Five Years Ago

Everyone remembers where they were when they heard about the airplane flying into the WTC on Tuesday morning September 11^th. I was on my train. It was a normal morning. I got up walked to the train station at Chicago Ridge and boarded the 7:45 AM train to downtown Chicago. I took my seat upstairs like I did every day and started reading the paper.

About halfway into my trek downtown, a woman who I saw every morning was listening to the radio via her headphones like she did almost every other train ride in. On Metra even though there is no official assigned seating you tend to sit in the same place every day. You will usually see the same people there morning after morning. So, you politely smile hello when you see them or sometimes engage in polite conversation with your Metra co-riders.

So, it was with this lady who broke the news to me. I saw her every morning and would politely smile hello to her when I got on the train. Well, as we were approaching downtown she took off her headphones and told me very quietly that she just heard on the radio that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center in New York. I was in shock. A million thoughts went through my head. Was it a terrorist plot? Maybe a plane was having equipment problems and the pilot lost control of the plane and it just happened to hit the WTC? I wanted to believe that as it would be much easer to accept.

As we got into the train station, people starting talking. No one had real facts yet. I flew off the train and wanted to get to my desk and put on my clock radio to hear just what the hell was going on. Downtown Chicago at that point was still normal. Not everyone had heard what happened. I remember it was a beautiful late summer day in the loop. So, I walked to my office which was at 311 W. Monroe. I worked a block and half from the Sears Tower and all I thought about was what if that had gotten hit.

I got to my desk and turned on the radio. I put on WCKG home of the Howard Stern show. I couldn’t get AM in my office in the loop so I was stuck with the FM band. Since Stern’s show is based in New York, his show actually had a ton of information. I heard that yet another plane had struck the other tower and that a third plane had struck the Pentagon. It could no longer be ignored America was under attack.

At some point that morning the CEO of Harris Bank told everyone to just go home. My boss, Susana needed someone to go to our DR site in case of a disaster. It was located in Lombard. I was just happy to get out of downtown Chicago. As I was leaving I heard yet another plane had crashed landed outside of Pittsburgh. For my own safety I just wanted to get away as far from the Sears Tower as possible. I hopped on the first train back home and it was packed.

It was surreal. Everyone was talking and rumors were out of control. No one had any idea what was going on and everyone just kind of bonded on that train. I sat with my friend Chuck and we just wanted to get home. I got off the train and walked back to my apartment. On my way there, a man was outside and asked if I just got back from the loop. We talked and bothof us could not believe what was going on. I eventually got in my car and headed over to Lombard. On my way there, my boss called me and told me not to worry, that the DR site was fully staffed and I didn’t need to go anymore.

As a pure coincidence I had already booked a trip to Vegas that I was planning to take with friends and family for two weeks later. My tickets were at a travel agent in Oakbrook. So, I called them on the phone and asked if they were open. They were and I went and picked up my plane tickets for Vegas. It was surreal. I wasn’t even sure if air travel would be allowed by then, but still I was picking up my tickets.

I got home and watched some news. I talked to most of my love ones that day. I felt that all of our lives had been changed forever. The next day I went to work and it was almost business as usual. I had a meeting about some e-mail conversion. I sat there thinking how pointless this all was. I mean who cares about some stupid notes databases. People had died yesterday because they happened to work in a certain building in New York. I guess life must go on but it all just seemed so cold.

Five years later I was on that same train this morning. I read in the paper all the tributes and all the Bush and Cheney rhetoric. Life has gotten back to a somewhat normalcy. Sure it is now a pain in the ass to board a plane and security in the loop is a little tighter but my life is pretty much as normal as it was on September 10, 2001. I have had two different jobs since then and have gotten married. I have moved twice and bought a house. My life has gone on.

I wasn’t personally affected on that day. I didn’t personally know anyone who died. I was lucky and a lot of people who lost loved ones were not so fortunate. I remember going to New York last summer and looking out onto Ground Zero and wanting to cry. I hate showing my emotions. It takes a lot to move me. Here I was with friends and my wife and I had to walk away before I completely lost it in front of them. As I was walking away, I saw another tourist taking a picture of the hole in the ground. All I could think was in a photo album full of smiles and good times on your vacation why would you want to look at a picture where thousands of Americans died? It just seemed so disrespectful.