Ten Years

Over dinner the other night Mia told me that her class was learning a special song to sing Friday morning in honor of the tenth anniversary of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. They were to sing, “God Bless America” and had been discussing the facts related to 9-11 in class over the past week.

As this anniversary date has approached I have naturally found myself reflecting on the events of that day. But, thinking about my daughter and her classmates learning about this event raised many questions in my mind. Most of the children in her school were not born that day, and the few that were could not remember it. I wondered what their perspective on it would be, how it was being presented to them: whether the magnitude or emotion of it could possibly be conveyed to them.

Ten years later it still does not feel that there has been sufficient time for the country to adequately reflect on or consider the events of 9-11-01 with true perspective. With troops still deploying to Afghanistan and Iraq, with the legacy of the George W. Bush administration still to be determined, with the recent assassination of Bin Laden, with the wound still raw and reactions still too emotional, I don’t think we can yet weigh the results, the implications, and the long-term effects of that singular day.

But, I have felt that perhaps ten years is enough time for me personally to reflect, to think back with greater perspective, and perhaps to finally record my experiences on September 11, 2001.

The morning was typical. I raced around the house, getting ready for work, grabbing something to eat and my make-up to apply during the inevitable delays crossing the 14^th Street Bridge over the Potomac. The news chattered in the background as Jeffrey and I chatted. NPR reporters discussed privitation of social security and recent suicide bombings in Israel and Pakistan, and I reflected on how fortunate I was to not have to worry about such threats in my life.

Mornings in a congressional office were formulaic. News clips were perused, the latest from CQ and Roll Call. Meetings were prepared for, and the latest news played on the television in our small lobby. It was in the midst of this routine that we were beaconed in to see the coverage of a plane striking one of the World Trade Center towers. With the rest of America, we supposed it was a strange accident, a freak error in air traffic control until we saw live on television a second plane fly into another tower. It was a quick mental jump to the fact that this could not be an accident, yet I am not even sure we thought at the time to use the word “terrorism.”

As the legislative staff returned to their desks and turned on the news on our individual computers, keeping an eye on this strange episode in New York while preparing for the days meetings, the local news broke in about a loud explosion at the Pentagon. It took a few minutes for news stations to shift, to cover this story too, but as I stood there listening, I began to realize what may be happening.

I recall turning to Jeffrey, who worked at the desk behind mine, and simply saying, “I don’t think we are safe here.” It is amazing to reflect now on how little the ramifications of a historic event can be fully realized when you are living in the midst of them. No one around us quite knew what to think, but as we talked it seemed increasingly obvious that if key US landmarks were being attacked the US Capitol Building where we worked was a potential target.

The chief of staff in our office was less concerned. She poked her head around the corner to say we were free to leave, if we were worried, but she was going to stick around and continue with her morning meeting with Kennecot Copper Mine. It was only a minute or two before the Capitol Police Officers began running through the halls at full speed and shouting at full volume, “Get Out! Get Out! Evacuation!”

I grabbed my purse, Jeffrey his phone, and our friend Wendy, the scheduler in our office, her rolodex (so she could call and cancel the remaining appointments for the morning). We made quick calls to family in Utah (amazingly able to get through before the lines were too crowded) to tell them to turn on the news and that we were alright, and we ran out of the building with scores of Members of Congress and staff.

There was no direction outside, no guidance on where to go; we had no evacuation plans. Our car was off limits as the basement of the House Office Buildings that had been closed. The metro was closed, as were key bridges across the Potomac, and our only way out of the city.

We wandered away from the Capitol building, feeling lost and scared. It was then that rumors began circulating. Police officers clearing the area told us that there was another plane headed toward the Capitol (which turned out to be true) and that bombs had gone off in other parts of DC including the Old Executive Office Building (which turned out to be false). Not knowing what was happening, we believed it all, and the potential for further threats seemed incomprehensible. Never in my life had I experienced something like this, and never had I felt the potential for harm and danger to be so real.

I was scared in a way I had never known before. I legitimately wondered if it was possible for us to get far enough away or to even go in the right direction to avoid the terrors which were raining down that day. I asked myself as we aimlessly walked east down the streets of DC, “What would happen if another plane struck right here and now or another bomb went off ? What if I did die today?”

There were no answers to be had from anyone around me. But, I prayed in my mind and with all my heart for protection for me and my husband, who I was so grateful was at my side and with me at that time. Even more, I prayed for peace that whatever happened I could be okay with it, that I would be right before my Maker. In an amazing way, I was instantaneously given that peace. I did not know or feel that we would be spared, but I knew I was not alone.

Aimlessly we worked our way away from the Capitol, unsure of where to go. We met up with several others from our office who had gone in different directions and determined to go to the apartment of the Congressman we worked for and wait, since it was the closest location we could think of off Capitol Hill and seemed better than wandering the streets. Together in Jim’s small living room we watched together in horror as the news unfolded. We saw the confirmed reports of a plane hitting the Pentagon. We watched the World Trade Center towers collapse as even news anchors could hardly choke back their emotions. We were numb, barely able to control our own.

Part way through the afternoon, Sarah and I wandered down empty streets near Eastern Market and found the only open restaurant or store, a Chinese dive, where we bought some take-out to take back to our little apartment refuge.

In the evening the news came that metro trains were running again. We rode in solemn silence, everyone. Our eyes told the stories of all we had witnessed and all that we feared. As we passed under the Pentagon the smoke was pungent, the train did not pause.

