Friday – Daily Compass

On September 11, 2001, I was a corporate trainer at NetJets, Inc. I had barely settled in at my desk with my morning coffee when our manager told us that an aircraft had crashed into one of the WTC towers. No description of the aircraft was available. The tail number wasn’t known. She simply had no information as she rushed in, pushing a TV cart. The TV was an older one. The reception was poor.

Working in the fractional ownership aviation business, and with the kind of high profile people who owned shares in our planes, we were always concerned about
crashes and other news-grabbing incidents, especially in the northeast–the departure and arrival area for many of our aircraft owners. The company had a perfect safety record. Something terrible had happened. Within a few moments, we were told to move to a larger room with a bigger and better TV, where it became obvious almost immediately that it wasn’t one of our aircraft.

Seeing the outcome of the strike on the first tower was horrifying. But from the instant we saw the second airplane… everyone knew immediately what was going to happen, where it was headed. It was like I’d been shot through the heart as I watched… physical pain… No one was spared. Many cried. We were under attack and we were terrified. And the longer we watched what unfolded before our eyes, the more the pain and the fear and panic increased. The fact that neither plane was one of ours brought only a tiny bit of relief, but did nothing to diminish the increasing fear. Although the Ops Center is several hundred miles from New York, our facility sat right on the perimeter of the local airport.

Within minutes, we learned that all aircraft had been ordered to land at the closest airport. The skies were silent for the first time ever. Our pilots and aircraft maintenance people could identify the type of aircraft landing and taking off just by the sound of the engines. It was the music, the communication system for so many. They knew when a landing aircraft was ours and whether or not it sounded okay. Then our world went silent, as frightening as watching the tragedy unfold on TV.

I crumbled! My older sister/surrogate mother had died almost exactly six months earlier and I had hardly begun to heal from that. The 9/11 tragedy piled on top of it was more than I could manage. I left the office and went home. I suspect I wasn’t the only one to seek refuge at home. Strangely, we never discussed it and there were no recriminations for having disappeared for a day or two.

For years, I had watched terrorist attacks on TV news and wondered with each one how people got back to seemingly normal lives so quickly after losing so many family members. friends or neighbors, countrymen. I was always thankful that such attacks were only occasional and mostly domestic here, but recognized that it was only a matter of time until foreign terrorists hit us where we live. Then suddenly, I became one of the people I wondered about.

It wasn’t until the terrorists were identified and the history of their time in the U.S. was documented that I knew that at least one of them had rented a vehicle and a hotel room just outside our airport. And it was after things seemed to be getting back to normal that I had a reminder of 9/11.

I worked on the second floor and, coming downstairs, I noticed two men standing at the reception desk of the flight school the company ran for employees who wanted to learn to fly or upgrade their licenses. None of the flight instructors were at the desk. The men looked like stereotypical “bad guys” from a B movie. The dress code for the flight school was much more relaxed than the rest of the company. So I was curious about the men: both were in dark suits; both carried sturdy-looking metal brief cases. Their posture was rigid. They looked threatening somehow. They spoke with accents–German, I think.

I asked if I could help them. They wanted to know who they should talk to, to get permission to go inside the security fence around the airfield. They were, they said, from a magazine and wanted to take photos of the airport for an article. I was genuinely scared when I heard that and had to try to hide my fear when I responded. Thank goodness for all those acting lessons and knowing how to disguise the momentary stage fright!

I suggested that the security department personnel at our other building could advise them on who to contact, or they could visit the Airport Authority in the terminal. I gave them instructions on how to get to both locations. They seemed satisfied and left.

I returned to my office immediately and called our security people to give them a heads-up then, not certain that those cool heads would see what I had seen in the visitors, called the Airport Authority myself and alerted them as well. I may have pushed the limits of my own authority a bit, but was never called out on it. I hope that between the people I contacted, and their responses… maybe we helped to send the strangers elsewhere to take their photos.

No one without security clearance and an official badge is allowed on any airport ramp or anywhere within the security fences. If they tried other airports, they must have gotten the same run-around wild-goose-chase that we hopefully sent them on and learned how secure at least the airfields are. But the terror of 9/11 and of my encounter with the “spy/terrorist” bad guy stereotypes are etched in my head and my heart forever. Under normal circumstances, they would have been almost comical–like a couple of bad actors dressed for a Halloween party.

But like the death of a family member, a friend, or a coworker, the pain and sometimes the fear never go away. We push them out of the way as we move forward in our lives, but they change us forever.

5 thoughts on “Friday”

Rachel Stevenson says:

March 2, 2012 at 8:42 am

Is there a way that members of the CLF community can contribute to the compass… by say, providing poetry that we have written up, or provide pictures and stories about the months theme?

