September 11, 2001...
"Honey, wake up! Come on, wake up... An airliner just hit the World Trade Center."
I had been in bed three hours... Had landed at 0230 hrs. I looked at the clock on the bed stand: 0630 hrs.
"What? It wasn't foggy in New York when we took off."
I remember the B-25 that slammed into the Empire State building in thick fog. Could it have happened again?
The phone rings... My brother. The phone rings again... My sister. The phone keeps ringing every few minutes... Where is Dave?
TV on and looking at the size of the hole in the building... Yeah, it was definitely an airliner. I am thinking (very carefully) that those guys were way off the localizer radio beam for KJFK. What could have happened?
A second airliner appears in the top-right corner of my TV screen in a two G turn and slams into the opposite tower. Gut check time...
October 2001...
Holy ground; U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Md. I am standing next to a WW II torpedo on display in front of a large barracks. It is quiet... No midshipmen, no wind, no birds. The sky is deep blue with scattered clouds moving slowly from the southwest.
I walk to the barracks doors; they are not locked. The brass is polished, so I use a Starbucks napkin I find in my coat pocket to open the door. Inside, you could, if it happened, literally hear a pin drop. Oh, Lord... Nimitz might have lived here. I move carefully and quietly, passing through a shaft of sunlight from a window on the second floor. There is an easel with a large poster board at the bottom of the stairs.
Black and white photos of USNA graduates killed in the attack cover the poster board. I am shocked at the number of faces looking at me.
One of the pilots, a left seater, was a graduate. He was happy when the photo was taken in his airline uniform. The smile is contagious... I start grinning, too.
September 11, 2010...
For some of us, nine years later, Life on the Line continues...
22 comments:
Yes! Smile Dave.
Smile at the exceptional beings this great lands presents to the universe.
And then, promise.
Promise to remember.
The ball of flame.
The ashen people stumbling through Manhattan.
The few who chose to fly toward the ground rather than perish in the inferno.
Yes. Smile to honor the greatness, the goodness.
And then turn and smile into the face of the evil that we will vanquish, no matter how long and hard we have to fight.
Let us never forget: UAL 93, 175. AA 11, 77.
I'll never forget that morning ... I was in 5th grade: My dad a 767 (c)aptain at UAL had just landed the night before.
Phone call after phone call asking, "where's Robert?!" "is he flying today?".
The feeling of relief was terribly overwhelmed by the sadness and gut check of what had happened.
Had that been his 757 leaving Boston as it was just 2 days earlier ... our lives would have changed forever. Little did we know ... they had changed already.
God bless all the men and women who didn't have a choice that horrible morning, and God bless the heroes who did.
Captain Dave - Thanks for the reminder. Though some seem to have lost the memory of the emotions of that day, I won't ever forget.
Wow, eloquently put!!
On the Metro in Paris - A lady stops to talk - "Are you Americans?", she asks. (maybe my kids' Kiwi accents sounded American to a Parisian!!). She went on to tell us an aircraft had crashed into the World Trade Center.
!!!!!! What the ???!!!!
We were on our way back to our hotel anyway so as soon as we were there we tuned into CNN in time to see the second plane impact (may have been a replay - time sort of stood still for a bit).
"Une Acte de Guerre" was the headline in Le Monde the next day - no interpreter needed for that.
Our 20th Wedding Anniversary - one we won't forget in a hurry.
Respect, God Bless, Dave, to you and all airline pilots everywhere, especially to those on 11/Sep/2001.
Lest We Forget....
Great Post- I was sitting in the cash pad with about 9 other pilots who were all new hires and on reserve. We had no clue what was going to happen with our career but we were all glad we were on the ground and safe.
BoredPilot.com
Beautifully and elequently stated Capt. Dave, as always. We honor all those who died that day with our memories. Via Con Dios my friend.
Dave, excellent written post reminding us of the true horror on September 11, 2001.
May they Rest In Peace.
Hello Captain Dave,
I was at work at the UCT Irma Stern Museum in Rosebank, Cape Town, when a museum custodian who has just returned from lunch comes up to me and says 'Bev, I am hearing people in the street say that the Twin Towers have 'come down''.
I see she is confused and so am I....
I turn on my office radio that sits on my desk at work and hear the inevitable, crushing broadcast.
It's something I can't easily take in....and then a certain fear grips me.....just this broad, amorphous fear seeping into every cell of my being, linked to the many questions running around my head: What? How? Why?
Later I try to take in the images I am seeing before me on TV.
I watch them over and over and over again not quite able to take in what I am seeing.
