9/11, 2001 by Marcus Williamson
From MemoryArchive
Who: Marcus Williamson What: September 11, 2001 When: Where: Washington, DC
When looking back at the historical events that I have been a part of during the course of my life, a few notable incidents stand out. The attempted assassinations of President Reagan and Pope John Paul II, The Challenger Disaster, The Fall of the Berlin Wall, The End of the Cold War, the end of many wars, political triumphs and failures, and of course, concerts and sporting events just to name a few. There is one event that stands out most in my mind, and it is the single thing that has the greatest impact upon anyone in my generation and still affects all of us today. Those are the events of September 11, 2001.
While I can understand that everyone will have a story about this event, it is important for all of us to talk about what has happened, and to hear what we all have to say. The impact that all of us around the nation felt on that Tuesday morning was something that we will remember forever. With the events now beginning to pass into history, the memories that we have hidden for so long now must be told and remembered on a personal level, and not just left to various news sources that documented the events of that day. Everyone has a story to tell, and not just the ones that were directly affected. The mentality of our country and the world has been so drastically shifted following these events that we must try to understand all that we can about this experience. The sooner that we all can come together in understanding is the beginning that we can start to develop past the fears and angers that we developed that fall morning. The quicker that we can get past these fears, the sooner that we can grow up as a nation, and begin to be a helpful, productive part of the world again and not just the latest bully to terrorize others through our fear and anger.
Many of the people that I attend college with currently were still in high school at various institutions across the country and around the world. At the time, however, I was 22 and I had already been out in the working world for quite some time passing over the college experience initially. At that time, my parents had convinced me to move to Washington D.C. during the summer of 2001 to assist them in the selling of their house in Silver Spring, Maryland. They had long since they had moved from this home, and were now living in Oklahoma City. Needing someone local to finalize the transactions of the sale for them, they had asked me to travel to the East Coast and help. Moving to the Washington, D.C. area from Lawrence Kansas, where I had lived for the previous two years, was quite a change of pace. I had lived in and visited major metro areas before, but like many people who come to this great town, I was impressed.
The sense of awe that comes across a person when experiencing Washington for the first time is something that people take with them wherever they go. The dynamic architecture, the presence of internationalism, and the feeling of power takes hold inside of your body giving the impression that when you come here, anything is possible and everyone can make a change. While the truth is different than the outside appearance, of course, that initial feeling is something that people take with them and hold onto for many years.
Washington, D.C. is a highly transient city in terms of its population. With so many people involved in going to universities, careers dependent on the latest whim of voting tendencies, the potential of failure, and the always continuing presence of shifting policies, I was no different. Originally, I had planned to live in the area for only six months and move on to the west coast. Still being in that transient state of personality, I felt comfortable with the decision to move on by the New Year. Fate had other things in store for me, however.
Upon arriving in Washington, I decided to take a job bartending at a restaurant on Capitol Hill. Still being enamored with a sense of awe regarding the city at this point, I thought that this would be a perfect opportunity to experience the city and some of the things that it had to offer under the surface. Meeting some of the longer-term transients and locals through the restaurant, I was able to develop my own sense of Washington. Seeing the sunsets fall over Massachusetts Avenue that spring and fall, and watching the Capitol Dome through the tree-lined streets gave me a sense that I was falling in love with this town. The friendships that I developed through that job were ones that I still easily continue on to this day, and one special one in particular one that kept me from fulfilling my plan of moving out west.
That Tuesday morning was one that began like most others for me at that point. I woke up at around 7:30, and went through my morning routine which took me to the Silver Spring Metro Station to take the Red Line train into town. I arrived at Union Station a little before my usual time of 9 in the morning, and the air outside felt amazing. It was a beautiful day and I was looking forward to getting off of work early in the afternoon to spend some time with my newly developing friendships. I lingered outside on the front steps of the restaurant for a quick moment, getting my last breath of fresh air before heading into the restaurant, and felt ready to begin my working day. I walked in and felt mostly focused to attend to the set-up of the restaurant for the lunch rush.
