My youngest child just interviewed me for a class project. The topic was about where I was and what I was doing on 9/11/2001. He was 20 months old then and has no recollection of how much America was changed that day.
Normally, my blog posts have some humor. But I think this one will be about my memories of that tragic day.
We were living in Cincinnati at the time, and I was working as a subcontractor to the DOE Superfund site at Fernald, a former uranium processing plant during the Cold War. I worked in the Records Management department, in a warehouse about 20 or so miles from the actual site, and I was part of a team that tracked the active records of the various projects going on at the plant during the cleanup. We also house the historical records from when the plant was in active production. The warehouse had thousands of boxes of documents, and walking through that warehouse with the racks of boxes extending way up overhead, would sometimes remind me of the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" where the Ark of the Covenant was being wheeled though a gigantic warehouse to be archived.
Anyway, on September 11, 2001 I was at work, listening to the radio as I entered information into a database regarding documents, what file folder they were in, and what box contained the file folder. The "Bob and Tom Show" was on with their usual comedic takes on what was happening, sprinkled with funny songs and frequent guests to the show. After one break, though, they came on and reported that someone had informed them that a plane had flown into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York City. They seemed skeptical until they saw a TV report with the tower smoking on the upper floors.
I went to one of the managers and told him what I'd just heard and asked if we could get the TV on in the large conference room and see if it was true. He and I went in and we were just tuning in when we saw a plane hit the tower.
"Oh my gosh! Someone caught it on TV," I said. Then I realized there were two towers smoking and we'd just witnessed the second jet live. Unlike the movies, where things like this happen in slow motion, with exciting music and flaming explosions, the jet just flew into one side of the building at (I guess) a couple hundred miles per hour and windows burst on the opposite side as smoke and debris billowed out.
I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach. Dozens of people, at least, had just died probably instantly. And this being the second tower hit, I knew it was not a horrific coincidence. The warehouse did not have good television reception, so everyone with a radio tuned in to whatever was going on.
My wife had chosen to home school the kids that year, and the homeschool group had planned a trip to a bookstore for storytime and other activities, so they had no idea what was going on. I called the bookstore and asked them to tell my family to just watch kid videos when they got home and to not watch TV. At this point reports were coming in of the other planes down, all air traffic being diverted, and descriptions of people jumping out of windows at the World Trade Center.
Since no group had claimed responsibility for what had happened, the uncertainty and anxiety levels were running high. Fernald still had areas with radioactive material and radioactive waste, so the plant was at a higher stage of alert with non-essential personnel being sent home. At the Records Center, even though we were safe from the nasty stuff, we were allowed to leave early as well.
That night, with my family close, we watched as many Disney videos as we could until the kids dropped off to sleep. Then we turned on the TV and watched the latest updates on the tragic events. The stars were unusually bright that night because the usual smog above Cincinnati was gone. Not very many people were driving around and there was no air traffic and everything was eerily quiet.
I remember being in various stages of shock for several days, but eventually things got back to as near to normal as they seemed they would get. I applied for and was accepted to grad school, so I moved back to Oklahoma in November 2001 and began classwork at OSU in January 2002.
My youngest child, now 12, has no memory of what was going on on 9/11/2001. I'm glad he asked to interview me for his World Studies project. It brought back some vivid memories, and I thought I'd share them on this blog.
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