Three Days in History - Day 2

(This is the second installment of this three-part series. Part 1 can be found here.)

September 11, 2001

It was a beautiful day in north Georgia that Tuesday morning. I drove to work, still getting used to my new commute. My office was in a community about 10 miles northeast of downtown Atlanta and about 15 miles south of where we lived at the time. The day began with a staff meeting. I believe that was the first time I had actually been introduced to some of my co-workers, of which there were about 15 or so that were there that day. Some were travelling. When the meeting wrapped up – at about 9:30 or so – I headed back to my office to begin tackling the day. That’s when I saw the light flashing on my phone, indicating a voice mail message was waiting for me…

I had never heard that tone in my wife’s voice before. It was urgent. It was scared. It was confused. I saved that message for years, so I have a pretty good recollection of what was said.

“Bud – you need to listen to the news. A plane just hit the world trade center. A jet, not a small one. They think we’re under attack. It’s a big mess. Call me! I love you!”

I have to admit, even typing that, tears well up in my eyes. I called Barbara back and she told me that since she had left the message, another jet had hit the other tower – she watched it as it happened live, behind the newscaster in view of the camera.

You must remember, this was before smartphones. This was before everyone had breaking news updates pushed to their phones and devices. As I turned on my radio to get the news, I started hearing the commotion throughout the rest of the office. Others had just received similar messages from loved ones. We tried looking online – but again, this was early days – everything got bogged down so nothing would load or update. One or two radios with local news were all we had to get information. Then the rumors started…

Was Atlanta one of the targets? There are some very high-profile buildings downtown that would be susceptible to this kind of attack. At this, some folks started asking if they should go home. As part of the management team, we said to hang tight for a few minutes. While we were making the decision to let everyone head home, the building management people called us to say there were “threats to our security” and that the building needed to be evacuated. Well… That was that. A handful of us waited until our team was on their way, and then we locked up and headed out, as well.

Once in the car I let Barbara know I was on my way. Traffic was even messier than usual, with everyone trying to move and get home at the same time. I tried to call my dad, who lived in Florida. I wanted to check on him, and my sister he lived with. I also wanted to find out about my two other sisters and their families who still lived in New York state – one of them less than an hour from the city. It took me multiple times to connect. Remember the dreaded, “all of our circuits are busy right now” message that used to come during busy times when everyone was making phone calls at the same time? Eventually, I got through, and he was very glad to hear from me because he had seen and heard on the news the rumors about Atlanta also.

After I hung up with my dad, right before I got home, I heard that a plane had also hit the Pentagon. I couldn’t get home fast enough. When I arrived, Barbara and her friend Janet (who had come over to help with some housework) were glued to the television – much the way we all were for days afterwards. The fact that my wife did not have to deal with watching all of that alone was just one of the many things about this period for which we are thankful to God. At some point our friend went home to be with her family - and continue her watch.

The Twin Towers struck by planes and then collapsed. The Pentagon hit and on fire. A plane crash in a Pennsylvania field that apparently was related. What in the world was going on?

To be honest, the next 12 hours are pretty much a blur. Hour after hour of watching smoke emanating from what was already being called Ground Zero. So many questions. So few answers. There were several other eventful things for us that day, but I honestly don’t remember the timing of when they happened…

Living so close to a major city, you get used to seeing planes and contrails in the sky – especially on cool, clear days. It was noticeable that by that afternoon there were none, as all air traffic had been grounded. We did see some planes, however, Air Force Fighters, loaded with ordinance under their wings, as part of their patrols of the Atlanta airspace. That is not something we were used to seeing.

One of our big concerns was one of my brothers-in-law, who worked in the World Trade Center Complex, in one of the smaller buildings. Every morning he took the train into the city and exited at the WTC station, directly beneath the towers. We learned at some point during the day, that he had woken up not feeling well, so he decided to go into work a little later that morning. Instead of arriving at the complex at about 8:45, he was just getting on the train about then. About 15 minutes into his ride, the train stopped. Eventually it was explained to the train riders what had happened, and that they would obviously be going no further. He went back home to a very happy wife (my sister) and family and thanked God for His intervention.

Throughout the day, I kept thinking back to my personal memories of those towers. I grew up about two hours north of New York City. The buildings were completed in 1973, when I was very young. Every trip we took to “the city” I knew when we were getting close, because those towers were the first things to be seen in the distance. They represented excitement for me. As we would get closer, I would just be in awe of their size and the way they rose above the rest of the skyline at the lower tip of Manhattan. Even many years later, the first time I took Barbara (before we were even married) to visit my family in New York, we didn’t drive through the city, but just close enough so that she could see the towers reaching up to the sky, in the distance. All of those feelings of my childhood came back, as they did every time I saw them. That was the only time Barbara saw the Twin Towers.

I also kept hearing the voice in my head of an old family friend. A man who had served in Vietnam and acted as a brother to me while I was growing up. He had become a Port Authority Police officer in New York City and was very much involved with the tragedy and aftermath of the first world trade center bombing in February of 1993. My dear friend Peter Caram was certain that those responsible for the first bombing were not satisfied and would attack again. (There is a much longer story to this which he records in a book he wrote about the incident. It is very much worth reading.)

At some point very late in the evening we decided we needed some sleep and went to bed, hoping we would wake up with this being nothing but a horrible nightmare. Alas, it was not…

(Photo Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images via https://newyork.cbslocal.com/photo-galleries/2013/09/10/iconic-images-from-91101/)