Knee Deep in the Hooah!

If I get a little passionate at times about the war on terror it is because I can still remember the feeling of sitting helplessly on my hotel bed watching the news. I remember sitting there knowing we were only yards from the Capitol Building as they were announcing that flight 93 had been hijacked. I could hear them saying it was headed for us. It was probably coming for the Capitol Building and the only place to hide was under the bed. It does something to your peace of mind for a while when you remember how it feels to have a Boeing 757 aimed at you — loaded down with jet fuel, guided by murderous madmen, and traveling fast. I didn’t know until much later that the phrase “Let’s roll!” was being uttered as I was trying to figure out if I should stay inside or go out and stand in the street.

To this day I can’t even begin to contemplate what could have happened had the brave Americans on that flight not fought back that day. I seriously can not. I also can not help but honor them in the same way I would honor a fallen soldier. Their bravery and actions stopped that plane, and they stopped it from coming toward me that day. No one will ever know the lives that were spared because of their actions. They defended me… they defended us!

It was 6 years ago this week that I was sitting in my office planning a business trip. I was, at that time, employed by one of the largest funders of childhood brain tumor research in the US. The week starting September 10, 2001 was Childhood Cancer Awareness week, and we had huge plans. Neither my boss, nor myself, had any clue of the events that were to unfold during that business trip. So, as normal, a couple of weeks before the event I was confirming our reservations, mailing off, ahead of time, the reams of printed media resources I would need to the hotel where we were staying, and making sure that I had enough suits, pantyhose, and other uncomfortable and stiff things to wear to the various events.

I decided to write about this on my blog now. I don’t know why. I really do not want to write about it on September 11. I don’t know if I will want to write much at all on that day. It’s a day that always evokes great sorrow on all of us. Our framework for our various realities was totally and irrevocably altered that day — and it happened collectively.

Do you remember where you were, what you were saying, thinking, smelling, tasting or doing the moment you realized that the first plane to hit the Towers was not an accident? I am sure you do. Most people have that moment, and the memory of the senses that go with it, etched into their memory.

I remember the morning of September 11, 2001 very well. I woke up out of a groggy sleep. See, I have always been a very nervous flight passenger, so in order to deal with having a job that required me to fly all over the Country I would take a dose of Valium before my flights. I never took it for any other reason or at any other time, but it really took the edge off of my nervousness around flying. I would often book my flights so that I could just go to my hotel and crash for the night after my flight. I would wake up a little groggy, but after a cup of coffee and a shower the next day, I would feel very refreshed.

We flew into Washington DC on September 10th so that we could be at the Capitol for the kick off of the week’s events. On the morning of September 11, my boss and I woke up early, got ready and headed down to the Senator’s Lounge, which is a restaurant located in the Holiday Inn on the Hill. We could see the Capitol Building from just outside the door of our hotel. We both had a full agenda for the day. The major childhood cancer serving foundations and agencies across the Country had decided to join together and announce a major cooperative coalition that would allow us to more adequately utilize our resources, gain a “gestalt” in our power and influence, and move closer toward our common goal of eradicating various types of childhood cancers. It was to be a grand morning! The good news proclamation of our concerted efforts would not happen though.

It happened over coffee. It happened over breakfast. It happened while we were putting all of the finishing details on the speech to be given on the steps of the Capitol that morning. We were sitting in the lounge and enjoying our breakfast when the first clips of the first plane hitting the first Tower came over the screen. We watched in horror as the big screen television in the lounge played the clip over, and over again. I told my boss that seeing that clip only reaffirmed to me the reasons that I would never take a flight into or out of LaGuardia Airport! Then the second plane hit. Everyone in the Lounge gasped. I watched it. I couldn’t believe what I was watching. It looked so intentional! Oh my, no! It was intentional! I grabbed my bosses hand and I said “We shouldn’t even be here, and we can’t go to the Capitol Building this morning!”