Thanks all!
Sondra Carney says:

March 2, 2012 at 12:24 pm

On September 11, 2001, I was a corporate trainer at NetJets, Inc. I had barely settled in at my desk with my morning coffee when our manager told us that an aircraft had crashed into one of the WTC towers. No description of the aircraft was available. The tail number wasn’t known. She simply had no information as she rushed in, pushing a TV cart. The TV was an older one. The reception was poor.

Working in the fractional ownership aviation business, and with the kind of high profile people who owned shares in our planes, we were always concerned about
crashes and other news-grabbing incidents, especially in the northeast–the departure and arrival area for many of our aircraft owners. The company had a perfect safety record. Something terrible had happened. Within a few moments, we were told to move to a larger room with a bigger and better TV, where it became obvious almost immediately that it wasn’t one of our aircraft.

Seeing the outcome of the strike on the first tower was horrifying. But from the instant we saw the second airplane… everyone knew immediately what was going to happen, where it was headed. It was like I’d been shot through the heart as I watched… physical pain… No one was spared. Many cried. We were under attack and we were terrified. And the longer we watched what unfolded before our eyes, the more the pain and the fear and panic increased. The fact that neither plane was one of ours brought only a tiny bit of relief, but did nothing to diminish the increasing fear. Although the Ops Center is several hundred miles from New York, our facility sat right on the perimeter of the local airport.

Within minutes, we learned that all aircraft had been ordered to land at the closest airport. The skies were silent for the first time ever. Our pilots and aircraft maintenance people could identify the type of aircraft landing and taking off just by the sound of the engines. It was the music, the communication system for so many. They knew when a landing aircraft was ours and whether or not it sounded okay. Then our world went silent, as frightening as watching the tragedy unfold on TV.

I crumbled! My older sister/surrogate mother had died almost exactly six months earlier and I had hardly begun to heal from that. The 9/11 tragedy piled on top of it was more than I could manage. I left the office and went home. I suspect I wasn’t the only one to seek refuge at home. Strangely, we never discussed it and there were no recriminations for having disappeared for a day or two.

For years, I had watched terrorist attacks on TV news and wondered with each one how people got back to seemingly normal lives so quickly after losing so many family members. friends or neighbors, countrymen. I was always thankful that such attacks were only occasional and mostly domestic here, but recognized that it was only a matter of time until foreign terrorists hit us where we live. Then suddenly, I became one of the people I wondered about.

It wasn’t until the terrorists were identified and the history of their time in the U.S. was documented that I knew that at least one of them had rented a vehicle and a hotel room just outside our airport. And it was after things seemed to be getting back to normal that I had a reminder of 9/11.

I worked on the second floor and, coming downstairs, I noticed two men standing at the reception desk of the flight school the company ran for employees who wanted to learn to fly or upgrade their licenses. None of the flight instructors were at the desk. The men looked like stereotypical “bad guys” from a B movie. The dress code for the flight school was much more relaxed than the rest of the company. So I was curious about the men: both were in dark suits; both carried sturdy-looking metal brief cases. Their posture was rigid. They looked threatening somehow. They spoke with accents–German, I think.

I asked if I could help them. They wanted to know who they should talk to, to get permission to go inside the security fence around the airfield. They were, they said, from a magazine and wanted to take photos of the airport for an article. I was genuinely scared when I heard that and had to try to hide my fear when I responded. Thank goodness for all those acting lessons and knowing how to disguise the momentary stage fright!

I suggested that the security department personnel at our other building could advise them on who to contact, or they could visit the Airport Authority in the terminal. I gave them instructions on how to get to both locations. They seemed satisfied and left.

I returned to my office immediately and called our security people to give them a heads-up then, not certain that those cool heads would see what I had seen in the visitors, called the Airport Authority myself and alerted them as well. I may have pushed the limits of my own authority a bit, but was never called out on it. I hope that between the people I contacted, and their responses… maybe we helped to send the strangers elsewhere to take their photos.

No one without security clearance and an official badge is allowed on any airport ramp or anywhere within the security fences. If they tried other airports, they must have gotten the same run-around wild-goose-chase that we hopefully sent them on and learned how secure at least the airfields are. But the terror of 9/11 and of my encounter with the “spy/terrorist” bad guy stereotypes are etched in my head and my heart forever. Under normal circumstances, they would have been almost comical–like a couple of bad actors dressed for a Halloween party.

But like the death of a family member, a friend, or a coworker, the pain and sometimes the fear never go away. We push them out of the way as we move forward in our lives, but they change us forever.
Susan Suchocki Brown- says:

March 2, 2012 at 2:00 pm

i like this idea Meg. not sure if i would check daily but know i would like to access often.
Margaret Anderson says:

March 2, 2012 at 5:21 pm

Thanks, Meg. I like this, and I like being able to link to it from facebook. I have shared with my sister, who is not UU, but who I think would appreciate both the poem and the homily.
Lois Reborne says:

March 5, 2012 at 10:08 am

I really love the image holding the video space – sort of collage/impressionistic, and very evocative of this story.

Comments are closed.