM meeting, but security had shut the building down. A couple of client employees and I went to the hotel bar, not to drink but to watch TV. The bar quickly filled up. Nobody did any work that day. At noon the phone rang -- it was one of my co-workers. We had run into each other on the plane during boarding and waved, but now she was crying and distraught and wondering if I had a rental car. That was when I learned that the airports had closed down ... indefinitely. My co-worker, a nice young lady of about 24 or 25, was going to be married in a month or two, and had just learned that her future brother-in-law was in one of the towers, and had not made it out. She needed to get home ASAP and wouldn't be flying even if the airports were open. She was hoping I had a car so we could hit the road.

As it happened I did have a rather nice Bonneville, big and smooth and air-conditioned, perfect for a cross-country ride at highway speeds. So I got up early the next day, purchased some driving shoes to replace my wingtips, picked up a couple of CDs worth of driving music, and drove to her hotel. We left Denver via Highway 70 at just about noon. We arrived in Arlington VA 25 hours and 45 minutes later, having driven 1,795 miles, stopping only for gas, food, and other necessities.

Going through the mid-west states, we had the cruise control set at 94 MPH. First, I figured law enforcement had better things to do at that time than issue speeding tickets. Second, if we did get pulled over, I was going to have my co-worker tell her story. I was pretty sure we were not going to get a ticket.

One last note, two of my other co-workers were scheduled to be in LA on 9/12 for meetings related to the Hughes Aircraft/Boeing purchase price dispute. The client called at the last minute and postponed the meeting a week, so they changed their reservations. Had that not happened, they would have been on the airplane that hit the Pentagon.

[formerfed]

I was doing work in southwest DC overlooking the waterfront. We first became aware of the New York events on computer/news coverage. Then we heard about the Pentagon crash and started seeing first smoke and then flames from the building windows. The scary part is nobody knew what was going on. Traffic was stopped and people walking/running across the bridges from DC to VA went faster than cars.

[leo1102]

I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing - .

I was working as the Battalion Commander's Secretary at the 30th AG Bn (Rec) at Ft Benning, GA. The National Guard liaison office down the hall had a television in it. One of the soldiers came running down the hall (I heard the footfalls before seeing the soldier). He told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Leaving my desk, I arrived at the television just as the second plane hit. Standing there dumbstruck by what we were seeing, we (civilians employees and soldiers - a large crowd had grown by then) began talking about the new soldiers we were processing through the reception station and what the world would hold for their future because this was an act of terrorism - plain and simple, no question, we were certain. I returned to my office to notify the Battalion Commander of the events - he was in a meeting and at first was quite angry at the interruption but understood my urgency after the fact. Then the plane hit the Pentagon. I was sitting at my desk processing the influx of phone calls, when the civilian personnel advisor for our Regimental HQs phoned to tell me that the Pentagon had just been hit. Immediately I rushed into the Battalion Commander's office and informed him and then went across the hall to inform the Executive Officer. The Executive Officer looked me straight in the eyes and said angrily "You're a liar". Dealing with the shock of being called a liar to my face, I responded that she needed only to check the television news to see the truth (she never did apologize for calling me a liar and our relationship was forever changed). It was at that moment that I remembered that the former battalion commander had left the 30th AG Bn (Rec) for the G-1 offices of the Pentagon. I phoned her cell phone, no response. I phoned her husband's cell phone, no response. I phoned her home phone and received a standard voice mail. I phoned her office and received a standard voice mail. I didn't know that the cell phone circuits were probably overloaded at that time and I certainly did not know that it was precisely where her office was located that the plane hit the Pentagon. The next morning, first thing when I arrive at work at 0730, I phoned her home number and, thankfully, she answered. Yes, she had been at work. Yes, overall she was OK (we would later learn that she had some hearing loss and other minor injuries). A meeting was scheduled for shortly after she reported to work on 11 Sep. She was not in her office when the plane hit, but in a conference room further down the hall. I never forgot that the soldiers we were processing through the Reception Station and who would go on to Infantry Training were going to be soldiers in a world that was far different than it was prior to 11 Sep. The influx of recruits grew steadily and these brave patriotic volunteers went into the breach.

[jewettr]

Interesting exercise; as usual, I?m a few days late and a dollar short.

I was still active duty Air Force at the time, stationed at Moody AFB in GA. As was the trend here, after the first strike the TV went on in the conference room. And as events unfolded, we all knew our lives as Americans changed forever. I was dumbstruck when the second aircraft hit ?live? and more so as word trickled down that the Pentagon had been hit, as well as the aircraft in Pennsylvania.

I was currently scheduled to deploy to Oman, as a matter of fact, my passport was at the Pentagon for the visa stamp. As a former member of the Security Police (prior to the Security Forces merger), I could relate to the changes in security posturing happening throughout the country. Eventually, I wound up in Qatar supporting OEF, thankful that no matter how insignificant my part seemed at the time, I was at least able to contribute.

As a postscript, after retiring, I moved up to the D.C. area and began working in support of the Pentagon Renovation Program Office. I inherited the contract for the Phoenix Project, closing out the final punchlist items. To this day, when I?m at the Pentagon for unrelated projects, I can?t help but to think about that day.