As per usual, there was the light scattering of employees around the dining rooms and kitchens, all trying to fight off tiredness and hangovers, chatting about last night’s escapades, and prepping service with all the enthusiasm of a dog on its way to the veterinarian. I grabbed a pint glass from the dish room, filled it with coffee, and prepared it hoping that it would be the magical elixir that I needed to face another day of fast-paced, intense, lunch-rush customers that barely have time to look up from their laptops or blackberries to order their food. I lit up a cigarette and sat down at the end of the bar to watch what was happening on the televisions over the end of the bar. They were normally set on Cable news stations and ESPN, each reporting the events of the day. It was at this point that I first learned of the plane hitting the World Trade Center in New York.
My primary thought was of an old King Kong movie, for some reason. I knew that planes had hit the building, and the Empire State Building for that matter, before and my initial instinct was to think of some small prop plane being flown by an individual out on a morning sightseeing tour that got a little too close to the building. I went on about my morning set-up duties, and didn’t think much about it. It wasn’t until a little later when someone mentioned it that I realized that a passenger jet had hit the building.
All of us in the restaurant began watching the television with more interest at that point. I didn’t see the second plane hit the other tower, but there were plenty of others that did. The replay was showing on the television when we heard a rumble outside that shook the front windows of the restaurant like a truck rumbling down the street outside. This was the plane that hit the Pentagon, and the beginning of my personal 9/11 experience.
The noise from outside seemed normal enough, like the typical traffic that winds its way through the streets on a weekday morning. The response that followed was definitely not. The news over the television told us that the Pentagon had also been hit by a plane, and a few of us headed outside. From the corner of the building, we were able to look to the southwest towards Virginia and faintly see smoke rising to the sky from a couple miles away. We all were in shock, not truly knowing what to do at that point. The scene in the streets was echoing that thought as well.
Sirens began to sound from all directions as emergency vehicles poured out from all corners of the Hill. The skies filled with military jets scrambled to secure the airspace over the District. Traffic came to a standstill as people began evacuating every government office within sight. With the mass confusion of what exactly was happening, I later found out that people were not told exactly what had happened, and wasn’t until the evacuation of these buildings that they were told to go home, everyone except for essential personnel. This is when the true panic hit. Parents trying to contact their employers or their children’s school found that cell phones were not working. Trying to use the metro that hundreds of thousands of people took to get to work was impossible as well. The TSA had shut down the city, and this included all metro trains as well. With the city flooded with people that had nowhere to go, all of us inside the restaurant had no choice but to open up our doors.
The waves of people that came into the restaurant were like no other crowd that I had seen before. There were people that were visibly shaken, everyone was nervous, and many were in a state of panic trying to locate loved ones all over the metro area and figure out what had happened. The televisions were turned up to full volume, with fixed eyes watching their every report. The city was stuck with nowhere to go, and no idea of what to do next.
In that state of confusion, I found myself not able to think clearly. I was absolutely in shock over what had happened, and still being new to the city I wasn’t sure of what to do next. So I did the only thing I could think of doing at that time. I worked. No one was in the mood to eat or drink anything, of course, and this led to basically crowd control on my part. Allowing for myself to be taken out of the equation as a staff person, my thoughts turned to how I could get home. How could I get to my home outside of the District with roads shut down, all the taxis out of service, and no metro system to get home with?
Gradually, the town began to find itself again. People were slowly able to make connections through e-mail, limited land-line and cellular use, and word of mouth. The lock that had been thrown on the city began to let people in and out, and the employees of the restaurant were given the option of staying or going home. I chose to stay for a little while. After all, I had no way of getting home and had no family in the immediate area that I needed to find or get a hold of. My situation was quite different than many others who truly needed to find themselves and get their lives back to a manageable state before I did.
I ended up staying on Capitol Hill until about three in the afternoon. At that time, I was able to get a hold of a couple of friends of mine who were living in Brookland, a neighborhood in North-East D.C., and attending The Catholic University of America. Classes had been cancelled for the rest of the day there, and they had congregated at an apartment and began drinking their faces off watching the developments of the day on the various news channels that were showing the events. All news was focused on this, from ESPN to the local channels; everyone was trying to make some sense out of what was going on.
I was able to find a ride from a co-worker up to that part of town, although the drive was slow. Traffic was still congested, with various roadblocks set up by local and federal officials around the district. With my ride only able to make it a few miles up the road in about an hour, I decided to walk the rest of the way to meet up with my friends and join them in trying to make some sense out of everything. The walk alone was the time that I was first able to try and clear my head about what had happened that morning.
