9/11: A Day We Will Carry For The Rest Of Our Lives

It started out like a normal enough Tuesday. The alarm went off at 5:30 AM PST, my wife (then girlfriend) got up first, as she always does, then about 10 minutes later I rolled out of bed and headed for the shower. As the hot water slowly brought me back to life, I thought about my pending day. At that time, I was a marketing manager for a small travel publisher in Southern California and my schedule on the 11th of September 2001 was fairly light: a 9:30 AM production meeting with the rest of the time set aside for working on our forthcoming 2002 product catalog. As I had spent most of that summer traversing the country on business (Washington D.C., Chicago, stretches of Route 66, California Gold Country in 100-degree heat) I welcomed a quiet, uneventful day in the air-conditioned office.

As I stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel, my wife poked her head inside the bathroom, handed me a cup of coffee and said: " A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.” I put on my robe, and headed out to the living room where the Today Show was on TV. The top of the North Tower was full screen and a smoking, ragged hole was cut across the width of the structure. There were no visible flames or wreckage, just eerie, smoky blackness. The current report was that possibly a small aircraft, a Cessna or a Piper Cub, had lost control and slammed into the building. As it was shortly before 6AM in California, I remember thinking at least it was still early and no one was probably in the building yet. The image remained the same for several minutes. There was no sense of urgency or panic by any of the on-air reporters at that time. It just seemed like a terrible accident, nothing more.

I went back into the bathroom and continued getting ready for work. About 10 minutes later I walked back into the living room for an update and the South Tower was now ablaze after being struck by another aircraft at 6:03 AM PST. Reports were coming in from eyewitnesses that these were large planes, possibly airliners. The on-air reporters' voices now crackled with anguish and panic. It all had become suddenly clear: America was under attack.

My wife and I, stunned and a bit confused, forgot about getting ready for work, eating breakfast, anything really, and sat down on the couch to watch this nightmare unfold before our eyes. The screen now contained two horribly damaged, iconic symbols of American might standing side by side. Flames were now visible eating through the interior structure of both towers. Tattered paper and debris filled the surrounding air, floating listlessly to the ground. People could be seen inside hanging out windows and waving white flags. The time stamp in the corner of the Today Show broadcast read LIVE 9:20 AM EST or thereabouts and for the first time it dawned on me that the workday had already started in New York and that the towers were full of thousands of people.

Reports were now coming in that two passenger jets, both out of Logan Airport in Boston and bound for cross-country destinations, had possibly been hijacked and that they were the two aircrafts that had plowed into the towers. I remember feeling a sudden sense of dread and vulnerability at that second, like some indescribable evil has just sat down beside me. Then at roughly 6:40 AM PST reports begin to filter in that the Pentagon had just been struck by a low-flying aircraft. Soon there was a split screen of the towers and one side of the DOD headquarters engulfed in flames. My only thought was: My God, what was happening?

This unbelievable, chaotic image would not change for the next 20 minutes or so. Reports were now coming in that this was possibly the work of Osama bin Laden. Then, at approximately 7:00 AM PST, our eyes glued to the screen, the South Tower began to fall, going straight down in a cloud of ungodly smoke as if it were strapped to an express elevator. My wife and I both let out a gasp of horror and the pit that had slowly formed in my stomach over the last hour quickly tightened and suddenly a flood of sorrow filled my heart. The resulting cloud of ash and debris that engulfed the entire area was unlike anything I ever witnessed in my lifetime. It was a wonder the North Tower was still standing.

That thought didn't last long as the the North Tower plummeted to the ground approximately 28 minutes later, now doubling the unfathomable destruction below. I had only seen pictures of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. I was now witnessing our own Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Smoke, fires and people caked in ash, screaming, filled the screen for the next hour. In that time, reports came in that United Flight 93 out of New Jersey had crashed in a rural Pennsylvania field, most likely hijacked as well. The FAA had halted all civilian air traffic, ordering everything still in the air to land immediately. Four planes had now been used to kill thousands on American soil. I had heard the word terrorism for decades but didn't really know what it meant until that day. Was it over or was this just the beginning?

It was getting close to 9:00 AM PST and my wife and I knew we had better get into work. We reluctantly dressed and carpooled the seven miles to our offices (we worked about a block away from one another at the time). As I walked into my area, the atmosphere was unusually quiet. A few people were visible talking, but for the most part the place was eerily quiet for 9:30 AM, people no doubt hunkered down in their offices or cubes perusing the Internet for new information. I sat down and did the same, ignoring my scheduled production meeting. I felt like I had been struck in the gut repeatedly. I was anxious and found myself letting out deep breaths to release the tension. I stayed in my office for most of the day, talking maybe to a handful of co-workers in that time as they walked by. Not one of them discussed business. The phone rarely rang and when it did I picked up and found it hard to hold in my contempt for people who actually wanted to talk about travel products.

10 years later, my anxiety and contempt may have quelled, but a day hasn't gone by that I haven't thought about the fateful events of that Tuesday morning. I am reminded every time I travel, turn on the TV and hear a report on Afghanistan or Iraq, look at the clock at precisely 9:11 or scan expiration dates at the supermarket. And every time I see pictures or video of the planes slamming into each of the towers, it's like I'm seeing it for the first time. I stop and again my heart floods with sorrow. Every time. And while hopefully one day the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq will end, I know the others things won't and I'm all right with that. Never forget.