September 11--Let's Never Forget

I tell my story every year.  It is impossible for me NOT to tell it. WE MUST REMEMBER THE PAST IN ORDER NOT TO REPEAT IT.

September 11, 2001
I was at home getting ready to go to work.  I was anticipating the arrival later that day of my brother, Ken, from New York. My dad was in the hospital with a broken hip.  Around 8 am Central time, my telephone rang, and it was Ken. He was flying standby on American Airlines from La Guardia Airport, NYC, and he was letting me know he had not been able to get on the first flights. He asked me to look at the TV and see what was going on at the World Trade Center.  He said they could see a fire from the airport, and wondered if it had been bombed again.  I turned my TV to ABC, and saw a gaping hole in the side of the building with flames shooting out. I reported what I saw, and he asked if it looked like a plane had hit it.  Being a pilot and doing airplane repairs for many folks on Long Island, he wondered if one of the tour planes had possibly crashed.  We exchanged a couple of phone calls, with me updating him as to what the news people knew. After one report, I told him I did not want to alarm him, but it was an American Airlines flight that had crashed. As information came in, I called him and he was relaying it to people around him in the airport. While we were talking, I saw the second plane fly into the second tower. At the same time, he saw the explosion. He asked if that was another plane, and I said yes. My stomach hit the floor. As he relayed that message to those around him, I could hear the distress and pandemonium that was going on around him. People were yelling, and I could feel their panic through the phone. I told him to get the hell out of there, and he said they had just closed the airport.

I hung up and went to work.  I should not have charged my poor customer for her hair appointment that morning, I have no recollection of what I did.  The whole morning was a volley of phone calls. We did not have a TV at the salon, but I took a radio so we could stay up with what was going on.  My daughter Shelly in Amarillo called because class had been cancelled, and she was just figuring out what a target Pantex was. She became our reporter, calling when the flight crashed in Pennsylvania, the bombing at the Pentagon, and when each tower fell. She called when they evacuated Amarillo National Bank, because it was a tall building. I fielded several calls from friends and family in Hartley and Dalhart who knew Ken was to fly out of New York that day, asking about his welfare. I had no answer for them. Finally, around noon, Ken called to let me know he was home, safe and sound. There was no cell phone reception as the lines had been overloaded, so I had spent that time wondering if he was even able to get out of the area, as we heard about the traffic jams in New York City and surrounding areas.

We got reports of others in Dalhart who had family or friends in NYC.  I would have never dreamed that on any given day there would be so many people in that city from our small town who were somehow connected to me or people I know. 

As this all began to sink in, I really realized what terrorism is.  What they did that day, thousands of miles away, affected our whole nation.  It reached across the USA and stabbed me.  It stabbed my family, my friends, my town. It picked us all up and shook us to the core. People were scared, refusing to fly and travel, stockpiling food and water, changing their daily lives out of fear. They discouraged large gatherings of people, thought it would be a target for other attacks. We had lived for many years thinking we were safe, and now our innocence and arrogance are forever gone. We, as a country, had been caught unprepared. 

Yes, I know some of you have heard me tell this story over and over for years. I am compelled to tell it again and again, lest we forget—we must all be vigilant, and stop terrorism wherever and whenever it rears it’s ugly head. There are bad people in this world, always has been, always will be.  Let’s never forget that. I miss my innocence, but it is lost forever, along with the 2819 people from all over the world that died that day.

So what did we do?  As soon as the ban on flight was lifted, my brother flew home to Dalhart.  Three weeks later, my hubby and I climbed on an airplane and flew to Phoenix for a NASCAR race. Oh, and the Arizona State Fair and the World Series were in Phoenix at the same time. ( So much for avoiding crowds.) I refused to let those bastards win. They are not going to stop us from living in freedom.

May God bring peace to those families who lost someone, and may God bless America. But we must not forget that ugly day, or we set ourselves up to repeat it.