the tindog coffeehouse

I was working at Microsoft at the time. Usually I’d listen to the radio on the way to work, but for some reason on the morning of September 11, 2001, I didn’t.

I showed up for work a little before 8:00 AM, and the office was still pretty quiet. I walked down the row of cubicles to say hi to my friend Larry, and I found him staring at his monitor. “Did you hear about this?” he asked. Of course I hadn’t. “A plane crashed into the World Trade Center.” Oh my God! How awful!

I got back to my desk and pulled up any news website I could get, trying to find out what happened. Normally, there were TVs at the end of the rows permanently tuned to MSNBC, but none of them had been working for a week or so. And now I couldn’t reach any of the major news sites (msnbc.com, cnn.com, etc.) as they were all flooded with traffic. I was able to get some information on the Dallas Morning News site, though, and kept reloading it over and over to try and get the latest updates. This was a terrible accident!

Then came the news that another plane had hit the other tower, and we understood that it was no accident.

Within the hour, a third plane hit the Pentagon, and it was clear we were under attack. By that time the TVs had been turned back on, and we split our attention between them and any other news we could get online. Everything seemed to be pretty chaotic.

And then the south tower collapsed.

I couldn’t believe it. It was all so surreal. For a few moments I sat there thinking how there would only be a single World Trade Center building now and how strange that would be. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around it.

Then came reports of a fourth plane down, this time in rural Pennsylvania, possibly the result of a hijacking that had been thwarted. But when would it end? How many more planes were still in the air, and what else could happen? And then shortly after that, the north tower of the World Trade Center gave way.

Throughout the rest of the morning, we could only watch helplessly as we tried to grasp what had occurred in such a short amount of time. The phones, which were typically pretty busy at that time of the day, were quiet, but there were a few calls coming in here and there. We handled them the best we could, but our minds were clearly not on our work. At lunch, everyone gathered in the cafeteria, where the company had agreed to buy everyone’s meal. Everyone around me was angry and could only talk about getting revenge on the people who had carried out the attacks. But I was silent, barely able to hold myself together. After I was done eating, I went to my car and broke down in tears, and then I prayed; it was the only thing I could do.

I got home that evening and hugged and kissed my wife. At that time we usually didn’t eat dinner at the table, but we did that night, turning the TV off in order to have a break from the news for a few minutes. And I prayed again, for our nation, for the families of the victims, and for my daughter Megan, who was only 5 months old at the time.

It’s been 8 years since the attacks on September 11th, and I can still feel the gut-wrenching fear, confusion, and overwhelming sadness that I experienced on that day. And that’s a good thing. We should never forget.

God Bless America.