Five Years Ago Today

Five Years Ago Today

(Note: I know that my memories pale in comparison to anyone who actually suffered real losses, and I don’t mean to diminish in any way their stories. This is just about how 9/11 affected me.)

Five years ago today I arrived at my job at National Geographic in Washington, DC. The morning was bright, sunny, and clear, an absolutely idyllic day. I was a few minutes late to work, and oblivious of the events of the morning. I walked across the hall to the office of an editorial assistant and was just chatting in a friendly manner when she said, “have you heard?” and I said, “heard what?” She told me about the plane hitting the first tower in New York and directed me to the TV down the hall, where I watched the coverage, hypnotized, along with a number of other employees. We soon learned that a second plane had impacted the other tower, and as we remained glued to the horrifying coverage, the reporters began talking about something happening in Washington, although they didn’t know what. They just said that there was smoke visible, that apparently there was a fire somewhere and initially they thought it was in the area of the Old Executive Office Building downtown. I don’t remember how long it took them to learn that the Pentagon had been hit and report that.

I do remember, vaguely, the panic and confusion that set in when we learned that the attacks were so close to home. I called my parents, who were retired and hadn’t yet heard anything about it, and told them that I was fine but that apparently there had been three terrorist attacks and they needed to turn on the TV. I believe it was around 10:30 when we were given the word that we should all go home.

What a nightmare—the whole federal government and most of the rest of the DC workforce leaving the city in a mass exodus, never knowing what was going to hit us next. Most of the coverage was about New York City, and understandably so, since there was so much loss of life there. But we were quite affected in DC as well. I called a friend of mine who worked at the World Bank and lived at Pentagon City, just across the Interstate from the Pentagon. I knew she took the metro to work, and since the Pentagon was the Metro stop just before hers, I talked her into coming home with me because I didn’t think there was any way she could get home—roads around the Pentagon were blocked off.

It took me forever to get to her office; for that matter, it took forever to get out of the parking garage. My rush-hour commute was normally around 50 minutes, but that day it took me close to 3 hours to get back to my northern Virginia home. We were listening to the radio the whole time; I believe I was in shock and not really registering any of it. I used to drive past the Pentagon every morning on my way to work; if I’d have been a little over half an hour later I would have seen the plane hit.

By the time we were fairly close to my townhouse, my friend asked me to turn off the radio. I was a little annoyed at first, because I wanted to know what was happening. But I finally realized how affected she was; she was Portuguese by birth, raised in Mozambique when it was still a Portuguese possession, and she had lived through the revolution there, so this was bringing back all her memories of civil war. I had to pull over a few blocks from home so she could get out of the car and vomit.

When I arrived home one of my roommates came running to the door hugging me and said, “Oh there you are, you’re safe, you’re safe!” Like I said, I think I was in shock and my reaction (internally) was “of course I’m safe, I don’t work at the Pentagon, what are you hysterical about?” Although I am an emotional person, I just don’t react like that in times of stress. Anyway, like the rest of America, I remained glued to the TV for most of the remainder of that day. Sometime in the early evening we learned that I-395 had been opened up to traffic again, so I drove my friend back home. She lived in a high-rise apartment building, so we went up to the roof and watched the flames and thick black smoke pour out of the Pentagon.

The next day I returned to work, where I learned that two National Geographic employees, Ann Judge and Joe Ferguson, had been on Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon, along with a group of teachers and students they were accompanying on a field trip, of sorts. I didn’t know Ann or Joe, but many of my friends and colleagues did; one of my best friends worked in their division (Geography Education Outreach). We were all in shock. Not much work got done the remainder of that week.

The following week there was a memorial service held by NGS for Ann and Joe in a hotel across the street, because our spacious auditorium was not going to hold the number of people who wanted to attend. I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate for me to attend, since I didn’t know them personally, but it soon became apparent that that didn’t matter. That memorial had such an impact on me; it was beautiful, with an audiovisual presentation made with all the talent that NG has to offer, along with all the love that friends and colleagues had for them. I really felt that I’d gotten to know two remarkable people. But one of the things that affected me most deeply was that over and over again the tributes mentioned how much they loved their work, their passion for what they were doing. And I couldn’t help but think, “No one could really say that about me if this were my memorial.” And it was true. I had a job in a remarkable organization, and I really loved the people I worked with, but I didn’t love my job. I didn’t love the 9-5, and I really hated the commute. And the whole thing made me do some soul-searching.

Well, the upshot was that by the end of that year there were layoffs and I went to my supervisor and told him that if our department got hit, I’d volunteer. I knew the severance package would be good, and I could use it for another dream I had (and to pay off some debts). I ended up going to Africa the following summer; originally the plan was to teach English at a university in Mozambique, but that fell through. Instead of working there, I spent two months as a volunteer with a humanitarian organization, where I made lifelong friends and left a piece of my heart. I'll go back one day, and still work on their newsletter. I returned home, and after a series of other experiences (long-term subbing and almost going back to school for a teaching certificate), I ended up in Georgia, living w/ my parents and doing freelance work from a basement office.

A couple of years ago I went to Ground Zero in New York and the church that the firefighters had used as a sort of rest station, and last night I watched just a few minutes of a program on the firefighters on 9/11, but when they got to the part where you could hear the bodies dropping, I just couldn’t watch any more. For the most part, I haven’t watched a whole lot about it ever since that very first day, even when everyone else was still glued to the TV and radio. It happened, it was horrible, but my own processing didn’t include me wanting to understand every detail. I think I might be getting closer to wanting to go back and revisit some of it now that five years have passed. I know it didn’t happen to me; but really, it did happen to all of us.

May the families of the victims find peace.