Like A Bookmark In My Mind

It was Tuesday morning. I was one month away from my 23rd birthday. My wife was three months pregnant and at home with our two-year-old daughter in our tiny one bedroom apartment on the second floor of a converted barn. I had been at work since 6:30 a.m.

I worked in the stockroom of a large electronics manufacturing company where I barely earned enough to pay the bills. It was the kind of job that was essentially the same exact thing every single day: cycle counts, receiving new inventory, filling shipping orders, and pulling parts for the various assembly lines throughout the building. It was like The Office only less entertaining. That day was a day like any other day until shortly after 8:46 a.m.

At home, my daughter watched cartoons while my wife did some house shopping. In those days you flipped through those free booklets stacked by the grocery store checkout to see what was on the market. She saw something she liked and picked up the phone to call a realtor’s office. She spoke to the agent who answered the phone but was obviously preoccupied. He apologized to her for being so distracted and then told her she needed to watch the news because a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. They hung up and she turned off the cartoons and turned on the news.

At work, I went through the daily routine of filling orders and pulling parts. We always kept the stockroom radio tuned to a local rock station that played the hits and then read the news headlines at the top of every hour. That was our only connection to the outside world — other than the stockroom phone. Cell phones were expensive back then and still in their infancy — they didn’t have access to the internet.

My wife called the stockroom phone to tell me about the first plane, which at the time, was believed to be just a terrible accident. While she was on the phone with me she was watching a live broadcast of the news coverage of the smoldering north tower when the second plane hit. She screamed. She started freaking out and wanted me home. I told her not to worry and that I had to get back to work.

When the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center, it was news. When the second plane hit the south tower, it was something more. As the morning wore on the Pentagon was hit and then a plane crashed in the middle of Pennsylvania. Things were not improving. The radio station turned into full on news as the events of the day unfolded in real time. Work slowed. Thoughts wandered. Concentration was impossible. It felt like one plane after another was falling out of the sky.

As things got worse some businesses closed and let their people go home. My wife called again and wanted me home, but I — being the kind, sensitive, and ever practical husband — I stayed at work and finished my shift.

When I got home I saw the images and the video of the burning towers, their eventual collapse, and the chaos at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania for the first time. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I was mad, sad, and a whole lot of other things mixed into an emotional cocktail.

Like a lot of people, we had various connections to those events that brought it closer to home. My best friend’s wife worked at the Pentagon and was there when the plane hit. She was unharmed but it took forever to find anything out. American Airlines Flight 11 pilot John Ogonowski lived next door to the church I attended. That plane struck the North Tower. And over the years that followed we’ve come to know people who were supposed to have been on one of those four planes, but by some twist of fate or Divine intervention, their plans changed. Those kinds of connections make it all the more personal.

There are certain events in life that, when they happen, you never forget where you were and what you were doing at the time. They are like a bookmark in your mind. For my parents, it was the assassination of John F. Kennedy. For me and my wife, it was September 11, 2001.

Mine is not a story of the front row or the spotlight, but it is mine, and I will never forget. What’s yours?

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