We both sat there, eyes glued to the television for what felt like hours, when we learned of what happened just across the way at the Pentagon. The Pentagon? Of all of the buildings in the world, in my own mind, the Pentagon was impenetrable! It is filled with military might! It is filled with the resources we count on to keep us secure! How can this be? My heart sank. My knees grew weak. The chaos of that morning in our Nation’s Capital was profound to me. I saw well groomed, tightly tailored professionals falling to pieces. I held the hand of woman who who was hyperventilating. I saw a prominent brain surgeon cry, and heard another doctor making plans to buy a brand new car on the spot if that is what it would take to get him out of there and back home. I was taking it all in, and everything kind of moved in slow motion. If I remember correctly at some point a fire truck was trying to make through the street. He couldn’t. The traffic was grid locked and people were every where. He actually gently used his truck to push parked cars out of the way. Did I see that? I think I did. There were men on the roof tops and it seemed almost like they appeared there so quickly. Did I see that? Are they here to protect us, or to harm us? I couldn’t tell at that point.

When I do tell the story I have a hard time remembering what happened next and how the sequence goes. I just tell it as I recall it each time. It is all jumbled still to a degree. I remember when it all first happened I tried to call my family. I couldn’t get a line out on my cell phone. I needed to hear that they were safe and that nothing was happening where they were. I wanted to touch the faces of my children so badly that I ached. I finally got through to the Foundation, and they relayed messages from family to us, and vice versa.

When we were able to finally get a line I remember we were frantically calling around. We had a brain tumor survivor — a young girl, who was flying in to DC that morning to give her testimony about her own battle and to argue the need for more brain tumor research. We couldn’t find her and we had no idea if she were on any of those flights. Finally her mother got through to our Foundation. Her plane never left its area. She had been delayed that morning. It was still on the tarmac, and she was grounded and safe. Thank God! What about our supporters who had offices in the Towers in NY? It took days for us to find out if they were safe — yes they all made it. How they made it is beyond us all, but they did.

What next? What are they saying? They were strongly encouraging us to go back to our rooms. Why? Another plane? It’s heading here? My boss and I looked at one another, and quietly went back up to our hotel room. At this point the hotel was under some kind of lock down. The elevators would only take you to your floor and you had to have a valid room key to operate them. I don’t even think the stairwells were open at this point. Once we were back in our room we watched the news broadcasts. They were tracking the plane and the news was “It’s headed for DC and probably for the White House or the Capitol Building.” Gee, you don’t say! Thanks. I wish I were ignorant of it all right now. What difference does it make if I know? Outside the window of my room I saw men on the roof. I couldn’t tell if they had guns or cameras. At this point I didn’t care. I do think that there were men with guns positioned on the roof tops. It makes sense now. Just at that moment in time nothing seemed to make much sense.

We started to make calls to try and find a way out of DC. No cabs left to hail. No rentals left to rent. No one can come in to get us because the inbound roads are all closed — and for how long we didn’t know at this point. We were stuck. Once we got word that the plane that was potentially heading right toward us was taken down, and that as far as anyone could tell all planes were accounted for and grounded… we kind of started breathing again.

Could all of this be real? This had to be a bad dream! There is no way in hell that all of this just happened! I could not have lived a lifetime’s worth of terror in such a short morning. It was all to surreal. I don’t remember at what point in this story line we watched the towers collapse. I just remember being in my room and sitting on the edge of my bed. My hand was placed over my mouth. I may have sat there for minutes. I may have sat there for hours. Who knows?

We actually went out to a late lunch after a period of time. It was so weird. How do you sit in a restaurant full of people and just eat a damn quiche when lunatic terrorists just flew a plane into the Pentagon just across the way from where you are sitting? Isn’t that weird or maybe it is just crazy? It still feels weird even thinking about eating that day. Neither of us were hungry, but we just did what you are supposed to do at that time of the day. Maybe it was a means of holding onto our sanity, or maybe we both craved a little normalcy so that we could have a few moments to pretend that what was going on outside was a huge mistake.

It didn’t really happen did it?

It did.

There is no denying it.

