Tuere's blog: "Random Musings"

I was one of the lucky ones.  I didn’t lose anyone in the attacks of 09-11-01.

Has it really been 8 years since that day?

Lots of people remember where they were when this happened, I mean how could they not?!

It was strange for me because I was 3500 miles away from my home on business and did everything go into a tailspin.

I live less then an hour’s train ride from NYC.  At the time I was working for an international airline.  A week or so before the event I flew to London for training that my job gives every year – 2 weeks.

I had just spent a great weekend with my sister and her friend who came to London with her Mom to see me on my time off.  There is nothing like treating a 15 year old and friend to a flight overseas to put you in the cool group.  After getting all to London Heathrow Airport to fly home, I got back into a training mind set. 

Being 5 hours ahead of New York, the news came in at lunchtime in London.  There were people standing around TV’s all over the office.  At first I thought there were meetings going on as it is not unusual for marketing to show new product and commercials.  What was unusual was someone running up to me and saying the air ticketing manager needed to speak to me immediately. 

It turned out that all Americans in the building were being informed of the events as they happened.  In the beginning it wasn’t much more then rumor and speculation so we tried to find out things online.  Huge issue with finding out things online when the towers fell, the radio antenna for many of the news outlets in NYC was at the top of the Trade Center.

No News from New York and more frightening, no calls were getting through to the US at all.  We couldn’t talk to anyone in the US headquarters by phone at all.  We also knew there were Sales meetings scheduled in the Towers so to say Upper Management was in a tizzy is quite an understatement.

I would say not knowing how I was getting home, when I was getting home and not being able to contact my family to see if everything was ok was the worst for me.  But I knew there were others with more pronounced fears and legitimate ones.

For the next 3 sleepless nights I watched the international news trying to get as much nfo as possible.  Every morning waiting to hear if US airspace opened up to hopefully get a flight home.  When the announcement came in that Canadian airspace opened, all Americans they could book to Toronto were on that flight.  We had exactly 2 hours to get from the office back to the hotel checked out and to the airport before the plane departed (not boarded mind you – departed).  In this case working for an airline helped because car pools were set up to get us home from Toronto.  I got home on Saturday morning at 6 am.  Called all my family to let them know I was in, called my babysitter to have her care for my then 8 year old boy for one more day, and went to work to pitch in and help get stranded passengers home.

My story is nothing compared to those who lost family members and friends in those days.  My heart goes out to all those babies born without knowing the parent that died in the accidents.  They are 8 years old now, in elementary school.

So much time has past.

And yet it still seems like yesterday.

Never forget.