For September 11, I’m going to do a personal thread on more of the near misses and one that did not.

On September 11th, I was working at IBM as an engineer when we heard news. One coworker, John, had the news up on his computer. A lot of IBMers are from NY - This is important to remember later.

Years later at church, we would hear the story from friends about their dad. He is an American Airlines pilot, who was signed up to fly on 9/11. He would be bumped by a more senior pilot, even though his wife had already packed his bags. This would be Flight 11.

If you want to hear his story, you can find it on YouTube: In My Seat - A Pilot’s Story from Sept 10th-11th.

Later I would find out from a friend, who was in my wedding that her dad was supposed to be at the Pentagon that day. Because he got so caught up on watching what was occurring in NY, he missed his meeting.

Everyone who did attend that Pentagon meeting died. Her dad had only recently retired and was back consulting. Where his former office used be was also destroyed. We used to go visit his office in college.

Back to my IBM coworker, John. He would find out later that one of the kids that grew up with his kids was a hero in Pennsylvania that day. Todd Beamer’s mom used to babysit John’s two sons back in NY.

What a lot of people didn’t realize was that a lot of the companies within the two world trade towers had contracted with IBM for disaster recovery.

For the next two weeks my husband’s IBM refurbishment group in Research Triangle Park, would be working 24/7 to send out computers, servers, etc. to get all those WTC companies operational again. It would take another month to fully ship out everything they needed.

This NYC skyline picture hangs on my husband’s office wall to remind him of what happened that day and afterwards.

When my husband got the news 18 years ago, he frantically started calling his best friend, who worked in NYC. He tried for 30 minutes before he finally got a hold of him.

His best friend was late to work on September 11th. His office building would be partially destroyed by the falling WTC buildings but he was okay for now.

Within the next year though, the best friend, a healthy 24/25 year old, would get cancer. The same cancer that a lot of the NYC firefighters were fighting because of the toxic NYC air.

The best friend came so close to dying that he was actually read his last rites. One doctor though attempted to save him. He had treatments that probably would have killed other people. It worked though and after many treatments and surgeries years later, he is alive today.

So for my family, September 11th is also about remembering all the near misses for our closest friends and for remembering the fun time my husband had with his best friend on top of the North Tower in late August 2001....before the world got very complicated.