Continued from Part 1
September 11, 2008 - Part 2
When I walked in the office on the sixth floor, the front conference room had the TV on. A couple of staff members were standing in front. This wasn't too out of the ordinary. I was going to need the room within the hour, though, so I went in to make sure I still had it.
A coworker immediately alerted me to what was going on: "A 747 crashed into the World Trade Center!"
"Wha?"
It was at that moment as I glanced at the screen that I saw the second plane enter the frame and slam into the top of the building.
It was shocking, but like much of the rest of the country, we quickly knew we were no longer dealing with an insane accident, but an insane attack.
We watched in near silence as the news blathered on the same little information they knew. A few minutes more of this and then I hear the receptionist talking on the phone with her friend.
"There's smoke there?"
"Don't go there!"
"Just get out of that area!"
It's the Pentagon. There's been an explosion at the Pentagon and it's on fire. A few minutes later the news that a plane has hit the Pentagon is broadcast on the television.
I hurry over to my desk and call my wife at work.
Her office is a few blocks north of the White House, near Dupont Circle. We agree that I'll walk the two miles to her work, and then figure out where to go next. As I'm getting off the phone there is a huge BOOM! in the direction of the Capitol. There's the partially constructed office building between us and the Capitol. We don't know if something happened at the Capitol or if some big piece of construction fell. Our attempts to figure it out by peering out the window fail.
The TV alerts us to a report of an explosion near the State Department building in Foggy Bottom. As we are just one block from the Capitol building which may or may not have been attacked, everyone is told to leave the building and we spill out on to the streets.
It is amazing that the air I was in a half and hour ago could feel so different. It was still sunny and mild, but the air felt thick with all the tension and anxiety exuding from the people.
Everyone else in the middle part of DC were doing the same thing. Getting out. The roads were choking with cars. Most people were being remarkably civil under the stressful circumstances, but you did have a few folks honking and aggressively pushing their cars in front of others. The cars of course were going no where. It seemed to me that people would have been better off walking all the way to Bethesda or wherever else instead of driving. I never even considered getting on the Metro as being stuck underground in a crowded train during a terrorist attack held little appeal.
I was walking up Massachusetts Avenue, which is embassy row. I saw confused embassy staff wandering outside debating what to do. I saw other embassies on high alert, ushering people in or out (as each country had widely differing protocols for embassy security) and hurriedly locking up the gates.
I stopped at an ATM and took out $100 as a precaution. An hour later all the ATMs I saw were out of cash. I arrived at my wife's workplace. She wasn't there, but some of her colleagues were. They had been told to evacuate, but some had ignored it and stayed to watch the TV. Most of those who stayed appeared to be people who had friends and family who worked in or near the World Trade Center. I met my wife's boss for the first and last time, oddly being sure to thank her for the thoughtful wedding present she had given us (an excellent kitchen knife I still use to cut tomatoes). I learn my wife had left with a colleague to her place in Colombia Heights. I get the address, say an awkward goodbye, and walk north.
As I walk further from the center of DC, the hoards on the street begin to thin out. Soon I'm on a residential block that for all appearances makes it feel like a normal day. Few people are on the sidewalk. The only sound I hear are chirping birds. I think I relax a little for the first time in a couple hours.
Indeed my wife and a couple other friends and coworkers are stationed at the house, glued to the set. We commence to stare at it in shock.
One says, "I have a friend who has been working in one of the towers. She would have been there early today to monitor the primary election results."
Another, "The planes hit after most people would have been at work. There must be 10,000 people in those buildings..."
Eventually we get hungry and buy some pasta at the corner store at the end of the block which is open for business like just any other day. I find this strange, but don't know why, so I just pay the clerk without much conversation.
I finally can use my cell phone to call my mom and tell her I'm OK, even though by this time the news stations have it straight that "only" the World Trade towers, the Pentagon, and a portion of rural Pennsylvania have been hit. I don't know how quickly they figured out there were no attacks on the Mall or the State Department. Even my paranoid mother knows the likelihood of a peacenik like me randomly being in the Pentagon that day was utterly slim.
