My Journey on 9/11

So, without much fanfare, or the normal clichés of a day of remembrance, below is my story of 9/11. It is a somewhat unique story, unique compared to most of the people I know, though I’m sure many other people across America have similar stories. My story is fortunately not tragic; and if you’ve followed the general themes of this blog, this story fits very well with those themes.

I had to travel to Houston for work that week. In my six-year career to this point, this was only my second business trip alone. The company had come up with a new services offering to sell to potential customers, and the first sale of this offering was to a customer in Houston. I was asked to go see the solution “in action”, and sit in on a couple of customer meetings.  Upon my return, I was to share my findings so that we could make sure we could account for the revenue and cost activity correctly for any contracts sold with this new offering.  In addition, one of our billing departments was located in the Houston office. I had been working very closely with this billing department, so this was a chance for me to meet several people in person for the first time; people that I had talked to on the phone weekly and in some cases daily, for years.  

On Monday evening, 9/10/01, my flight to Houston from Philadelphia, with a layover in Atlanta, was uneventful. Since there was a hotel next door to the Houston branch office, I did not rent a car; instead I took a shuttle from the airport to the hotel. I checked in, watched some TV, and went to sleep, all as normal. Then, at 2:45AM, the fire alarms in the hotel sounded, and everyone had to evacuate the hotel.  Everyone waited outside for about an hour, and then eventually people just started walking back in. We were never told what happened. I eventually went back to sleep, woke up a few hours later, got showered and dressed, and went downstairs for breakfast.

When I finished breakfast, I left the hotel. I had to walk across a parking lot to get to the branch office.  When I left the hotel, all was right with the world. The sun was shining; it was warm; I was pleasantly anxious to start my day. When I walked into the branch office three minutes later, a handful of people were all sitting around a TV, faces in shock, as I’m sure everyone can relate to. During that three minute walk across the parking lot, the first plane hit the World Trade Center. I was taken back to the billing department, where everyone there was huddled around another TV, and it was during my walk back to that part of the office when the second plane hit. By sheer coincidence, I can say that I didn’t see either plane hit the World Trade Towers. 

So, when the world seemed to stop, I was with a group of people I knew very well but hadn't ever met in person, except for the manager of the department, Michelle, who I had met a few years back.  Michelle and I had already developed a great friendship in the six years prior.  As I'm sitting there with these new faces but familiar voices, glued to the TV, reports started coming out about a plane crashing into the Pentagon, and "somewhere in Pennsylvania", and a thought occurred to me at that moment that I hope will never occur again: Try to think about what life would be like if all of a sudden, your entire family and most of your friends were no longer around. For about a 45 minute period, that was a very real fear, one that I couldn’t rationalize my way out of. It wasn’t until the media reports were able to narrow down the location to the now infamous field in Shanksville in Western Pennsylania; it wasn’t until then that I could start to erase that fear. And I consider myself very fortunate – I didn’t know anyone who worked at or near Ground Zero, so I can’t exactly identify with people who did, but there are enough similarities where I can say that the memory of that fear is still unsettling. I can’t even imagine the feelings for those who actually lost a loved one.

The office in Houston closed for the rest of the day, the client meetings were cancelled, and I am very fortunate to this day that Michelle offered to keep me company for the afternoon. We went to an early dinner at a Mexican restaurant that was completely empty. The feeling of being alone, halfway across the country away from familiarity, not knowing how or when I could get back home, was pretty heavy on my mind, so it was nice to have at least a good friend's company, instead of being completely alone with my thoughts. After dinner I went back to my hotel and spent probably seven hours on the phone with family and friends, just talking.

 

The next day (Wednesday 9/12), I don’t know what things were like in the Northeast, but in Houston, things were almost back to normal…though an uneasy normal. The VP of the branch ordered pizzas for lunch and they had a branch-wide lunch, where she talked about the importance of family and friends and togetherness and it was all very touching. And I felt like an included outsider, but most importantly, included, and it was very comforting. There were meetings scheduled at the customer site, so the Project Manager (who was local to Houston), and the Account Manager (who was from Chicago and like me, now stranded), went out to the client, did the walk-through, had a couple meetings, and then wrapped up the day.