Some two years later I am driving along a Cape Town street, when I begin to feel unspeakably nauseous and somehow I immediately see someone high up in the first Tower (I think it was the first to be hit) waving something white with appalling flames way too close to him.
The nausea drives me to pull over onto the shoulder of the road and sit for a while....
I suppose what happened to me that day was that I had been traumatised by the *images* I had seen playing over and over again.
I sat for quite some time with the horror of it all sort of swamping me and feeding the nausea.
I cannot imagine how American folk (generally) and the friends and family of the many lost in that horrific tragedy must have felt....
To those who died on 11 September 2001, to their families, to their unspeakably brave rescuers (many of whom gave their lives so heroically), I bow my head.
PEACE TO YOU AND YOURS CAPTAIN DAVE, TO YOUR FOLLOWERS, TO ALL AIRLINE PILOTS AND ALL CITIZENS OF AMERCIA....and to the rest of us mortals on this planet....
Peace. Peace. PEACE...
I do remember....each and every year, and intermittently as well.
Bev
Cape Town
I was living at that time near Boston, and was originally booked on AA flight 11 from BOS to LAX (the one hijacked and flown into the north tower). I looked at the booking, and saw how early I would have to get up, and changed it to fly out the night before instead. So I was in a hotel in California instead of dead.
Ever since, I have felt that laziness is a virtue.
I pretty much saw it the same way you did-- I woke up and turned on the tv after the first tower had been hit, but before the second. I sat there staring in disbelief, wondering how such a thing could have happened. Only to see the second plane strike. Then the Pentagon was hit. There were reports of more possible hijacked planes. No one knew how many more were coming. Most of the day went by without any assurance that it was over.
I remember the unbelievable shock of watching the first tower collapse. In fact, that moment was probably when reality really hit me. It's not there anymore. An soon after, neither was the second. Those towers were synonymous with New York City, and the most recognizable element of its skyline. And just so massive. How many people must have been in there? Life in this world just isn't going to be the same. As a former New Yorker, it was hard to come to grips with the fact that the World Trade Center does not exist any more. There was no turning back.
I was at grad school in Cleveland at the time, and I was the one that had to break this news to my advisor. We had a meeting scheduled, and he'd been in his office all morning and hadn't heard the news. It's amazing how hard it was to convey this message. I couldn't do it-- he just didn't believe me. He thought I was making some sort of morbid joke, and was starting to get angry. There was simply no way to express what had happened in a simple, believable sentence. I finally persuaded him to load up cnn.com. If a picture ever was ever worth a thousand words, that picture that loaded up on his monitor sure was.
That day will live with me forever.
I was on a day trip with a 6 hour wait to Holland,Michigan. Flew a citation there with 6 pax.Was coming out of a restaurant after breakfast and an older gentleman said a twin engine airplane had flown into the World Trade Center.
Huh?
When I had checked earlier the weather all over the world was clear.I was thinking maybe a 310 or Navajo or something with a horrible control problem or a suicide nut.
That night,watching TV at a hotel bar,one of the other stranded corporate pilots asked the group: "When is it ok to cry?"
It was just after 8.45 pm in Western Australia, 12 hours ahead of New York. Just a few minutes into my favourite TV show the screen went blank and another picture took its place — that of smoke coming from one of the Towers. Reports came in bits and pieces of what seemed like a terrible accident. Then the second plane came into view and beyond belief, into the second Tower. This was no accident.
I watched most of the night with a sick feeling deep inside at the terrible sights and chaos. It was hard to believe that this was actually taking place on the other side of the world right that instant. I thought that this was the beginning of some huge event, perhaps another World War and wondered when and how it would end.
Whilst I shed tears of horror as I tried to comprehend what was taking place, I knew that the World as we had known it had changed and things would never be the same again. There would always be this new awareness...that a line had been crossed. That it was planned and deliberate made it so.
Our hearts ached for America and for mankind on that day, but set against the hatred and ugliness of this deliberate act was the courage, some of the best qualities of human nature and most of all the sacrifices of rescuers' own lives for the sake of others.
We grabbed donuts and coffee, then got off the ship and stepped into the bright St. Martin sun.
"Orient Beach," I told the driver. My wife and I had been here before, and although we're both considerate enough of other people's sensibilities to keep our clothes on, it is fun to visit the picturesque nude beach on the French side of the island.
"So, what is happening in the United States?" the cab driver asked. "Sounds like some difficulties there today."
"I haven't heard anything," I said.
As we rode, his old radio crackled the story of a plane hitting one of the WTC buildings in New York.
