So after I updated my blog last night about our family Easter celebration I was playing around on the computer when I noticed that people on Facebook had started to post that there was some big news buzz going on and there was speculation that Osama bin Laden had been killed. Of course I had to check further so after getting to a couple of news sites it did indeed look like that was the big story and that the President was going to have a press conference, so I headed downstairs and waited for almost an hour to confirm what had already been speculated.
It's hard to believe that after almost ten years the man responsible for plotting the 9/11 attacks is finally dead. Don't get me wrong - I don't wish death on anyone... usually. I figure I'm allowed to make one exception, and this is it. Hearing the press conference gave me the chills and flashbacks to 9/11, and today's news coverage was full of images and recollections of that fateful day that literally made me sick to my stomach.
While I was no where near New York, Washington, DC, or Pennsylvania on that day, I had just been in New York City two weeks prior and remember joking with the co-worker that I went with that next time we were in town we were going to go to the World Trade Center's famous "Windows to the World" restaurant for dinner. I worked for the New York Times call center at the time and was out at our sister location in New Jersey (literally across the GW bridge from NYC) quite frequently.
I still remember driving to work that morning, bored with what was on the radio and flipping on the CD player instead. Because of this, I missed reports of the first plane hitting the WTC tower on the radio and was greeted outside by two of my managers who broke the news of the "accident" in New York. Of course I rushed upstairs to check the internet, but information was sketchy and since we didn't have a TV in the office at the time, we relied on news reports on the internet and the radio to keep us posted, and it was about 5 minutes later that the second plane hit. Our phones, which were normally ringing off the hook, were eerily quiet and just kept getting quieter and everyone realized that this was no accident, but a deliberate terrorist attack on American soil.
We closed our offices early that day and sent people home to safety (as we really didn't know what else to expect) and to be with their families. I lived alone at the time and remember having every TV on in my townhouse and I sat glued to it for hours, listening to the reports, watching the footage, and crying and praying with the rest of the country. Stunned does not even describe it, and I still get the chills thinking about it. Suddenly the world seemed much more harsh, and I'll admit that I slept with every light on in the house for weeks - every single one - for no apparent reason, other than it was what I felt compelled to do at the time.
September 12 had me out of bed and at the office before sunrise. Like I said, I worked for the New York Times and we KNEW it was going to be a chaotic day, and I was trying to get ahead of what was going to be a very trying day. After watching the sunrise with the IT staff (who were the only other people there that early) and meeting with the supervisors to form some sort of game plan for the anticipated call volume, we sat and waited for the phones to ring. They didn't ring off the hook like we expected (at first anyway), but the calls we received were heartbreaking. Everyone was calling for copies of the 9/12 paper so they could read the latest on what happened and we took calls from people who had gotten out of the towers before they fell, families who had loved ones missing in the towers and were looking for any information they could find to help foster a glimmer of hope that they would be found alive, and first responders who lost colleagues when the towers collapsed. Everyone in the office was a wreck - myself included - and I remember walking up and down aisles with boxes of kleenex as everyone was crying as they were talking to the callers and hearing their stories, their hopes, and their losses.
To this day I still have the September 12th copy of the NYT wrapped in plastic in a Rubbermaid container, along with several other newspapers and magazines. I saved them as a first hand testament to what happened that day, and planned to share them with my children when they got older. I still plan to share them someday with RP, and I pray that she never has to endure an event (or worse - eventS) like that in her lifetime. Is it too much to ask that we all just get along?
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