Since there isn’t anything better I can write about what September 11th means to me than what I wrote two years ago, here it is again.
This is the third fifth year that I’ve been blogging during the anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Each time I’ve tried, in one way or another, to articulate how that day made me feel.
Back in 2005, I was unable to come up with the right words to express what I was thinking and used pictures instead, then, I quoted the memories of a Pearl Harbor survivor who wondered if 9/11 would fade into history the way 12/7 did, and then I quoted a letter from a friend who was just angry about what happened just like we all were that day.
Last year, I participated in the 2996 project, and noted the passing of Erica Van Acker, who died in the World Trade Center.
This year, quite honestly, I don’t know what to do except remember what the world was like before everything changed, and after.
It probably isn’t that much different from what everyone else experienced.
I got up early that morning because I had to stop at the Fairfax County Courthouse to file some papers and review a few other things. Quite honestly, at this point, I don’t even remember what I was there for.
I drove back to the office, which at the time was about 15 minutes away, listening to a CD instead of talk radio. And then I walked into the office and one of the secretaries told me about a report on the news that a plane had hit the World Trade Center, it was just a little bit after 9:00 in the morning.
I went into my office, fired up the computer, and tried to access CNN……nothing…..Fox News….nothing…MSNBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times. By 9:15 every news website I could find was inaccessible. Then the phone started ringing. Not one, but two, planes had hit the Towers. By now, everyone was in the office, and the television was on.
For the next two hours I watched transfixed as an icon I had grown up with billowed with smoke and then collapsed to the ground. In the meantime, news came of the plane hitting the Pentagon. There were rumors of car bombs at the State Department. And rogue planes headed for the Sears Tower in Chicago.
In the end, those rumors proved to be thankfully false, but the day itself still was a mind-numbing experience. I remember at one point in the midst of all this talking with opposing counsel in a case about a discovery dispute; he told me he was late by about two or three days on responses and asked for a couple more days. Not something that I could’ve made a big deal in Court over anyway. I just remember telling him that on a day like today, I wasn’t going to be jerk about stuff like that.
Then the day ended, and the eeriest part of it began. Driving home at about 5pm on streets that were, for the most part, entirely empty. It felt lonely, and it felt sad. And, when I went outside late that night to take out the trash, the one thing that I didn’t hear that really threw me off was the sound of airplanes in the sky.
That’s what I will always remember about September 11th.
While the attacks were unique and spectacular, Americans need to end the Post 9/11 hysteria. Here is some data to help place the deaths in perspective:
ANNUAL US DEATHS BY CATEGORY
1. Tobacco 435,000
2. Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity 365,000
3. Alcohol 85,000
4. Microbial Agents 75,000
5. Toxic Agents 55,0001
6. Motor Vehicle Crashes 26,347
7. Reactions to Prescription Drugs 32,000
8. Suicide 30,622
9. Incidents Involving Firearms 29,000
10. Homicide 20,308
11. Sexual Behaviors 20,000
12. All Illicit Drug Use, 17,000
13. Non-Steroidal Drugs Such As Aspirin 7,600
14. Total Deaths All 9/11 Attacks 3030
Thanks for the read. I was in the Air Force stationed in S. Korea when the attacks happened so my story is probably different in many respects. The way you describe the eeriness of the 5:00 drive home and the lack of airplane noise helps me relate to how it must have been back here at the time. Thanks for what you do and God bless!
Yah, two weeks of no airplanes. I remember being startled somewhere in that time to see one black DC10-like plane flying east, toward Boston. As Logan airport was the jumping-off place for the attacks, it was no doubt something to do with the investigation.
I still get creeped out at jets in the sky.
Tyler B
You are listing mostly self-inflicted deaths. 9/11 was anything but self-inflicted IMHO!
Also, IMHO, your comment is stupid, coming on this date.
President Obama has proclaimed this a day of service and remembrance. By encouraging citizens to translate their sadness over the 9/11 murders into constructive actions that will strengthen America, the President is sending a message to would be terrorists that we will continue to get stronger, and that our collective grief must not be interpreted as a signal of weakness.
The message that we must send to potential enemies is that America remembers, but we will not let hysteria cause us to suspend the Constitution and the United States shall remain a place where the People rule.