We stayed in DC that night. I don’t remember the rest of that day, other than the phone calls we kept getting from colleagues, friends, family, and others wanting to know if we were OK. I remember that after supper we both decided that a bottle of wine and a piece of cheesecake was needed. We didn’t finish the cheesecake, but the wine didn’t stand a chance.

Finally when the next morning’s sun appeared it was time for us to get out of Dodge! We found a limo company that had an available car. The driver came over from Maryland, picked us up and took us back over to a suburb of Baltimore. We had a Foundation related event planned for the weekend. I was not scheduled to stay for it, but how would I get home? No one would even guess at this point as to when the planes would be able to fly again, and to be honest, at that point in time they simply did not manufacture enough Valium for me to step foot on one! Regardless of the details on how I was going to make it back to Western North Carolina, I was glad to be away from DC.

At this point in my story I had not shed a tear yet. As I have mentioned in past posts I am a very stubborn stoic. When things are falling in around me I refuse to cave — it isn’t until things get quiet that I fall apart. We made it to Maryland, checked into our hotel and ate lunch. I later went to a small strip mall and bought a couple of pairs of jeans. All I had was business attire and sleeping clothes. After that little excursion I went back up to my room. I had my own room this time. All alone and to myself. It was odd. I walked in, looked around and fell to my knees and cried. Sweet relief! Finally a moment to collapse. I pulled myself together, but I had no idea that these episodes of intense crying had only just started, and they were not to end for quite some time.

I met my boss and her husband, who come up to join us that afternoon, for supper. It was a nice, quiet and normal supper. I said my “good night” to them and headed back up to my room. I was getting situated for the night when an alarm went off outside my door and all of the power for the whole area went out. I hunkered down in a corner in my room. I waited for something to happen. I waited for the explosion that I knew was imminent. I waited. I cried. I waited some more. Nothing. Silence. No light, no noise, just silence.

I am still not sure what caused the power outage that night. The timing could not have been any worse. I know that I am not the only person who was hiding in a corner when that happened. We were all on edge and a little hyper-vigilant. The next day came and all of the hours spent on the phone begging my travel agent to do whatever he could to find me a vehicle was about to pay off. I even told him at one point that if all he could find was a huge moving truck to book it for me! I didn’t care. I’d had enough. I was going home. One way or another, I was going home to be with my kids! Fortunately for me he found a nice little car instead of huge truck. I picked it up, went over some maps and started my drive from Maryland to home in North Carolina.

When I started out on the trip I was fine, but as time went on I had waves of tears over come me. They often came with such power that I had to pull over or I would wreck. I would weep until I could stop for a while, and then drive until the next wave. My trip wound up taking a few hours more than it normally would due to the need to stop a lot. I do remember at one point when I saw a sign that said “Speed monitored by aircraft” I thought “Not today boys!” I will openly admit that I was speeding. I wanted to get as far away from it all as I could, and as quickly as that little car would take me! I just wanted to get home. When I finally reached my door I was able to peek in on my boys. They were down for the night. I just stared at them. Man, were they a sight for sore eyes!

The next few months were filled with more tears, and some very vivid dreams of plane crashes. One dream in particular was very disturbing because as the plane was going down I could feel the force of the descent pushing me into my mattress. I could barely breath. I quit that job a few months later. I quit for several reasons and one major one was that being a single mom and trying to hold down a job of that magnitude was wearing me out. I wouldn’t meet Mr. Hooah! until later that same year. The main reason I left, though, I just couldn’t take getting on another plane. It would mean a drastic cut in pay for me, and letting go of what seemed to be that once in a lifetime “dream job.” It all seemed pretty unimportant to me any more. It still does, and I do not regret that decision in the least.

I still can not stomach flying. I will do it if I have to, but the dose of Valium for today’s flights is much larger than the dose of old. I seriously do not know how much of the events of that week played on Mike’s decision to join the Army and fight in the war on terror. I know that there are a lot reasons he and Bryan joined. Supporting them is easy. Not only do I love them both with all that I am, but I am grateful, as a witness to terrorism, for all that they do everyday to try and stop it at all costs.