In the late afternoon, it appears safe to go on home to our basement apartment on Capitol Hill. Suddenly, living two blocks from the Capitol and Supreme Court isn't all that appealing.
We walk through a nearly empty downtown. Already military vehicles and personnel are out, blocking certain segments of the city. We walk past a downtown restaurant which is oddly open. It has a few patrons and a few staff and we go in and have an almost completely silent dinner.
As we approach the Capitol, we keep a two block radius to avoid any security blockades. Several military helicopters swoop overhead to the Capitol. We turn on the TV once we get in the apartment to learn it was Congressional leaders returning for their press conference and rendition of "God Bless America" on the back steps of the Capitol building.
The next day we arise, tired and disorientated. Outside our apartment building is a man in fatigues with a big gun. He and others continue to guard our intersection 24 hours a day for the next several months.
I get to work. Everyone else is shellshocked and unable to concentrate. We mingle in small groups talking about our previous day and what this all means and whether the US should make war on Arabs and what exactly is the difference between Afghanis and Arabs and who was Al Qaeda. At 10:00 I get a call from one of the staffers I was suppose to see the previous day.
"We gotta come in there right away for our meeting. Will you be ready for us in a half hour? We were unable to make it yesterday for some reason. HA! HA! I know there's a war on or something, but we need to get this redistricting plan squared away. Can you be ready for my boss in a half hour?"
I'm disgusted. My boss is disgusted. Everyone in the office is disgusted. We are all people who work nonstop for partisan advantage and yet we are sickened by the blatant partisanship displayed by this Member of Congress and his staff on September 12, 2001. (Later, I get a little bit of pleasure when the congressman was one of those depicted flirting with young interns days after September 11 in a controversial article in the December issue of Vanity Fair.)
After this phone call I began questioning just how long I wanted to stay in that city.
Over the following weeks and months, a war was started. DC was overrun with security measures, with concrete barriers, guards, and military vehicles everywhere. Then the anthrax scare happened. I remember uneasily walking past the wrapped up Hart Office Building. Every day our receptionist opened the mail with gloves on.
Washington, DC had lost a lot of the appeal it had when we first moved there June of 2000.
One year later, on September 15, 2002, we closed on our new house in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis and have been there ever since.
Showing posts with label story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label story. Show all posts
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Monday, September 8, 2008
My September 11, 2001
Quick note: On September 11, 2001, tragedy struck thousands of Americans. Many lost their lives. Many more lost their loved ones. The seemingly random act of whole-scale violence shocked a nation and the world. Many, many people have stories much more tragic and horrific than mine. While September 11 was a personal tragedy for them, the day made an impact, small or large, on most every American. This is my story.
September 10, 2008 - Part 1
The seventh anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade and Pentagon is upon us. The moment causes all Americans to reflect on the immense loss of that and brings back some of the fear, anxiety, and outrage we felt on September 11, 2001 and afterwards.
I lived and worked in Washington, DC on September 11, 2001. My story did not end in the tragedy that thousands of my fellow Americans (and others) did on that day. But it is a day etched in my personal memory all the same.
Like we hear about New York City, on September 11, it was a beautiful early fall day in Washington. The hot, humid weather of August was finally behind us and I could again enjoy my 10 minute walk to work without sweating up a storm. I was in pretty good spirits. I liked my job. I loved living on Capitol Hill even though it was in the city's tiniest basement apartment. September 11 was my one month wedding anniversary. My wife and I had married while in the slow, muggy month of August while Congress was in recess--August 11, 2001. We spent our August honeymoon driving along the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada; admiring the ocean, eating fresh seafood, drinking wonderfully bitter bear, and staying in quaint, overpriced B&Bs.
I had been back to work for a couple of weeks at my job as a professional gerrymanderer. We were creating and analyzing Congressional redistricting plans to maximize the advantage for Democrats. Things were going well.
