Today is the day when we look at the calendar, and nearly flinch. September
11, 2001 is distant to us in many ways, but now--
amazingly--for the 12th time, we've all
looked at that calendar page and have been taken back to where we were that
morning.
I'm republishing my personal account of what happened to me that
day, written in the early days of my blog. My story is no more special than
yours, I know. But on a day when the date is sure to be used by many for
political purposes, I wanted to have one post up that just remembers
the
day.
 |
Photo of United
Airlines Las Vegas-based Flight Attendants'
memorial service at Sunset Park,
September 2001
(Originally published in the Las Vegas
Review-Journal)*
|
ORIGINALLY POSTED SEPTEMBER 11, 2007
Posts I've made today, and earlier in this blog's short history, have
discussed or are related to 9/11. I'd rather not let the day go by without giving
you the reader--and me the blogger--a little more, minus the political
rhetoric.
I've become a deeply cynical person, you might say, at least as
it regards politics. This is particularly true lately. But on Tuesday, September
11th, 2001 I wasn't thinking about any of that. Everyone who witnessed that day
has their own story. Mine is no more relevant than yours, and is surely less
traumatic than many.
I awoke that morning at my usual time, somewhere
between 6:30 and 6:45 am. I had finished my morning ritual, and was just
buttoning up my clothes when the phone rang. It was our friend, Larry, an
American Airlines flight attendant, and he was crying. "Two planes have just
hit the World Trade Center," he managed between sobs. This was startling news,
but not yet sufficiently alarming for me to change my routine.
I passed
the phone to The Other Half, and turned on the bedroom TV. There it was, and the
slight alarm turned to a sinking feeling. This was big. We quickly
learned that it was both United's and American Airlines' planes that hit the
buildings, causing high alarm in the room, and on the other end of the phone.
The Other Half, and our next-door neighbor/friend, were [and still are] both United flight
attendants. And the neighbor was on a trip at an unknown location. My heart
sank, and I nearly sobbed myself--with relief--that my partner was right there
in the room with me, accounted for.
Not fully realizing the impact of
what had happened, I began my journey to work. I switched on the radio, and was
very shortly informed that the Pentagon was on fire. They did not yet know the
cause. When I pulled into the parking lot at work, the radio announcer said that
a plane was believed to have crashed in Pennsylvania. There was an erroneous report about an explosion somewhere else (maybe the White House?). I said out loud, "the sky
is falling." I fully expected at that point that a wave of attacks would
continue throughout the morning. Thankfully, that did not come to
pass.
Shortly after my arrival at work, The Other Half called, and told
me one of the towers had fallen. Not long after, we heard the same about the
other. We imagined the worst, that the buildings had fallen over,
smashing all below. Thankfully, again, as bad as it was, it could have been
worse.
We didn't get much work done that day. Someone went home and got a TV,
and we spent much of our time in front of that fuzzy little picture. Later that
day, we found that most of our friends, and their colleagues were accounted for.
Our neighbor was stranded in New Orleans for over a week. We had quite the
celebration upon his return.
The following days were surreal. I'd never
seen Las Vegas without planes in the sky, and believe me, you notice. We watched
hours upon hours of TV News, of course, like everyone else. And the casinos
around town knee-jerk fired lots of people. We feared for our
town.
Several days later, The Other Half went to a memorial service at
Sunset Park, due east of McCarran Airport, with the Las Vegas United Airlines
base crew. During the service, the first plane in days landed, flying right over
the park. There was a swelling of spontaneous applause, as you'd
imagine.
We were very lucky. We knew people who had
friends-of-friends-of-friends who died that day, but fortunately (for our little
world), were spared personal losses. One friend was quite well acquainted with
one of the [United 93] pilots, and we had his wife to our house, but that was the extent of
our direct contact. United, of course, had a very rocky ride of it, as did
American. Many of the flight attendants left town, or left aviation. Las Vegas,
predictably bounced back.
UPDATE, SEPTEMBER 11, 2008:
Las Vegas isn't feeling very bouncy this September 11th.
Tourism is down, layoffs are widespread, hours (mine included) have been cut at
many jobs. United Airlines and American Airlines are seemingly always under
threat of going out of business. The neighbor moved to Florida not long after
September 11th. The Other Half and I were married this year, and are doing well
despite job worries. Whatever happens on November fourth, I think it will
bookend 9/11/2001, and hopefully all of this will seem like a bygone era.
UPDATE, SEPTEMBER 11, 2009:
Things in Las Vegas haven't perked up much in the last year. We have,
of course, moved from the Bush Era on into the Obama Era. It remains to be seen
how that will play out. I'm not a lock-step liberal by any stretch, but I'm
willing to give the President time and space.
UPDATE, SEPTEMBER
10, 2010:
Still waiting for the economy to pick up in Las Vegas,
personally and city-wide. We lead the pack for foreclosures, unemployment and
several other "worst of" lists. We did place first in a "best roads" in
the US story, so that's something. All of these woes are put at the
feet of: a) Barack Obama, if you are a partisan conservative, b) George W. Bush,
if you're a partisan liberal, c) Harry Reid, if you're Sharron Angle, or d) the
snowball effect of many factors, with blame to be shared by both political
parties. I'm going with the last one. But I do have to wonder what the state of
the economy and the United States in general might have been like if that clear
blue skied Tuesday in September 2001 had been just an ordinary day.
UPDATE, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011:
Wow, 10 years. There are parts of that day that seem eerily recent. And then you remember everything that has happened since. Our two (main) wars--started in the immediate aftermath of 9/11--are still going on in one form or other. The economy noted in the updates above, hasn't improved much. Las Vegas is hanging in there, but a bit beaten and battered. And as I noted in 2010, this economic pickle might have been a bit different were it not for that one day. Maybe we still would have had a housing bubble, maybe the bankers and corporate fat cats would've still been crooks. But the whole deficit/debt sideshow might've been in much, much better shape. Ugh. I wish things were a bit rosier for the 10-year anniversary of that rotten day. Maybe the 20? Or dare I wish it, the 11th or 12th?
UPDATE, SEPTEMBER 11, 2012:
In my yearly updates, I see I've gotten away from "not being political." Sorry about that, but what can you do? Everything is political these days. In 2012, our household actually is better off than we were four years ago, with everything except housing values looking up. Everyone is looking toward November's election, but very little has been made this year about 9/11, other than that this year is the first (oops) second time it's happened on a Tuesday since that fateful day. Though American Airlines is in bankruptcy this year, but United seems to be doing well with its Continental merger. In good news, the Iraq War is over. Still don't know what that had to do with 9/11. And sadly, Captain Dahl's widow died this year, oddly enough at the house of a friend of ours. So, at eleven years and counting, it's kind of a mixed bag. Here's to the day when we have to think about it to remember how many years it's been.
UPDATE, SEPTEMBER 11, 2013:
President Obama spoke last night, on the matter of what to do about Syria. The proximity to September 11, and our botched response to it weighs heavy over the whole thing. Then again, it also informs us about overheated, foolish reactions. Also, we have to keep in mind that last year, we were attacked in Benghazi,. Hopefully this year's anniversary will go by without anything like that. This year makes a dozen years, which means we're getting well into a time where high school kids probably don't remember much about the day as it happened. Their entire worldviews are of the "post-9/11" variety.
* Full disclosure: photo contains an image of my husband, our friends and his co-workers.