I had been scheduled to check out of my hotel and fly back to Philadelphia on Thursday 9/13, and it was becoming obvious that flights were going to be grounded for an unspecified amount of time – so, what to do? Several people including Michelle offered to let me stay at their houses until flights resumed. The branch office was having their annual office picnic on that Saturday and I was invited to attend.  But in the end, I decided to attempt, to hope I could get a car rental and drive all the way from Houston to Pennsylvania.  Michelle and I mapped out my route; she was insistent that I not drive through Mississippi, and yes, that was a concern.  I was to take US 59 up through eastern Texas to Texarkana, then I-30 to Little Rock, AR. I then would take I-40 across Arkansas, through Memphis, and all the way across Tennessee, at which point I would pick up I-81. That would take me through Western Virginia and into Southern Pennsylvania to the Harrisburg area. And keep in mind that this was 2001, before GPS and before wide-spread cell phone usage, so I was living off of phone calling cards – remember those?  I coordinated that I would give periodic updates on my progress to three people:  Michelle in Houston; to my boss Keith so my co-workers would know I was OK, and to my wife, so my friends and family would know I was OK. (Incidentally, my boss agreed that I was correct in avoiding Mississippi. In 2001.)

So, Thursday morning, 9/13, Michelle drove me to the airport, where I was fortunately able to get a car rental, and off I went. I stopped at the first Wal-Mart I saw to get:  three days of clothes (I was out of clean clothes), sneakers (I had only packed for business), a handful of CDs, and a couple calling cards, and off I went, to begin the longest and most meaningful road trip of my life so far. I had one goal: to get home. To get back to where I belonged, to be with my family and friends and loved ones and familiarity and stability and all of those things which I now cherish and realized at times I had taken for granted. It’s amazing how important someone or something can be when you realize they could be taken away, could no longer exist.  The first day I drove 14 hours to Nashville. I pushed myself to get to the eastern side of Nashville so I wouldn’t have to deal with rush-hour traffic, and was fortunate that the first hotel I saw past Nashville had a room available – that had been a fear, as it was reported that hotels were filling up from the thousands of people who were doing the same thing I was. In hindsight, I pushed myself a little too hard that first day…as I was getting off the interstate, I could barely keep my eyes open and ended up driving over a median curb, but fortunately didn’t do any damage to the car. 

 

I woke up Friday morning and hit the road. My boss Keith had a map of the United States on his office wall, and he said he was noting my location each time I checked in.  My wife said she was on the phone all night with friends and family. By now, it seemed like the country was getting over the shock of what happened, and the country was starting to rally. Late in the morning, I was just east of Knoxville listening to talk radio, and people were calling in, requesting a long moment of silence, so at exactly 12 noon, the radio became silent.  And there on I-40, there were hundreds of us; soon enough, we were all blowing our horns. Literally, almost every car and truck going in both directions, honking wildly. We were all trying to get somewhere and yet we were all together.  (I’m getting goose bumps typing this.) Once that was over, something else was becoming apparent…people started hanging flags on the interstate overpasses. Not just one or two overpasses, but for a long stretch of my drive, maybe half of the overpasses had flags hanging on them. 

Later that evening, there was another call for a rally, this time a candlelight vigil, I think at 7:30, and again communicated at least via radio. I was in the Blue Ridge Valley of Virginia on I-81. And just as before, those of us on the road participated…this time by flashing our high beams on and off. And again, it wasn’t just a small handful; it was almost every car and truck, high beams flashing like a moving light show.

 

Soon, I had a decision to make…how far was I going to drive that night?  And then I saw the turnoff for I-66 which runs from Northern Virginia into downtown Washington DC, and I felt the urge to drive through DC.  So, I took the turn off, and got into DC around 11PM. I took the George Washington Memorial Parkway, which runs along the Potomac River, past Arlington National Cemetery and The Pentagon, and across the river from the Washington, Lincoln, and Vietnam Memorials. The Pentagon still had a plume of smoke coming up from where the plane crashed. And there was something very very powerful about seeing those sights, at that time at night. First, and of course, the obvious patriotic symbolism of the monuments had never been as powerful as it was those immediate days after 9/11. But for me personally, there was another feeling…the feeling of familiarity. DC was the first familiar place on my drive back, the first place that wasn't completely new. The emotions of being so uncertain about whether life would ever return to normal, and then seeing the first real sign of something familiar, well, it was energizing. I ended up driving the rest of the way back home and made it home at 2AM. I had been on the road 16 hours that second day, 30 hours total, and approximately 1,700 miles. 

The next day, Saturday, my home office had our annual picnic, this time at Hershey Park, so even though I only slept for four hours, I really wanted to go, again, to get back together with the people that were familiar to me. The energy of being back home, back to someplace familiar, of seeing that everyone and everything was OK, kept me going that day.

It almost goes without saying, almost, that I will never forget those events, and I’m very thankful for my friends and co-workers in the Houston branch office for taking care of me. It’s very rare to feel a sense of togetherness while feeling alone at the same time…there’s something surreally comforting about it.  

To close, here is what I wrote as my Facebook post last year:

We have forgotten...today is our reminder...this year, let's not only pledge to never forget, but let's follow through and make our pledge filter through our words and our actions; today, tomorrow, all next week, and beyond, every day.