My wife and I had moved out to DC on faith without jobs two weeks out of college. We both had the good fortune of quickly snagging some jobs and had been in DC for a little over a year. After getting married we discussed how much longer we would stay in DC. We loved it, but we knew it wasn't the best place for buying a house on two nonprofit salaries or to raise a family. We were Midwesterners at heart and imagined we'd return eventually. I had advocated staying through the next election season, 2002, and figuring out our next steps in early 2003. She was working on the campaign finance reform fight and wanted to see it through.
As I said, I enjoyed my job. It was high pressure at times, demanding, inflexible--but I was young, flexible, and loving being in the middle of all the political stuff in our nation's capital. So, work was great, but my favorite part of the day was walking to work.
We'd wake up sometime around 8:00 AM, get ready, eat a quick breakfast, and be out the door. My wife took the bus or subway to her job in an office building between Dupont Circle and the White House. I would walk about five blocks to my work. I walked past a couple Senators' homes and past the security detail in front of a Bush cabinet members' row house. I walked past the old brick building that housed the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL). This being the darkening days at the beginning of the Bush years, it was nice to see the peace-loving Quakers on the Hill and knowing they were fighting the good fight.
On my left I could see the Capitol Building behind the old, towering trees. On my right a couple blocks was Union Station. I crossed the street to find myself on the sidewalk along the Hart and Dirkson Senate office buildings. Often I would see Senators I recognized and VIPs (usually from the Pentagon) arriving for hearings. Mostly, it was the Senate staffers that had the good parking who were streaming down the sidewalk.
On one occasion I saw Senator Clinton hurry in with a team of Secret Service agents. I hadn't been paying attention and nearly walked right into an agent who had deftly planted himself on the sidewalk. I looked up just in time to see Senator Clinton less than 10 feet away from me. Occasionally, I'd see Senator Kennedy arrive in a minivan driven by a staffer or discover that I was walking next to Senator Barbara Boxer, who, by the way, is unusually attractive for a woman in her 60s and is very short.
Crossing the street you always had to be careful. Even with Capitol Police on site pedestrians were endangered of being hit by the reckless DC motorists. I had had a couple of close calls. Once, Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (CA-37), whipped around a corner and came a foot or two from my knees. (She had never slowed down.) On another occasion, a person who looked suspiciously like Sen. Patty Murry (WA) driving an SUV into the parking lot behind the Senate office building nearly knocked me over in the crosswalk.
On the morning of September 11 I don't remember any close calls with vehicles or Secret Service agents. I simply continued by the Russell Senate Office Building and across the park directly north of the Capitol, where I again could glance at the dome. This was the park I'd often see Senator Kennedy's dog out romping around, a couple times with the Senator, but usually with a staffer or intern. In the middle of the park stood a fountain where you'd often see people taking wedding photos on Fridays and Saturdays. Up on the left stretched the National Mall and I could also see part of the National Gallery of Art. In between, on Constitution and 2nd St NW, a very posh office building was being constructed to house the offices of some to-be-determined Washington moneyed-interests.
I crossed the street to my building and took a couple of fresh breaths of the peaceful, fall air before I entered. That morning I was to have a meeting with a couple of chiefs of staff of some Democratic representatives from a certain eastern state and possibly their bosses. They had been obtuse jerks in previous meetings, so I wasn't looking forward to seeing them this morning. I got on the elevator and that was the last normal part of my day.
Tomorrow: Part 2. Attacks. Fleeing central Washington. Returning. Leaving.
September 10, 2008 - Part 1
The seventh anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade and Pentagon is upon us. The moment causes all Americans to reflect on the immense loss of that and brings back some of the fear, anxiety, and outrage we felt on September 11, 2001 and afterwards.
I lived and worked in Washington, DC on September 11, 2001. My story did not end in the tragedy that thousands of my fellow Americans (and others) did on that day. But it is a day etched in my personal memory all the same.
