re: Annual 9/11 Thread - 19 Years Later

I was in second grade. I now have what they call a flash bulb memory.

I was born and raised in Arlington Virginia. My mother was elected sheriff of the county just the year prior. My dad works in DC about a block from the Capitol building. I have two stories. My story that I remember and my parents stories.

My story is I’m 7 years old and at school that day. Towards the beginning of the day they put us all in the library and put a movie on for all the kids. Based on other accounts I’m sure all the teachers outside of a few watching us are all huddled around whatever TVs they could find away from the kids so we didn’t have to watch what was going on. I remember kids being picked up very quickly and steadily. Finally someone called my name and I remember being upset because I really wanted to finish the movie. None of us kids had any idea what was going on. When I got to the office the woman who picked me up was not my mother. It was a family friend. My mother is a newly elected sheriff in a small county that has just been attacked by terrorists. People were so disheveled that they let a woman pick up a child that wasn’t even hers. Thankfully my parents were able to coordinate during the madness but this was before either of them or lots of people even had cell phones. I’m sure they were panicking. My little brother also had to be picked up halfway across the county from his daycare. All I remember after that is getting to our family friend’s house and playing with all the other neighbors kids downstairs. I’m sure the adults were all upstairs watching the news and crying.

Now my parents stories. My mom Can see the pentagon from her office. She works in a high rise and Arlington wasn’t quite as developed as it is now. She got a call on the phone that the pentagon had just been hit and she looks outside and all she sees is smoke. I’m sure at this point the entire department is mobilizing. The sheriffs office is responsible for protecting the courts and housing inmates in the county jail. There wasn’t much of a part to place in terms of being a first responder outside of having any off duty deputies or on duty but non essential deputies volunteer to the heroes of the Arlington County Fire and Police Departments. But they do have an industrial sized kitchen designed to feed 400+ people 3 times a day. So they cranked that up so they could get food and water out to the site for first responders ASAP. My mom has to coordinate this while at the same time having a 7 and a 4 year old both in opposite parts of the county that need to be picked up immediately and our dad is across the river in DC without a car as he takes the metro every day and has every day up until COVID.

My dad is trying to get a hold of my mom. Neither of them have cell phones. My dad can’t get through to the office because the sheriffs office is in a scramble to figure out what they can do to help the situation and how they can maintain their current obligations to the county especially in case another strike happened. Well my dad eventually gets a hold of her somehow and they’re having an argument about getting my brother and I. My mother basically just can’t do it. She can’t. She’s the chief law enforcement officer of a county under terrorists attack and has a duty to her citizens to deal with that threat with the resources at her disposal. Somehow they arrange for our family friend to get me as mentioned earlier. So with that all settled my dad without a car is hell bent on getting the frick out of Washington DC. His brother in the military taught him certain things to do in urban areas of shite ever hits the fan and I guess that kicked in. Even though the metro was running he said frick it and walked. He didn’t want to be stuck on a metro or a bus or in the wrong cab if another attack hit (which of course we figured out now there was another attack planned that would have succeeded but for the heroism of those regular Americans on board). So he walks from downtown DC all the way out to the suburbs of Arlington. It’s something like 8 miles and you have to cross the Potomac river via one of several major bridges. He said it was the quietest he’s ever heard Washington. He walked 8 miles back to our house. I’m sure he was freaking out the entire time. He has no idea what’s happening while he’s walking. No cell phone. No way to contact his wife or make sure both his kids have been picked up. No way to check the news like he could today. And on top of that he basically has to walk home from memory. I wonder how many people could walk 8 miles just on memory from a contemporary downtown out to the suburbs. You can’t just walk up on the interstate as if there were a sidewalk. What a weird day. I’ve never really written that all down before. I’ve only retraced it in my mind.

As an epilogue to that I also remember a little under 10 years later my mother waking me up at like 4 am or something before school to tell me we’ve killed osama bin laden. It couldn’t wait until whenever I would normally wake up. She wanted to make sure my brother and I both knew immediately as the news broke. It was that important to her. Not that she would wish death on anyone because she isn’t that type of person but it was that big a moment to us as Arlingtonians and Americans to finally get some closure on what happened that day.

ETA: sorry for the length but that’s my story. It would feel wrong to short change it or trim out anything else.

quote:

---

After 9/11 everyone was trying to act like where they lived was important enough to have a terrorist attack happen to it. It was really bizarre.

---

I can relate to this.

quote:

---

The goal was to either intimidate the US enough to withdraw troops or provoke them enough to come and make more of them into martyrs which they then use as recruitment tools and grow exponentially. The latter clearly proved true just like in the late 90s after Clinton bombed them. It's the difference between fighting a country/government and fighting an ideal.

---

Osama said the goal of 9/11 was like the USSR to get the US caught in "the bear trap" of Afghanistan and to bankrupt the US and destroy our country financially. You can't deny it's worked so far.

A couple of videos from 9/11 that I find interesting are just someone surfing through channels on that day. It’s interesting to see all of the non-news channels that were either carrying news coverage or simply went off the air out of respect for the tragedy of the day. Here are the videos:

Channel surfing on DirecTV on 9/11/01

9/11/01 channel surfing

I still remember seeing that video for the first time. The sound of the people hitting the ground is haunting.

I know hindsight 20/20 and all, but looking at that Duane Park video, of course it was an airplane, and a big one at that. You can clearly see the wingtip and engine nacelle of the right wing.

A picture taken 19yrs ago on this date. Never take that breath you breathe for granted. Life that was there one moment can be gone the next. #NeverForget ???? As a former firefighter long after 9/11 I have never forgotten the 343 Firefighters and 8 Paramedics & those who died later

Thanks

My little girl is in her dorm at NYU right now. While she was obviously not there 19 years ago, she's having a tough day.