I was supposed to be at a board meeting on 9/11, 2 World Trade, 94th floor, 9 a.m., but at the last board [meeting] before our chairman asked if we objected to moving it to Chicago!
On 9/11/01, I was working in Washington, D.C. at the Bureau of Engraving & Printing. I was about 1.5 miles from the Pentagon on the east end of the 14th Street Bridge in Southwest, D.C. I was on the sixth floor of the Annex building at the corner of 14th & C Sts., S.W. I felt the concussion of the explosion when the plane hit the Pentagon, as well as seeing the smoke from the west side of the Pentagon. I was viewing it from the east (D.C.) side of the Pentagon. That was too close for comfort.
September 11, 2001, started out like a normal work day – I worked on the eighth floor of a commercial building a block from the 14th Street Bridge that connects Washington DC to Virginia. The bridge connects to the 395 Interstate that runs by the Pentagon.
I was getting ready to teach a class.
There were whispers going around our floor that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. …Then there was a very big smoke cloud over the Pentagon – we could easily see the Pentagon and the cloud being so close to the Potomac River at the 14th Street Bridge. I thought it must have been a terrible accident, maybe even a tanker truck, to cause such a large cloud. I did not associate the two events –World Trade and the Pentagon. We just did not have the information and pictures then that we have today.
I called my wife, Susan, told her that we were told to go home at ten o’clock but I was going to stay until the rush to Metro was over. We had plans to go out and celebrate my [9/11] birthday; understandably, we stayed glued to the television…
One of the most moving expressions of support we heard reported was an American warship was in the North Atlantic and coming in the opposite was a German warship that had sheets sewn together with this statement – “We Stand With You” – with all of the sailors standing at the rail at attention. It was as powerful a statement then as it is today – to have such an expression of support displayed on the high seas was very moving.
Even though I returned to work the next day, things did not return to normal for weeks.
My son Jon ’00 was in NYC as a student, and I was sitting in my classroom at McDonogh. Margaret Bitz, in tears, came and told me a plane had flown into the WTC.
Bo [Dixon] called all of us to the Horn Theatre, and on the way over we all realized what was happening. As I walked my kids over, I tried to call Jon but could not get through. As I got to the doors of the Horn I broke down, and Bo kindly took me aside and excused me from the meeting for a while. I wandered by the US office where the TV was showing the event.
When we left to go back to Finney, I went back to the US office to watch some more. Petrified, knowing that he worked for the GAP in the World Trade Center, I stood, worried, watching the TV. I knew that he was not there that day, but his apartment was very close to the WTC and my fear was the WTC could fall toward his apartment.
It was not until 12:23 p.m. that I received an email from Jon stating that he couldn't talk right then, but that he was okay. I saved that email for eight years and read that email every day for those eight years until I accidentally erased it.
I was on the Jersey turnpike that morning and watched the buildings get hit. I also was consulting with the building management company that manages WTC at the time, and they later gave me a disk of pictures that have never been released of the interior damage and of other shots of the site. I looked at it once and never looked at it again.
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