Monday, July 17, 2006
September 11, 2001 was a horrible day for America. I understand the historical reasons for war but can’t comprehend the intentional killing of innocent men, women and children on such a large-scale basis. Especially in the name of god.
Most people will always remember where they were when they heard the news about the Towers coming down, similar to how people remember where they were when JFK was shot. I’ll always remember where I was because I was at O’Hare Airport in Chicago, waiting for the second leg of my trip to Springfield, IL.
I was flying to Springfield for a meeting with some guys with the Illinois Department of Commerce to discuss some state incentives to build a new coal power plant. It was going to be a long day, fly in and fly back the same day which is fairly hard to do because the Springfield airport doesn’t have a lot of airlines servicing it. For the same reason, travelers had a three hour layover at O’Hare waiting for their puddle jumper.
My flight arrived in Chicago early that morning and I used the layover to go to the adjacent Hilton to have a leisurely breakfast. On the way to my gate I got a phone call from one of the Dominion guys who was going to meet me in Springfield. He was in his plane on the ground in Virginia and something had happened and there was going to be a delay. He said they had shut down everything on the East Coast. I wasn’t too concerned; I could handle the meeting by myself if he didn’t make it. But then things got weird. I looked at the monitor to find out if we were okay and all the departure times were blinking. I had never seen that before.
No one knew what was going on. The agents didn’t even know. So I started walking toward some of the restaurants/shops when I received another phone call. This one was from a friend in Columbus who knew I was traveling and she told me that the Twin Towers had been hit by an airplane and that it may have been a terrorist attack. I doubled back to my gate; lights were still blinking so I started looking for a television to see what the news was reporting.
This was where things got really weird. The television was turned off in the first place I encountered. And the second. And the third. I finally found one but there were so many people jammed in Wolfgang Puck’s that I couldn’t hear and could barely see what was on. So I went looking for another one but they were all off. When I returned to Puck’s, that television was off too. They turned every TV in the airport off.
I kept trying to call my friend back but the cell service was poor. Finally, I got her and she said that two planes had hit the Towers and it was definitely a terrorist attack.
I’m not sure how other people felt when they learned about the attacks but I was scared. I was in a strange city, in an airport that very well could be a target if this was a large scale planned attack. So I looked to get the hell out of there.
The rental car places were packed and that did not look promising so I thought I would try to get downtown and rent a car there. At the least, I could get on a train and head east, back toward Chicago. I shared a cab with some guy and on the way in called the Hilton Honors hotline for a room in case I had to stay in town. They had nothing except at the Drake so I headed there. I also called our Pittsburgh office and our secretary told me there was a rumor of a plane from Cleveland to Pittsburgh that had crashed. This worried me, at the time it was very likely someone from our company was on that flight and I wouldn’t find out until later that it was the flight path from a plane that originated on the east coast that crashed into a Pennsylvania cornfield.
The Drake is a nice hotel. And for $450 a night, it should be. There was a problem in getting a room though because everyone who had checked out was coming back for their room. And the hotel didn’t comprehend that the people who would be checking in wouldn’t be getting there because the airlines were shut down. But I managed to get one and immediately headed for the train station to see if I could get out of town. The train station was a mess. The lines to purchase tickets were very long and they weren’t selling tickets. Everybody was just waiting. Then the thought hit me “I’m in a train station in Chicago and this might also be a terrorist target”. So once again, I got the hell out of there.
The cab driver drove me back and we drove by some rental car places. Those lines were long and they didn’t appear to have any cars. I was stuck in Chicago.
Driving down Michigan Avenue was eerie. The stores were all shut down and there was almost no one walking up and down the street. I wanted to buy some casual clothes but nothing was open. I got worried that I wouldn’t be able to get something to eat so ordered a big steak when I got back to the hotel. The rest of the day was spent watching TV and wandering around the area around the hotel.
That evening, a girl I was dating at the time drove to Chicago to pick me up. We left early September 12 to head back. The roads were deserted; it seemed as if everyone was bunkered down for a few days.
Five years later, we are still at war. We have defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan and rid the world of Saddam Hussein. We won the Iraq war shortly after it started and now are fighting terrorists who look at Iraq as a chance to kill Americans. The Middle East is once again a powder keg, with Iran and Syria orchestrating war against Israel. But the lesson of September 11 for me is this: There are people in this world who hate the United States and what it stands for and they will do everything in their power to destroy us. We can sit back and let that happen or we can be proactive and go destroy them first. I support the latter.