I knew that someone had attacked the United States. More than that, I felt that someone had attacked me. I knew that our government was unprepared for anything. I knew that Manhattan Island was in a state of confusion, particularly after seeing the pictures of people walking out of town across bridges and any other way possible. I knew that both of the World Trade Towers had collapsed, and that there was nothing that I could personally do about it. This time that I had to think was something that I will never forget. It was the first chance that I had to actually try and figure out what was going on, and piece together something that was tangible. I felt victimized, like someone who had just been robbed and could only sit there and let it happen.
When I arrived at my friend’s house, I was greeted with people trying to cope with things in their own way. Some were trying to make sense of the reports on television. Some distracted themselves by doing house work or cooking food in the kitchen. I know that I did the same thing, and coped with the situation in the best way that I could immediately think of. The first thing that I did after saying hello was to make myself a strong cocktail. About halfway into it I realized that my parents were probably very concerned about my well being. I checked the land-line phone in the house, thinking that cell phones were still off, and called them up. My mother was in class at that time, so I just left her a quick message. I didn’t talk to may parents at all that whole day, not getting into contact with them until the next day. Watching with my friends in that close-knit atmosphere of pseudo-family, I began to understand the true horror of what had just happened. I knew that all of my friends and family were safe, but there were hundreds of thousands out there who were not as fortunate as I was. The anger that I had initially felt melted away into something else. The closest feeling that I can compare it to is compassion. I felt the need to do something that could possibly help those in need, but I didn’t know what I could personally do. The best plan came through the grape vine.
After spending most of that afternoon and early evening in a state of extremely heightened emotions and drama, the idea of a prayer vigil at the Lincoln Memorial came to us from some friends of ours. With the metro now opened again, we took the train down to the National Mall, complete with armed military escorts which would soon become a regular sight on the trains, and did the only thing that we knew that we could do. We prayed. There were thousands that showed up in the spirit of fraternity and need, trying to show support to those who had suffered so much that day. It was healing for all of us as well. It proved to us that we were not alone, and despite the feelings of victimization that we had others who had just experienced the same thing. It was definitely the best thing that happened to me on that desperate day. That day was not the end of things, however. After that moment, the District had a very rough year. After 9/11 came the anthrax threats after letters were mailed out to Senator Daschel and others on Capitol Hill. Mail service was disrupted for months as an effect after several post offices were closed to be checked for anthrax. After the biological threat came another physical one, in the form of sniper attacks. After victimizing several people in the suburban D.C. area and terrorizing people everywhere. Soon following that was the biblical impacts, with the 17 year cicada cycle impacting the city and forcing all of us to just sit back and laugh. There was a time there when I wasn’t sure that staying in the District was the best thing that I could have done.
Since the attacks on 9/11, however, our planet has changed dramatically. Not limited to change in Washington, D.C., the entire world has now had to deal with the changes that have come with an aggressive enemy that is willing to battle with the western world on an extreme and insane level. While we are at war with those that aggressively and maliciously attacked us, we have found the problems that can exist when we let our personal feelings dominate our actions, and forget how to grow and develop from them. Our initial American values that we hold so dearly have now been sacrificed to the extent that we ourselves are terrorizing each other in the types of attacks that we are so afraid of. Fear has gotten the better of us, and it is something that we must learn to deal with in a positive manner before it leads to the destruction of our country.
One of the things that I have learned since moving to Washington is the fact that despite how quickly life moves here, ideas and policies do not. While the initial feelings of that September morning have begun to fade away into our memories, the ideas that it has spawned have not. The reactions that have been implemented by the current Presidential administration have persisted in our everyday lives, affecting us in forms that in a way are more detrimental than the attacks themselves. As a focused policy effected by our government has terrorized the lives of millions both around the world and here at home, we have to realize that while the effects of 9/11 will always be with us, that we must find a solution to the situation that does not regress the American people and the world to the level of the extremists that we are currently at war with.
I know that the events of this day affected me in ways that I could never have imagined, the most noticeable of which for me is the eeriness of an airplane flying overhead. In my mind, I know that this sound reminds me of the events of that day. As we all heal and move on, I wish that I could get to know the Washington, D.C. that I initially found when I first came here. I want to think that people can make changes for the better. I want that feeling of amazement and power. While some of those have gone and will never return, I believe that we can make a change and grow in a positive way from the events of that fateful day.
