9/11 in Pentagon City, by Elissa

From MemoryArchive

What: The 9/11 Terrorist Attacks
When: September 11, 2001
Where: Pentagon City, Arlington, Virginia

My September 11th story is not that exciting. I wasn’t in New York City, I wasn’t at the Pentagon. I was a junior in high school, I was in Spanish class when the planes hit. After class was over I was walking to my study hall and I heard people talking in the halls about a bombing or some kind of attack in New York, but I wasn’t sure what they were saying. When I got to study hall I remember telling my friends about what I had heard but they dismissed it not believing it was possible. Thirty minutes later the principal came on the loud speaker. The rest of the day was a blur and looking back I don’t really remember all of it or exactly what happened. I remember going to a few of my classes, I remember people being scared and worried about their parents and families, I remember wondering how my parents were, but none of the phones were working so there was no way to find out. I tried my dad’s cell phone, my mom’s, our house. No answer, no answer, no answer.

Finally one of the girls I carpooled with came and found me because her mom had come and was taking us home. I went to high school in Alexandria, Virginia which is about a fifteen minute drive from the Pentagon. As we drove back to my house in Pentagon City I noticed something that I had never seen before. We were the only ones driving in towards the Pentagon. On the opposite side of the road cars were parked waiting for the traffic to move out away from the city, away from the Pentagon.

When I got out at my house everything looked and seemed normal. After the plane hit my mom had felt our whole house shake, now the only difference was noises in the background. There were helicopters and sirens that were loud and close. From my front yard about two miles from the Pentagon the smell of smoke was thick in the air. As it got later and the sky got dark it remained lighted by the high voltage lights that were on all around the Pentagon and the flames that were still burning. We drove up to the top of Arlington Ridge Road where there is a spot that overlooks I-395 and beyond that the Pentagon. The plane had hit the Pentagon hours and hours ago but I could still see the flames and the emergency crews working to take care of the situation.

The whole day was a crazy blur of events and I was not sure how to piece them together or what they meant at the time. Things slowly went calmed down, but they have never gone back to normal. It’s those little things though that keeps what happened in my mind. The bus stops that moved from the Pentagon to Pentagon City Mall, the military trucks on route 110, the gas station where my ATM is that has had cement barriers blocking off most of the entrance, they all remind me that something happened. I grew up two miles from an airport and I never heard a plane take off or land until I was 17 years old. I always hear them now.