When we got out of the cab, I suggested we go to the Club Orient to see if they had a TV. As we walked along the deserted beach, our minds began painting images of the scene in New York. Perhaps there’s some broken windows, even a bit of smoke - who knows.
We walked into the Club's bar. The TV was against the far wall, and its images defied logic. Both WTC towers were spitting flames and belching black smoke into the clear blue sky.
With us in the bar, about thirty naked people stood silently gazing at the conflagration.
I glanced at the lovely men and women in the room, then to the ugly violence on the TV, and tried to reconcile that the one had somehow caused the other. How is it that beautiful human beings can be the source of such terrible inhumanity.
Like so many who witnessed the awful events of that day, I still don't get it.
Hi Dave,
My thoughts are with you, your “wife of your youth” and your fellow airline employees. We will never forget.
I was in British Columbia, Canada when this event happened, the evening before having just gone down on bended knee to ask my love to be the “wife of my future” – I had just flown in from New Zealand that day going through Los Angeles on the morning of the 10th of September 2001. Needless to say, there were plenty of phone calls to home.
As we sat watching the TV and the events of that day, I couldn’t help but feel guilty as I was so happy with the answer that I had received to the question – “will you marry me?” – what followed that weekend was a trip to Banff, Alberta where we attended a candlelight vigil in the Banff Gardens and without a doubt, this was the single most moving experience that I have ever been a part of. I doubt that I will ever experience this again. It was an amazing service that will remain with me forever.
To you and all those that are reading this – may this never happen again.
Cheers,
Steve
I grew up in NYC and worked in the basement of WTC 5 and across the street in the shadow of the towers. On 9/11 I was returning from the gym in Oxford Valley PA, having exercised in disbelief to the morning news. As I drove from PA to NJ, I listened to the car radio; the announcer told us that a plane crashed in Pennsylvania....I literally ducked my head as I drove, feeling like planes were falling all around me. And I cried all the way home.
Hey Dave---long-time reader. I am a science teacher and GA pilot that is still hoping to make a career of aviation someday....hoping the turnaround comes soon. I can't imagine a better life than rolling into an airport and seeing that beautiful, diesel breathing bird ready for me to fly on a crisp morning. I get goosebumps just thinking about it.
Alluding to the "energy triad" of your last post. I follow another blog of a regional pilot, and thought you'd get a kick out of his reference to another triad in your livelihood----JFK, LGA, and EWR----the "trifecta of suck."
Safe skies Captain!
I was standing on the corner of South Nash Street and South Arlington Ridge Road in Arlington, VA; in disbelief overlooking the devastation of the Pentagon shortly after impact.
Suddenly there was a commotion, a firefighter with a bullhorn ordering is all to clear the hill, another commandeered airliner was headed our way. As we started to clear the hill, two F-15's screamed directly overhead at about 1000 feet headed north to Pennsylvania to intercept flight 93.
Those F-15's meant business.
Captain Dave,you remember and I hope the whole country remembers. I do. We were on Maui and had just got up to go on a kayak trip. My son called and said "turn on the tv" needless to say we were glued to it the rest of the day. God bless your comrades and their passengers.
I was sitting in an interminable meeting on this side of the world when the phone rang. My wife was working at a travel agency and said that a plane had hit one of the WTC towers, they were watching it live on CNN. My first thought was as yours, that they were way off course and, of course I remembered that B-25.
We didn't have TV at the office then and I couldn't connect to either CNN or BBC to get the QNH. I was thinking "that's weird." The phone rings again and the wife said a second plane just hit the second tower. Suddenly nothing seemed to make sense. I watched the rest unfold on CNN from my flat. I knew then that the world had just changed and not for the better.
It took three days until we were able to catch up with family and friends and ensure everyone on that side of the pond was okay. One of my oldest friends spent the next weeks helping out at the WTC site along with scores of other firefighters and on his own time. Our cousin, a head nurse at a NYC hospital, waited for the casualties that never came and instead walked past the temporary morgue at her hospital every day on her way to and from work.
I'm sure I'm not the only one in this career who has collected a bunch of tie tacs along the way...union pins....some new commemorative thing from the company...whatever.
But after 9/11, I've worn this tie tac on my tie and another on my lapel in the winter. I'll wear it until I retire.
I was actually at an airport - SDF - when it happened. I was putting my sister-in-law on a flight to TPA.
We were annoyed when a "Ground stop" was announced... but not as annoyed as the passengers of recalled flights were evacuated from their planes.
That annoyance turned to confusion when the news broke... and nobody could use their cellphones because all the lines were jammed.
That was the day flying stopped being fun. And the world changed forever.
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