Most people will always remember where they were when they heard the news about the Towers coming down, similar to how people remember where they were when JFK was shot. I’ll always remember where I was because I was at O’Hare Airport in Chicago, waiting for the second leg of my trip to Springfield, IL.
I was flying to Springfield for a meeting with some guys with the Illinois Department of Commerce to discuss some state incentives to build a new coal power plant. It was going to be a long day, fly in and fly back the same day which is fairly hard to do because the Springfield airport doesn’t have a lot of airlines servicing it. For the same reason, travelers had a three hour layover at O’Hare waiting for their puddle jumper.
My flight arrived in Chicago early that morning and I used the layover to go to the adjacent Hilton to have a leisurely breakfast. On the way to my gate I got a phone call from one of the Dominion guys who was going to meet me in Springfield. He was in his plane on the ground in Virginia and something had happened and there was going to be a delay. He said they had shut down everything on the East Coast. I wasn’t too concerned; I could handle the meeting by myself if he didn’t make it. But then things got weird. I looked at the monitor to find out if we were okay and all the departure times were blinking. I had never seen that before.
No one knew what was going on. The agents didn’t even know. So I started walking toward some of the restaurants/shops when I received another phone call. This one was from a friend in Columbus who knew I was traveling and she told me that the Twin Towers had been hit by an airplane and that it may have been a terrorist attack. I doubled back to my gate; lights were still blinking so I started looking for a television to see what the news was reporting.
This was where things got really weird. The television was turned off in the first place I encountered. And the second. And the third. I finally found one but there were so many people jammed in Wolfgang Puck’s that I couldn’t hear and could barely see what was on. So I went looking for another one but they were all off. When I returned to Puck’s, that television was off too. They turned every TV in the airport off.
I kept trying to call my friend back but the cell service was poor. Finally, I got her and she said that two planes had hit the Towers and it was definitely a terrorist attack.
I’m not sure how other people felt when they learned about the attacks but I was scared. I was in a strange city, in an airport that very well could be a target if this was a large scale planned attack. So I looked to get the hell out of there.
The rental car places were packed and that did not look promising so I thought I would try to get downtown and rent a car there. At the least, I could get on a train and head east, back toward Chicago. I shared a cab with some guy and on the way in called the Hilton Honors hotline for a room in case I had to stay in town. They had nothing except at the Drake so I headed there. I also called our Pittsburgh office and our secretary told me there was a rumor of a plane from Cleveland to Pittsburgh that had crashed. This worried me, at the time it was very likely someone from our company was on that flight and I wouldn’t find out until later that it was the flight path from a plane that originated on the east coast that crashed into a Pennsylvania cornfield.
The Drake is a nice hotel. And for $450 a night, it should be. There was a problem in getting a room though because everyone who had checked out was coming back for their room. And the hotel didn’t comprehend that the people who would be checking in wouldn’t be getting there because the airlines were shut down. But I managed to get one and immediately headed for the train station to see if I could get out of town. The train station was a mess. The lines to purchase tickets were very long and they weren’t selling tickets. Everybody was just waiting. Then the thought hit me “I’m in a train station in Chicago and this might also be a terrorist target”. So once again, I got the hell out of there.
The cab driver drove me back and we drove by some rental car places. Those lines were long and they didn’t appear to have any cars. I was stuck in Chicago.
Driving down Michigan Avenue was eerie. The stores were all shut down and there was almost no one walking up and down the street. I wanted to buy some casual clothes but nothing was open. I got worried that I wouldn’t be able to get something to eat so ordered a big steak when I got back to the hotel. The rest of the day was spent watching TV and wandering around the area around the hotel.
That evening, a girl I was dating at the time drove to Chicago to pick me up. We left early September 12 to head back. The roads were deserted; it seemed as if everyone was bunkered down for a few days.
Five years later, we are still at war. We have defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan and rid the world of Saddam Hussein. We won the Iraq war shortly after it started and now are fighting terrorists who look at Iraq as a chance to kill Americans. The Middle East is once again a powder keg, with Iran and Syria orchestrating war against Israel. But the lesson of September 11 for me is this: There are people in this world who hate the United States and what it stands for and they will do everything in their power to destroy us. We can sit back and let that happen or we can be proactive and go destroy them first. I support the latter.
