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A lobby full of strangers stared at the small television monitor and my world changed.
I completed my week-long business in Texas, and took my scheduled flight back home the following Monday, one of the first flights to depart after nearly a week of grounded flights. I flew American Airlines back to Washington Dulles on the quietest flight I've ever experienced. As we landed, passengers broke out in spontaneous clapping, in relief and thankfulness to a flight crew that had experienced the loss of colleagues less than a week before.
The days and months ahead would bring several trips to the Pentagon site where my naval chaplain uncle was presiding over the chaplains who were working with the victims of the attack there. A trip to New York where the most indescribable smell met me as I came out of the Brooklyn Bridge subway station. At best it was the smell of burning metal, but it was more than that. A sober New York City and a bomb scare outside my hotel were the many things that marked the post-9/11 world.
September 11 changed air travel forever. It changed the United States and the world. What do you remember?
I posted on FB, but I'll post it here too: That when Darren IMd me telling me that "a plane hit the World Trade Center," I thought it was a little prop plane and an accident and said it was "an odd thing to happen."
ReplyDeleteI also remember watching the news on our small, fuzzy TV (all internet sites were jammed, especially since we had dial-up)with my three-month-old little girl in my arms. Darren came home early that day.
-- SJ