09/11/2019
9-11-2001 didn't start out as a normal morning. Cable & Wireless USA mandated that I attend some training class that morning at 9:30am in Reston, VA instead of heading to my office in Tysons Corner at 8:30am. While I was getting ready, I just happened to have the Today Show on the TV. I was about to turn off the TV and walk out the door when they cut to video of the North Tower of the World Trade Center on fire. Knowing that my division's two largest clients, Cantor Fitzgerald and Merrill Lynch, were in the World Trade Center I immediately called our group admin, Margaret, and told her to turn on a TV and watch what was happening. We were still on the phone at 9:03am when that second plane flashed across my screen and hit the South Tower. Margaret had to go and I left to make my training.
I drove to the training listening to the Howard Stern Show and their take on what was happening in New York. Just as I was about to exit the Fairfax County Parkway to our Reston office, I heard the news that the Pentagon, just 30 miles away, had also been hit. That one was a real kick in the gut.
I was in a state of total shock when I walked into my class. The instructor, a Scottish gentleman, tried to give me some guff about being late. I wasn't having it, “three planes have just been flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We have been attacked.”
Upon hearing “Pentagon” a half-dozen of my co-workers immediately walked out of the class. Our instructor tried to equivocate this attack to the bombings in Britain during The Troubles. That just ticked off a senior manager in the class who told us to go to the cafeteria and watch the TV. 15 minutes later all employees were all told to go home.
I arrived home and received a call from my high school girlfriend, Jennifer, who told me, “I'm safe. When the plane hit the North Tower everyone ran to the windows. Our supervisor told everyone to ‘get back to work’. I headed straight down the stairs and was on the third floor when the plane hit our building. I just kept walking until I got home.”
My best friend, Rich, had an early smartphone, and he was able to post to an email listserv we were on that he and his wife were both okay at the Pentagon.
My neighbor, Melissa, got home and told me that she was on the George Washington Parkway, just north of I-395 when she saw the explosion at the Pentagon just 3,000 ft to her west.
My closest friends all survived the attacks. Everyone that I had ever talked to at Cantor Fitzgerald and Merrill Lynch did not. My division did not survive the loss of our two largest clients and we were laid off less than a year later.
There is no joy in this day. Or in its aftermath. The hundreds of stories of individual heroism and suffering are overshadowed by the political incompetence, malfeasance, and malpractice both before and after the attack. Ignoring our experts and brushing off our intelligence services has gone into overdrive in the current administration. We had no plan for victory in Afghanistan and instead of being gone in December 2001, we've been stuck there for 18 years. Trillions of dollars, instead of being invested in our domestic infrastructure, were wasted on tax cuts for billionaires and a stupid second War in Iraq. And the lives. Hundreds of thousands of innocent lives wasted.
our governments are here to protect us and our planet, to make our lives better, not to bring death or destruction to the world.
For me 9-11-2001 didn't start out as a normal morning. Cable & Wireless USA mandated that I attend some training class that morning at 9:30am in Reston, VA instead of heading to my office in Tysons Corner at 8:30am. While I was getting ready, I just happened to have the Today Show on the TV. I was about to turn off the TV and walk out the door when they cut to video of the North Tower of the World Trade Center on fire. Knowing that my division's two largest clients, Cantor Fitzgerald and Merrill Lynch, were in the World Trade Center I immediately called our group admin, Margaret, and told her to turn on a TV and watch what was happening. We were still on the phone at 9:03am when that second plane flashed across my screen and hit the South Tower. Margaret had to go and I left to make my training.
I drove to the training listening to the Howard Stern Show and their take on what was happening in New York. Just as I was about to exit the Fairfax County Parkway to our Reston office, I heard the news that the Pentagon, just 30 miles away, had also been hit. That one was a real kick in the gut.
I was in a state of total shock when I walked into my class. The instructor, a Scottish gentleman, tried to give me some guff about being late. I wasn't having it, “three planes have just been flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We have been attacked.”
Upon hearing “Pentagon” a half-dozen of my co-workers immediately walked out of the class. Our instructor tried to equivocate this attack to the bombings in Britain during The Troubles. That just ticked off a senior manager in the class who told us to go to the cafeteria and watch the TV. 15 minutes later all employees were all told to go home.
I arrived home and received a call from my high school girlfriend, Jennifer, who told me, “I'm safe. When the plane hit the North Tower everyone ran to the windows. Our supervisor told everyone to ‘get back to work’. I headed straight down the stairs and was on the third floor when the plane hit our building. I just kept walking until I got home.”
My best friend, Rich, had an early smartphone, and he was able to post to an email listserv we were on that he and his wife were both okay at the Pentagon.
My neighbor, Melissa, got home and told me that she was on the George Washington Parkway, just north of I-395 when she saw the explosion at the Pentagon just 3,000 ft to her west.
My closest friends all survived the attacks. Everyone that I had ever talked to at Cantor Fitzgerald and Merrill Lynch did not. My division did not survive the loss of our two largest clients and we were laid off less than a year later.
There is no joy in this day. Or in its aftermath. The hundreds of stories of individual heroism and suffering are overshadowed by the political incompetence, malfeasance, and malpractice both before and after the attack. Ignoring our experts and brushing off our intelligence services has gone into overdrive in the current administration. We had no plan for victory in Afghanistan and instead of being gone in December 2001, we've been stuck there for 18 years. Trillions of dollars, instead of being invested in our domestic infrastructure, were wasted on tax cuts for billionaires and a stupid second War in Iraq. War crimes. And the lives. Hundreds of thousands of innocent lives wasted.
our governments are here to protect us and our planet, to make our lives better, not to bring death or destruction to the world.
