The Day the Earth Stood Still

Watching the news this morning and last night's 9/11 movie by brothers Jules and Gedeon Naudet opened a floodgate of emotions. I felt I was transported back to that horrible day five years ago when so many souls were lost. Likened to the Kennedy assassination's "Where were you?" question, it's a day that everyone who was over five years old will remember.

I asked Little Bit about her memories of that day this morning. She was in first grade and said her teacher wasn't in the classroom a lot that day - the student teacher was mostly in charge. The students were dismissed early, and when she got on the bus the fourth and fifth graders were very quiet. She didn't understand why. All she knew was she had a great day at school, so was feeling happy. Then she got home and her Grandma told her about it. She said she didn't really understand what it meant then, but she does now.

My oldest daughter was in the fifth grade. She said a boy came into her classroom and said to turn on the television because something happened. The teacher and students watched for an hour and were shocked, but understood it was horrible. I don't think my daughter realized the extent of the horror then, and possibly not even now. She has listened to our dinner conversations about the loss of civil liberties in the name of safety and protection and heard us question why Osama Bin Laden is still roaming the caves and hills of whatever nasty little country he is in. She has heard us express our contempt for this president who has been a poster boy for tearing this country apart and generating ill will much like that of the Civil War when brother fought brother. When I asked her this morning what she thought September 11th did to our country, she said it made us really paranoid and it gave the president a good excuse to be in Iraq. Neither of my daughters talked about the lives that were lost that day.

Meanwhile, I wasn't home five years ago on that day of infamy. I worked for the National Association of State Treasurers and we were in Santa Fe, New Mexico at our annual conference. I had stepped out of the shower around 7:00 a.m. (we were two hours behind) and flipped on the news. I called my colleague across the hall who was then the director of our Washington office and told him to turn on the TV. I then sat on the bed and started watching the coverage, and was horrified as I heard a lady frantically saying "Another plane has hit! The other tower is hit!"

I quickly dressed and went downstairs to the conference area where people were starting to gather. We had a lot of investment bankers from New York at that conference - folks from Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, etc. We also had the state treasurer of New York. Watching his anguish was nearly as bad as watching the event itself - he had offices in one of the towers and lost 32 treasury staff that day. The New York bankers were also frantic as they tried to reach their families who lived in apartments near the World Trade Center.

We had a couple of people check out of the hotel immediately who went to the airport, but they came back because all flights were cancelled. Our association's president, now-Vermont Governor Jim Douglas, decided to continue the meeting because no one could go anywhere anyway. It was surreal... we had major name speakers who made their muted presentations. And we kept hearing more news that just kept getting worse. The Pentagon was hit. Another airplane crashed in Pennsylvania. The first tower collapsed. The second tower collapsed.

After the conference ended the next morning at breakfast, I loaded up with three other staff members, including our director. We started driving home to Lexington, Ky. It took us two days to get home. Driving through Texas was eerie because that was where we saw a lone airplane circling a military base. We think it may have been the vice president, but aren't sure. It was frustrating driving through some areas of the southwest because we couldn't get a radio signal to hear more news. We stopped in Oklahoma City and went to the memorial. That was probably the point when I cried the most. I stood on the spot where the first major act of terrorism in our country occurred and cried for the 168 people who died at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995.



Seeing the chairs, especially those of Baylee Almon and the other children killed in the day care center, released even more tears. There was a reporter there from the Austin American-Statesman visiting her family. Her Texas editor asked her to go to the memorial and find a story. I was interviewed and said we were far from home, so felt compelled to stop and share our grief with another city that had lost so much. We stopped overnight in Missouri because none of us could keep our eyes open. That hotel was near another military base, so there were a lot of soldiers milling around. It was September 13th and we looked at our soldiers with newfound respect and gratitude.

I collected newspapers on our journey home. My husband also taped footage on our VCR of the different network coverage. I don't know what we'll do with the newspapers and videotape eventually. Probably hand them down to our daughters, if they want them.

Maybe someday my grandchildren will ask me what I remember about the day. I will tell them I was scared. And all I wanted was to get back to my family. I knew our country was forever changed that day. What I didn't anticipate was how deeply divided we became in such a short time. I could never have imagined the media giving airtime to the poisonous Anne Coulter who called 9-11 widows The Witches of East Brunswick and accused them of enjoying their husbands deaths. I'm appalled that politicians are fighting over whose issue is terrorism. We are a nation divided. I hope it won't take another day like September 11, 2001 to bring us back together.