Like we hear about New York City, on September 11, it was a beautiful early fall day in Washington. The hot, humid weather of August was finally behind us and I could again enjoy my 10 minute walk to work without sweating up a storm. I was in pretty good spirits. I liked my job. I loved living on Capitol Hill even though it was in the city's tiniest basement apartment. September 11 was my one month wedding anniversary. My wife and I had married while in the slow, muggy month of August while Congress was in recess--August 11, 2001. We spent our August honeymoon driving along the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada; admiring the ocean, eating fresh seafood, drinking wonderfully bitter bear, and staying in quaint, overpriced B&Bs.
I had been back to work for a couple of weeks at my job as a professional gerrymanderer. We were creating and analyzing Congressional redistricting plans to maximize the advantage for Democrats. Things were going well.
My wife and I had moved out to DC on faith without jobs two weeks out of college. We both had the good fortune of quickly snagging some jobs and had been in DC for a little over a year. After getting married we discussed how much longer we would stay in DC. We loved it, but we knew it wasn't the best place for buying a house on two nonprofit salaries or to raise a family. We were Midwesterners at heart and imagined we'd return eventually. I had advocated staying through the next election season, 2002, and figuring out our next steps in early 2003. She was working on the campaign finance reform fight and wanted to see it through.
As I said, I enjoyed my job. It was high pressure at times, demanding, inflexible--but I was young, flexible, and loving being in the middle of all the political stuff in our nation's capital. So, work was great, but my favorite part of the day was walking to work.
We'd wake up sometime around 8:00 AM, get ready, eat a quick breakfast, and be out the door. My wife took the bus or subway to her job in an office building between Dupont Circle and the White House. I would walk about five blocks to my work. I walked past a couple Senators' homes and past the security detail in front of a Bush cabinet members' row house. I walked past the old brick building that housed the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL). This being the darkening days at the beginning of the Bush years, it was nice to see the peace-loving Quakers on the Hill and knowing they were fighting the good fight.
On my left I could see the Capitol Building behind the old, towering trees. On my right a couple blocks was Union Station. I crossed the street to find myself on the sidewalk along the Hart and Dirkson Senate office buildings. Often I would see Senators I recognized and VIPs (usually from the Pentagon) arriving for hearings. Mostly, it was the Senate staffers that had the good parking who were streaming down the sidewalk.
On one occasion I saw Senator Clinton hurry in with a team of Secret Service agents. I hadn't been paying attention and nearly walked right into an agent who had deftly planted himself on the sidewalk. I looked up just in time to see Senator Clinton less than 10 feet away from me. Occasionally, I'd see Senator Kennedy arrive in a minivan driven by a staffer or discover that I was walking next to Senator Barbara Boxer, who, by the way, is unusually attractive for a woman in her 60s and is very short.
Crossing the street you always had to be careful. Even with Capitol Police on site pedestrians were endangered of being hit by the reckless DC motorists. I had had a couple of close calls. Once, Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (CA-37), whipped around a corner and came a foot or two from my knees. (She had never slowed down.) On another occasion, a person who looked suspiciously like Sen. Patty Murry (WA) driving an SUV into the parking lot behind the Senate office building nearly knocked me over in the crosswalk.
On the morning of September 11 I don't remember any close calls with vehicles or Secret Service agents. I simply continued by the Russell Senate Office Building and across the park directly north of the Capitol, where I again could glance at the dome. This was the park I'd often see Senator Kennedy's dog out romping around, a couple times with the Senator, but usually with a staffer or intern. In the middle of the park stood a fountain where you'd often see people taking wedding photos on Fridays and Saturdays. Up on the left stretched the National Mall and I could also see part of the National Gallery of Art. In between, on Constitution and 2nd St NW, a very posh office building was being constructed to house the offices of some to-be-determined Washington moneyed-interests.
I crossed the street to my building and took a couple of fresh breaths of the peaceful, fall air before I entered. That morning I was to have a meeting with a couple of chiefs of staff of some Democratic representatives from a certain eastern state and possibly their bosses. They had been obtuse jerks in previous meetings, so I wasn't looking forward to seeing them this morning. I got on the elevator and that was the last normal part of my day.
Tomorrow: Part 2. Attacks. Fleeing central Washington. Returning. Leaving.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
