Going through High School and a little bit in college, friends of mine and I always lamented that we didn't have a story that followed "Where were you when you heard about _______?" Our grandparents told us stories about where they were when they heard about Pearl Harbor, and our parents told us where they were when they heard about President Kennedy being shot, or where they were when man first landed on the moon.
Then September 11, 2001 happened. Now and forever we have something that we can tell stories about.
On September 11, 2001, I was working at Camp Omega as the program director. I can't remember if we still had a dial up connection, or if we had finally gotten a satellite internet connection, but I remember that I checked my email when I got into work at about 9:00. There was a headline on yahoo.com that said that a "small" plane had crashed into one of the towers of the world trade center. I clicked on the link, but wasn't able to get the page to come up. For the first time that I had ever seen, a page on yahoo said that "maximum connections have been reached." So why not try CNN right? Nope, I couldn't get anything to work on there either. Every web news site was completely at maximum connections, or didn't respond at all. So, I checked my email. Oh well.
We didn't realize anything big was happening until Patrick Hair (who always had MPR on in his office) said something to the effect that there was something going on in New York. We still couldn't get any web sites to connect, so Kevin Hall, the director, ran over to his house to see what was up. He was gone for quite a while. Apparently as he got into the house, he watched the second tower collapse in on itself.
We lauhed at him the next day because he didn't invite us over to watch on his fancy Satellite TV, but when he didn't come back for a while, we grabbed the camp conversion van and turned on the TV in it. Now, don't get me wrong. It was 2001, and the van was from some time in the early to mid 1980's. The TV we watched it on had one channel that worked, and it was in black and white. Right as we turned it on, we watched as they replayed the collapse of the second tower "that happened minutes ago." It truly was surreal.
Patrick and I worked on getting a strap peg on my guitar for an hour or so after that, and then I decided to go home. I watched the rest of the day. I watched the same things over and over, the second plane crashing into the tower, and then the video of them both collapsing.
I think something that has been forgotten in the past five years is that feeling that was in all of our stomachs. We had been attacked on our own soil. If it could happen to New York and Washington DC, it could happen anywhere. Gas lines started to form that evening. Everyone was stocking up. I don't even know if they were sure what they were stocking up for, but it was scary enough for everyone to go out and get as much fuel as they could.
I remember going outside that night and taking a walk around. Where I was living you could usually see the airplanes lined up on approach to MSP. That night the sky was completely quiet. It truly felt like the world had completely changed forever.
The plane above was one of the only planes that was allowed to fly after the FAA grounded all non-fighter traffic. It is a Navy C-9 transport, and it flew firefighters and rescue workers up the east coast from Georgia to New York. Thank you to all who have protected our lives, and our country since the beginning of this war on terrorism.
