I had just started work at 6:00AM PST the morning of September 11, 2001. I worked for United Air Lines in the San Francisco Reservation Office. About 6:20AM a co-worker walked in and said that planes had flown into the World Trade Center Towers. I know I saw no footage until I took my lunch break at 10:30AM. When I heard about the Pentagon I tried and tried to get hold of my daughter who lived about two miles away up Columbia Pike in Arlington but couldn't get through. I can't remember anything about work that day. The TV coverage and films of the people covered in dust and injured and running and the planes hitting the towers and the towers collapsing have blanked out everything.
My daughter and I didn't reach each other until that afternoon when I got home from work. She said she was just walking out the front door of her apartment on her way to work when she heard a plane go over and heard something she thought had happened at National Airport (Reagon). My daughter knew something was up because air traffic was restricted to flying up and down the Potomac River only. When she turned on her car radio is when she found out the Pentagon had been hit by a plane. She went to work but left and went out to her Grandfathers. Daddy and his good friend Ann were driving down to Southern Virginia to see a new Marine Corps Memorial that had just opened and were stopped for a bite to eat when they got the news. They turned around and headed back to Fairfax. My brother said he was at the Veterans Hospital for tests that morning and when he left it took him hours to get out of DC and back to Virginia. My husband can't get past how this event has changed our lives with the fact that we both had to end up taking early retirements and loosing half our retirement and benefits in United's bankruptcy that followed.
My heart breaks for the souls lost that day in the planes and Twin Towers and Pentagon and Pennsylvania and all the souls lost in the ensuing military actions that have followed. Thank you to our servicemen and women who have lost their lives in this battle for our country's way of life, our beliefs, and our freedoms. Thank you to all who now serve. "God bless America, land that I love. Stand beside her and guide her through the night with the light from above. From the mountains to the prairies to the oceans white with foam, God bless America my home sweet home."
Post Script: On May 2, 2012, Osama bin Laden, founder of al-Qaeda and responsible for the terrorist assault on New York City's Twin Towers, the plane hijacking that crashed in Pennsylvania, and the assault on the Pentagon, was found and killed in an action ordered by President Obama and carried out by Navy Seals. His death was verified for all the world and his body was buried at sea.
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