A day in my life - 9/11/2001

 

America is under attack, and I want to hide under my desk in my cubicle. But instead I stand with the other reporters in front of the TV. None of us speak. Two commercial passenger jets hijacked from Logan Airport in Boston struck the World Trade Center. How? Why?  I see Manhattan burning, the Twin Towers reduced to rubble, thousands of people running through smoke-filled streets. A third jet hits the Pentagon, and a fourth plane heading for Washington crashes in a Pennsylvania field. What the hell? President Bush is aboard Air Force One heading to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, home of the Strategic Command, which controls the United States’ nuclear weapons. Armageddon? I file into the conference room with my colleagues. I can hear my heartbeat pounding in my ears. “What the f--- is going on?” yells Harold, my editor, as he tries to wrap his head around what is happening. I begin to shake. We are all veteran reporters in the room, but there is dead silence. Yet it is our job to inform the public, and our reflexes kick in. Harold barks out my assignment: “Connect the dots. Tie this rampage with the first attack on American soil at Pearl Harbor.” I go back to my cubicle and call my husband and speak to my children. Then I block out everything but this story. What happened 60 years ago? I find a former Army Air Corps mechanic, a Purple Heart recipient who was stationed at Hickam Field near Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed the airfield. He had been on duty all night and was going to bed at the time of the early morning raid. He tells me that he ran to get a rifle in the hangar, and it was hit three times. He says that 200 men died there, and the planes, barracks and hangar were heavily damaged. He says that 2,000 servicemen lost their lives in the harbor. Yet he points out that Pearl Harbor was a military target and an act of war, but the World Trade Center victims are civilians. I speak to a widow, whose husband was an aviation machinist mate first class aboard the Helena. She says that he was just getting out of bed, putting on his shoes and planning to go to church when a bomb hit amidships. She tells me that he ran up to the deck, and bullets from a Japanese plane flew over his head and killed two men. She says that what her husband most remembered about that day was the confusion and disbelief at the surprise attack. I write the story on deadline. I climb the three flights of stairs in the parking garage on wobbly knees. Today is the day that changes everything. God help us!

September 11 – The day that changed everything

NOTE FROM BLOGGER: In remembrance of the 15^th Anniversary of 9/11, I am reprinting the post I wrote five years ago. Tragically, terrorism has escalated around the world since that fateful day.

I remember in surreal detail that Tuesday morning (fifteen) years ago.

While driving to my job at a daily newspaper, I listened to the breaking news story on the radio: Two commercial passenger jets hijacked from Logan had just struck the World Trade Center.

America was under attack.

When I arrived in the Newsroom, the reporters were gathered around the televisions, and I joined them.

We saw Manhattan burning, the Twin Towers reduced to rubble, thousands of people running through smoke-filled streets. A third jet hit the Pentagon, and a fourth plane heading for Washington crashed in a Pennsylvania field.

We would later learn that President Bush was aboard Air Force One heading to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, home of the Strategic Command, which controls the United States’ nuclear weapons.

My assignment that Tuesday was to edit a special supplement, but I abandoned the project and filed into the conference room with my colleagues.

“What the (expletive) is going on?” said the executive editor, as he tried to wrap his head around what was happening. There were a lot of veteran reporters in the room, and there was dead silence.

But it was our job to inform the public, and our reflexes kicked in. The editor started to assign stories. He told me to connect the dots, to tie this rampage with the first attack on American soil at Pearl Harbor 60 years earlier.

We went back to our cubicles and started making calls.

I found a former Army Air Corps mechanic, a Purple Heart recipient who was stationed at Hickam Field near Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed the airfield. He had been on duty all night and was going to bed at the time of the early morning raid. He told me that he ran to get a rifle in the hangar, and it was hit three times. He said that 200 men died there, and the planes, barracks and hangar were heavily damaged. He also saw the Arizona being bombed. More than 2,000 servicemen would lose their lives in the harbor. Yet he pointed out that Pearl Harbor was a military target and an act of war, but the World Trade Center victims were civilians.

I also spoke to a widow, whose husband was an aviation machinist mate first class aboard the Helena on the “Day of Infamy.” She said that he was just getting out of bed, putting on his shoes and planning to go to church when a bomb hit amidships. She told me that he ran up to the deck, and bullets from a Japanese plane flew over his head and killed two men. She said that what her husband most remembered about that day was the confusion and disbelief at the surprise attack.

I wrote the story and turned it in on deadline.

The following weekend I returned to the summer house in Fogland. September is a beautiful time of year, and everything was the same – the Sakonnet still lapped the shore, children played on the beach and the sounds of laughter were everywhere. But everything had changed. I no longer felt safe.

(Ten) years ago, I was on a fellowship for religion journalists at Brandeis University in Waltham. One of the guest speakers was a journalist whose beat was Homeland Security. After the lectures, the college hosted a reception, and I had the opportunity to speak to him.

“Do you think we are safe from future terrorist attacks?” I asked him.

“Let me put it this way,” he said. “We have stopped every terrorist attack since 9-11. But the odds are that we can’t be right 100 percent of the time.”

It is a sobering thought.

  

  

Sea teaches patience and faith

There are few books that are timeless, speaking to your heart during all of life’s passages. For me, the short list is my Bible and “Gift from the Sea” by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

This book spoke to me as an adolescent; it sat on my carrel on the fourth floor of the Margaret Clapp Library at Wellesley College where I wrote my thesis; and it is just as meaningful today.

The wife of aviator Charles Lindbergh, the first man to cross the Atlantic in a solo flight in 1927, Anne Morrow Lindbergh raised five children, tragically losing her first son who was kidnapped and murdered in 1932. She was the first woman in America to earn a first-class glider pilot’s license in 1930, and to win the National Geographic Society’s Hubbard Medal in 1934. She also received the National Book Award in 1938 for the novel “Listen! The Wind” about her aviation and exploration adventures.

Published in 1955, “Gift from the Sea” is a personal series of essays that she wrote about her stay at a little cottage near the beach on Captiva Island on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

“The beach is not the place to work, to read, write or think,” she wrote in the first chapter. “Too warm, too damp, too soft for any real mental discipline or sharp flights of spirit. … And then some morning …, the mind wakes, comes to life again. Not in a city sense – no – but beach-wise. It begins to drift, to play, to turn over in gentle careless rolls like those lazy waves on the beach. … The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach – waiting for a gift from the sea.”

A reporter and editor, I’ve spent much of my life in a newsroom, where I’ve been the first to know about every disaster and misfortune known to man. I remember in surreal detail the Tuesday morning 14 years ago when the terrorists hijacked the plane from Logan and took down the World Trade Center. I wrote a breaking news story that day interviewing a local man who had survived the attack on Pearl Harbor 60 years earlier.

Over the years, I developed a coping mechanism that helps me reconcile my life in the fast lane and all its grittiness. No matter the season, I drive to Fogland Beach. During the forty-minute drive, a shift occurs; and by the time I reach Fogland Road, I have left behind the struggles, sorrows and sufferings of my fellow man, finding sanctuary where peace is as palpable as the fog.

Away from work and home, I have no appointments, no laundry list of things to do, no reason to do anything but just be. In a world this beautiful, there is only sea, space and possibilities.

At the beach, I breathe in the salty air. It is here where Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s voice speaks to me, her prose ringing in my ears in rhythmic cadence to the crashing waves:

“When we start at the center of ourselves, we discover something worthwhile extending toward the periphery of the circle. We find again some of the joy in the now, some of the peace in the here, some of the love in me and thee which go to make up the kingdom of heaven on earth.”