I didn't go to the Managers' Meeting today. Usually when I say that it's because I'm late. Today I didn't go because six years later, thanks to a leap year, September 11th occurred on a Tuesday. I was in that meeting six years ago when we read on the CNN site that a plane crashed into the World Trade Center. A little while later, we saw another plane crashed into the other tower. Most of us were sure the CNN Web site had been compromised.
We were wrong.
It was personal for me -- my brother lived and worked in Manhattan at the time. I have to admit that other than "The Bronx is up and the Battery's down," I really don't know anything about NYC's geography. It turns out he was dozens of blocks away, but we didn't know anything until about 2:30pm. He was fine and many of the folks in his office stayed at his place that night; some stayed the whole week.
When Flight 93 went down in "Central Pennsylvania," I received frantic calls from relatives. Here, we know that to the national media, Central PA means everything that isn't Philly or the 'Burgh, but they didn't.
I worked for Advanced Information Technologies at the time, and we delivered a message from President Spanier in about 20 minutes to all e-mail inboxes. That's probably faster than we'd ever done it before. Kudos to the guys, particularly John Kalbach and Jim Vuccolo for getting it out that fast.
Later that day, I had my MIS 445 class on System Administration. I decided that I should show up because I knew some people would. About half the class showed up. We talked about disaster recovery preparation and how C&IS was already in planning phases. We talked about getting the message out electronically. Mostly, we just sat around and expressed our disbelief about the events of the day.
We had heard about terrorism, but it was always somewhere else. That day, it hit ordinary people; ordinary people who just happened to show up at work on time.
No, I didn't go to the Managers' Meeting today. I stayed home and listened to WPSU-FM. At 9:05, my friend, WPSU Program Director Kristine Allen came on. She said that her programming today was going to feature American composers. The first piece she played was Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man."
I lost it...
Simply stated, I love your blog entry. I think you've articulated your thoughts and remembrance so wonderfully and with a lot of compassion. I think it speaks to a huge part of what we do everyday, at work, at home, etc., and it makes me recognize how much has truly changed since September 11, 2001 - and why it's important that we reflect and respect every year on that day - if not more frequently/regularly. I actually lost it a little when I read the last line of this blog entry. ;-) Thank you for sharing your remembrance with all of us, Jim.