There were no buses running from Pentagon City that day. We walked the mile home with hundreds of others. Smoke was still rising from the Pentagon and filling the air. The grassy hill sloping up from the point of impact had become a make-shift memorial, already. People were camped out on the lawn, just starring at the hole left on this fifth of the building. Some mourning; some curious; many waiting, hoping for signs of loved ones. Our walk home was quiet. Along the way some neighbors had set up a small table and were passing out cups of water and lemonade to the tired, shocked wanderers on their way home. A way to try and be purposeful that day.

That night many Members of Congress would gather on the steps of the Capitol Building to demonstrate their resilience, their commitment to not let terror stop them from their work, and they would spontaneously render their own version of “God Bless America.” President Bush would address the nation, introducing to our vocabularies words that now seem common-place, such as “terrorism” (or “terra” as he pronounced it), “al-Qaida,” and eventually “Osama Bin Laden.” And, Jeffrey and I would huddle around the television set in the club house at our apartment complex to watch, since we did not have a working TV at home.

That night our ward’s bishopric, our local church leaders, would place phone calls to the homes of members of our congregation to ensure we were all safe and accounted for and discover that one man, Brady Howell, was not, and, never would be, although it was several days before he was confirmed to have died at the Pentagon.

And, that night, and for many afterwards I would lie in bed trying to sleep listening to the sound of planes circling over-head above our apartment, trying to remind myself that these planes were not a threat, they were there to protect me.

We went to work the next day, and the day after that, only to sit numbly at our desks watching more news and marveling at what it meant. Still unsure that we were out of harm’s way.

It would be a week before we were allowed to get our car out of the basement of the House Office Buildings, and then it would take an extra hour or more to drive in as new security measures were put in place to inspect our trunks and under the cars with mirrors for bombs. All around the Capitol Building there were new cement barricades and military personnel with AK-47’s patrolling. And, there was the constant presence of fighter jets overhead.

The terror attacks of September 11 brought life on Capitol Hill to a dead stop. Every tourist, every constituent, even lobbyists packed up and went home. The halls were empty. There were no meetings to be held. Every other agenda item was off the table. There was no talk of social security or education or immigration; they were not even considered anymore. We lived and breathed the effects of terrorism. I sat in hearings on the science of how and why the World Trade Center towers had collapsed; I wrote legislation and arranged briefings on how biometrics could be used to increase airport security; we discussed increasing the powers available to identify terrorists through what would come to be the Patriot Act. We watched the President begin a war. We heard the message that if you are not with me, you are against me loud and clear, and everything and everyone seemed to fall in line.

There was a sadness that filled those days, a fear, but perhaps even more a sense of vulnerability that my generation had never previously experienced. We had not really known war or terror in our lifetimes; we did not live with the sense of real threat from the Germans or the Japanese or the Russians as our parents and grandparents had. But now, we knew a new type of deep trepidation that ate away at our innocence.

Less than a month later, we would experience a new threat as anthrax was sent to Capitol Hill. We would be out of work for a week, waiting for sweeps and tests to declare our office uncontaminated, but it would be months before we received mail again – adding to the sense that everything was ghostly and dead. When it finally arrived, the mail was brown and brittle, exposed to radiation designed to kill any biological or chemical agent, but leaving an odor and texture to the paper (which was opened by interns wearing gloves) that made one wonder if the cure was as lethal as the disease.

When I recall those days I wonder at how very much I was changed by them. In no measurable way is my life really different. But, in so many subtle ways I have grown and changed, and my sense of the world around me has been profoundly altered.

When I think about how and what to tell my children of all that I and others experienced on September 11, 2001, I pray that they will be spared ever having to feel as I did that day. I hope that they can learn and understand without tremendous fear. But, I wonder if without the fear they can ever fully comprehend. I hope that this day in history will never be too glossed over, made too shiny and heroic, and stripped of the ability to impart deeper, penetrating lessons which have changed my life.

One of those lessons is a deep, abiding gratitude for individuals willing to sacrifice themselves for others. There are countless stories that evoke this emotion -- of office workers and fire fighters -- but I think each year with emotion of the men and women of United Airlines Flight 93 who, sensing the magnitude of what was happening that day and comprehending their own fate, courageously took down a plane headed towards me. I can never know what would have occurred if that plane had made it to the Capitol Building. I don’t know the damage that would have been sustained, where on the complex it would have hit, how the impact would have spread, whether I or my husband or others dear to me would have been injured or killed. What would have happened will always be a mystery. But, deep in my heart, I will always be gratefully in awe of those whose deaths spared me the answers to these endless questions. On recent visit with my daughters to the US Capitol I paused near a plaque engraved with the names of these individuals, these average passengers, who spared so many of us an even closer and greater knowledge of terror. Today, my heart is again full of thanks.

Another lesson is of perseverance and the source of true peace. I learned then and will hold with me all my life that during what felt to me to be the darkest of times, I can find the capacity to keep going, even with courage. Going back to work those days took real courage. Whether or not I was ever at risk, the potential for harm felt real, but so was my resolve to keep living my life and doing work that I felt was important. I found an ability I did not know I had to just keep moving forward, but I did not do it alone.

More than anything, I learned that it was not planes or soldiers or military action or the promises of politicians that would bring me peace and comfort and security, I found that I had a greater sense of internal happiness than so many around me during these days, and I knew it came from God. I learned how He could be with me and how He would reassure me in even the most troubling times.

Ten years later the fear and the horror has subsided, although it can come flooding back quickly when I pause and reflect, but the gratitude and the sense of God’s love have not waned.

Today, I am grateful for the gift of memory. I am grateful for the ways that what I have experienced can continue to teach me, for how what we have experienced as a nation, the loss and the terror, can still have a power to unite us and make us better, and for the possibility that these recollections can reach forward into the future and inspire and change lives for many more decades to come.