JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: It's been twenty years. But for anyone who was over the age of, oh, eight or nine, the memories of September 11, 2001 are still sharp.
I was working at a small law firm in Portland's Old Port when one of the secretaries - we had a TV in the reception room - ran back to the lawyer's offices and said a plane had hit one of the twin towers. A big plane. We all gathered around the set, and were utterly horrified to see the second plane hit. I've never revisited at the footage of what happened as the towers burned, but what I saw broadcast live will stay with me forever.
A CNN reporter was at the Pentagon, trying to get information on possible military responses, when he was cut off abruptly. The Pentagon had been bombed. No, it had been hit by a third plane. That's when I finally felt fear as well as horror, because no one knew how many planes might be flying through the skies on a similar mission. I remember trying to call my sister again and again; she worked in an office in the Navy Memorial Plaza, five blocks from the White House. She was fine, of course; she and her husband walked five miles from DC to Virginia to reach a working Metro station to get home.
I watched as the last plane came in to the Portland Jetport - which we would discover, later, had been the entryway to the terrorists - while I was on the phone to Ross, discussing whether we should pick up the kids from school. We decided to have them stay, to keep things as normal as possible, and at home, we hid the newspapers and kept the radio and TV off whenever Victoria and Spencer were around.
For forty years, I thought the world was one way. And in one day, it all changed.
Reds, what are your memories of 9/11?
HALLIE EPHRON: I remember the phone ringing that morning - it was my sister Delia who lives in Manhattan: “Turn on your television.” The first plane had just struck the north tower. I wish I could unsee what came next.
My younger daughter was in college in Morningside Heights on the Upper West Side and she could see the smoke from her dorm room. My older daughter was on her way to her office in lower Manhattan. In the thick (literally) of it, she walked home to Brooklyn. It took a while for us to hear that she was safe and sound. The news all day just kept getting worse and so inexplicable as we tried to piece together some coherent narrative to explain what had happened. It still haunts me.
JENN McKINLAY: Like Hallie, it was a phone call. But it was my mom, who was practically incoherent as she’d just spoken to my cousin whose twin brother was supposed to be flying from Boston to Los Angeles that day. We had no idea if he was on Flight 11 or not. Mercifully, he wasn’t but it was hours before we found out. Being in AZ, we were already behind the news and Hub and I turned on the television to see the second plane hit the Towers.
Mostly, I remember the shock and disbelief as we watched the endless news cycle. And I remember the quiet. The days of absolute quiet that followed as if the entire country was just holding its breath as the reality slowly seeped into our collective consciousness. Maybe it’s because I was a brand new mom with a nine month old baby, but the world has never felt the same to me.
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: It was a beautiful day in Boston; perfect, gorgeous. (And as it turned out, that was necessary for the terrorist plan to work.) I was actually getting a haircut, and someone came into the salon, and said--a plane has hit the twin towers.
I thought, we all did, that some little plane had gone off course, something ...understandable. But then the phone in the salon started to ring, and the news emerged, bit by bit. I ran out of the salon, to run the three blocks to the station. I ran down Congress Street, and there was a bar with a big front windows, and the television was on over the bar. I stopped in my tracks, staring at the screen. There was no sound, or course, and it all seemed so quiet at that moment, and I thought--oh, our lives will never be the same. I will confess, now, that I walked the last block to work, marking it as “before.”
I got to my office, and about ten minutes later, the news director came rushing in, all wild-eyed and crazed, and said: “You’re the investigative team! Find out why this happened!”
I remember I looking at him, and my producer looked at him, and we said--are you kidding us?
By that afternoon, we’d interviewed a former flight attendant who told us about the boxcutter loophole.
And I still notice when the clock says 9:11.
RHYS BOWEN: We were woken by the phone ringing just after 6 am. That’s never good news. It was my son, at drama school in Manhattan. Turn on your TV, he said, voice shaking. We did, in time to see the second plane hit. He was on the upper West Side but we still didn’t know how many more planes might be coming. And I had friends in Lower Manhattan. I think we all felt as if we were watching a horror movie. Not real. Couldn’t be real.
And two weeks later we took a cruise through the Panama Canal. I remember thinking this would be the perfect terrorist target. Bomb a ship in the canal and you freeze World commerce for months. I was so relieved when we reached the other side!
LUCY BURDETTE: It was a beautiful day. I remember because I was playing in a golf event away from home. As we came up a hill to the final green in front of the clubhouse, other players had gathered to tell us the news. Of course we couldn’t believe it--couldn’t begin to take it in. My first thought was for my brother, who was a Marine with frequent business in the Pentagon. A few hours later we learned that he hadn’t been in the building that day. So relieved!
The skies were so quiet--none of the planes we were used to seeing traveled between New York and places north. No flashing lights in the night sky, or distant roar of engines. I also remember spending much of the next week on the couch in front of the TV--and crying. It felt like the end of the world, and in some ways it was.
DEBORAH CROMBIE: I flew from Dallas to London on the evening of September 10th, arriving early in the morning of the 11th, UK time. I picked up a car and drove to Rye in Sussex, where I checked into my hotel, had lunch, and took a nap, all in blissful ignorance. It was only when I went to a neighboring restaurant for dinner and they asked me what I thought about the twin towers that I had any idea what had happened. Cell phone coverage was down, of course, but I didn't know it. I rushed back to my room and turned on the TV. I watched in horror as the videos played over and over. I couldn't call home, no phone, no internet. The next day I moved to a flat in London, but it was days before I knew anything other than what I could see on the British news. Even once I knew that my family in Dallas was okay, I didn't know when I'd be able to go home because all air travel was suspended.
My flat was under the Heathrow flight path but the skies were empty. It was so bizarre, almost like we had gone back in time. I've never since taken the fact that I can get home for granted when I travel. It did feel like the end of the world we knew.
JULIA: The title of today's post comes from the WWI poem by Laurence Binyan, "For the Fallen:"
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.At the going down of the sun and in the morningWe will remember them.
