I woke this morning to a sky as blue as it was on that Tuesday, September 11, 2001. I was a second year student at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia. We went, as we did every weekday morning at 8 AM, to chapel. After chapel, some students went to a class, some to the library, some back to the dorms and many of us went to the Refectory for coffee. I had just grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down at a table with my fellow sacristans and friends Diane and Ron. Ken, a student in my class, walked over to us at our table looking stunned: “A plane just flew into the World Trade Center.” I knew he was from New York. My image was that a small plane, off course or in mechanical trouble, had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. Accidentally. We were all puzzled, but not really worried or panicked as we didn’t know enough at that point to be concerned.
Moments later the entire building at the Seminary shook; the windows rattled so violently that I thought they might burst from their frames. What is going on? Then people began to say, “We’re under attack.”
I don’t know how long it was before we found out that another plane had hit the Pentagon which was less than 4 miles down I-395 from the Seminary. More details began pouring in. Two planes, big planes, commercial airliners, had crashed into both towers of the World Trade Center.
Students who had spouses and friends who worked in the Pentagon were crying as they tried to call them with little success. Several students who were doing CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) internships at the hospital in Alexandria went there to see if help was needed to be with the families of the injured they were transporting from the Pentagon. Brigades of students began making sandwiches to take to the rescue workers at the Pentagon site.
We still really didn’t know what was happening. I wondered if I would ever see my family again; I was studying at VTS but my husband stayed at his job in North Carolina and our son was living in Colorado. My heart lurched as I realized that my daughter who was interviewing for graduate programs was scheduled to be in New York City that day. I could not reach her.
Rumors were flying. Washington was being evacuated. Washington was being bombed. Televisions were switched on in the dorm common rooms. I lived in Price Hall that year and we had the worst television on campus and no cable. We were able to see the news, but it was as if they were broadcasting in a blizzard. Somehow that did not seem inappropriate as we ourselves felt lost in a blizzard of confusion, shock and grief.
As the day went on, more facts, hard and difficult and horrifying facts, were revealed. That night a prayer service was held in the Chapel at the Seminary. I remember only one line from the sermon that the Rev. Dr. Bill Stafford preached that night: “…the bottom holds.”
The bottom holds. We would not let the events of that day destroy us. It would take a long time, years if we are honest, to process all that led to September 11 and all that happened on that day and in the years that followed and continue to follow.
I found out that our daughter’s plans had changed and she was not in New York City on September 11th, but in New Bedford, Massachusetts interviewing for the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts. Her interview began at 9 AM and was abruptly interrupted as the news hit; all classes were dismissed, students and faculty sent home. She did complete her interview later that week and then she came to see me in Alexandria. I remember standing in the King Street Metro Station parking lot waiting and watching her emerge from the dark tunnel out of the Metro into the sunlight. She looked illuminated. I remember thinking, “My daughter is alive. I can take her in my arms and hold her.” I knew that other mothers’ arms were empty that day. My joy was edged with deep sorrow.
Today it has been twenty years. It seems impossible that it was so long ago because it feels eerily close. For my family, September 11 was always an important day, one we all had marked on our calendars because it was my grandmother’s birthday. Now it is a day marked on calendars around the world. It is a day we shudder to remember while we know it is a day we will never forget.
So many memories etched in my brain about that day and that morning. We didn't even have a TV then or a smart phone or even a flip phone. No news on the computer. No FB. No other social media. It was weird. I do remember being in my office and our son Jody calling me to tell me about the planes. At that time he thought they were just small planes. I went next door to the church as I knew they had a TV and then had to figure out how to use it. I stood there transfixed watching and not understanding what was happening.