Memoirs of 9-11-01

Memories of 09/11/2001

What happened that day five years ago? We all have our own memories. We were all affected in some way by those terrible events. My life since has continued much as it was before, and that might be a good thing in many ways. I have not been forced to bend in fear to the terrorists. A small victory in the war. But for a few weeks in September 2001, that was not entirely so.

I was a passenger in my daughter’s little car. She was on her way to work and I had an appointment with the doctor she worked for. We were driving on the 215 listening to one of the God awful stations she liked so much. We were in the airport connector tunnel when the announcement came on, “Apparently a second plane has crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.”

I thought the quality of their humor was on a par with the quality of their music. I switched the station to one of all news. “…Planes targeting the Pentagon, the White House, and the Capitol Building. All aircraft around the country have been grounded.” We were just exiting the tunnel with McCarram International Airport on our left and the sight of no activity was like a knife in the heart. The announcer went on to say that security across the nation was on high alert, especially in areas that might pose a likely target for the enemy.

My first thought was to my father who was in Manhattan at a hospital having surgery that morning. How far from the WTC is the hospital? Could he be affected by the buildings coming down? Then my thought went back a few years to the Gulf War (the first one). Security in Las Vegas and at nearby Hoover Dam was so tight you couldn’t get a sewing needle in without alarms going off. The airport was another story. Co-workers of mine worked there and they had to remove nail clippers from their key chains. Imagine! No longer were visitors allowed to descend into the dam and see the turbines that supplied the power to three states. Visions of the movie Universal Soldier flashed through my head.

I listened to the radio every minute until I had to go to work. I worked in one of the hotels in LV. The televisions in the sports books had only one show on CNN. Gone were the horse races and other forms of light entertainment. People were sitting on the floors all around the sports books watching replays and rescue efforts.

With all flights being cancelled people were stranded. Many had spent (gambled) all their money and had checked out of their rooms but couldn’t get home. There wasn’t a rental car to be had in the town. Stranded travelers grabbed every one of them in an effort to get home. Car lots were doing a phenomenal business with people buying all the new and used cars trying to escape. One of the car dealerships actually hired buses to drive tourists to Los Angeles free of charge, merely because it was a way of showing support for our country and its people.

I made frenzied calls trying to contact the hospital in New York to find out if my father was okay. The circuits were constantly busy. It wasn’t until I had gotten home, after midnight that I was able to get through to them. One of the nurses said she couldn’t put my call through, it was 3am! Was I crazy? How could I expect them to wake him? In a round about way I got my confirmation that he was fine.

A series of events that took place on the East Coast one early Tuesday morning in September had such far reaching impact. People around the world realized that the terrorists had not struck a blow for freedom. They hadn’t killed soldiers fighting a war but civilians of all walks of life. Restaurant workers, typists, brokers, firemen, elevator operators, children, these were the people they attacked. The devastation touched hearts everywhere. How many children lost parents that day? How many wives lost their husbands? How many husbands lost their wives? How many parents lost their children? How many people lost their jobs?

The travel industry was impacted: flight s were cancelled ,schedules were altered for months; hotel rooms were vacant, restaurants in every part of the country laid off staff, especially those which were in big vacation destinations.

I follow the news and listen to the on-going war with Iraq. Time has softened the edge of my anger, but not completely. A death for a death is not right. But, can we just let the evil that led to that day continue to exist? I don’t know.