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1. A 9-11 thread for my younger followers. (But you old-timers who, like me, lived in D.C. on that day may benefit from one man’s vivid remembrance.)
2. I was teaching that morning, high school English, in the suburb of Potomac @HeightsSchool. A friend, likely one of the very most patriotic teachers at the school, whose ancestors could claim decorations for wounds & bravery in all the wars of our country, came to my classroom.
3. He was white as a ghost: "Matt, the World Trade Tower has been hit by a plane, and D.C. is under attack. They're evacuating the city. Bombs going off on the mall." He uncharacteristically and agonizingly looked at me for some kind of aid.
4. I turned to my students at the door jam where he'd whispered this news to me: "Guys! Stand up and start praying Hail Marys until I get back." Shocked, a class of good and good enough Catholic boys got up and immediately began praying. I stepped out of my class into the sun.
5. My friend added that the Pentagon had been attacked as well—"It's on fire," he said. Now I knew that my father had an important morning meeting at the Pentagon, a great rarity for him. I immediately tried to call him—cell signal was busy. Mom—busy. Siblings in city?—busy.
6. Other teachers began letting their students out onto the grass of campus. Pods of students and teachers were spreading and forming all over. Teachers were all looking for a good cell signal, but the towers were jammed. Nobody could call anyone.
7. After praying and attempting futilely to reach my family, I told my students what I knew and that it was unlikely they'd get through to family without a landline. But effectively, school was now cancelled and people should stay on campus, pray, and try to organize a way home.
8. But that would end up taking much of the day. In the meantime, some went to the chapel to pray, and after that a good number went to the "living room" of the school, that had a huge big-screen TV. We were transfixed.
9. People came in and out, attempting to call family, trying to find out more news. But most people came and stood and stared and could not stop staring at the first attack on our homeland in anyone's memory.
10. Our chaplain, an Ivy-league, Deerfield Academy elite sort of guy, who'd given up a proud life of high finance on Wall Street to become a humble priest, was watching too. He was standing behind a couch in the back, but I had my eye on him, because I knew he worked in the WTC.
11. I will never forget the moan of agony he gave out—this man was a New England soul of self-possession and poise normally—again, I will never forget that groan as he saw the first Tower begin, impossibly, to collapse.
12. He had worked w/ many people, and many of his friends were on those top floors. He knew where & what floors his many friends were still working on. He turned his head heavenward, & gave up a quite but concentrated groan, & then half-collapsed on the couch back, taking a knee.
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15. After the second tower fell, after more news, some true, some false, came flowing in about D.C. being under attack, a few people began to get through on their cell phones, here and there, to touch base with loved ones.
16. I sat on a green grass hill, under a blue sky, and called my father a dozen times. When I finally got through, all was...well (enough). He was hunkered down in his federal office near the mall. His meeting at the Pentagon was early A.M. and had ended long before the attack.
17. But my sister was MIA, and she lived very near the Pentagon. As it turned out, she was stuck on 395, the highway that the terrorists used to track their flight into D.C. and dive bomb at the end of the road into the Pentagon. The highway was a parking lot all day.
18. Later that day, she would take off her dress shoes, abandon her car, and walk up the highway, past the Pentagon, and back to her place.
19. Back @HeightsSchool, that green grass hill overlooking the parking lot, had begun to fill with students, waiting to be picked up or get permission from parents to drive off by themselves, and with faculty, there watching over them all.
20. One gym teacher, whose tongue was sometimes too quick to speak and who'd had some training in the Coast Guard began talking far too loudly: "Terrorists want to get us on the bridges. Then they blow the bridges." That did not settle well with the boys.
21. All that to say, the boys were worried, and most of the teachers saw there job there was to calm them down. But they would be renewed in their worry when more news came rippling into the crowded knoll or when a mother would roll up, run out to her child and hug him feelingly.
22. For my part, I talked with many, helped process the news, helped find boys for their arriving and usually very worried parents.
23. I also had a long talk with a large group of high-schoolers about the principle of double effect and how President Bush could, in fact, shoot down a passenger plane if he thought it was going to be used as a weapon to kill many more people as the other planes had been used.
Eventually, the school emptied out, and it was time to drive home. My route home, took me across the American Legion Bridge, down the GW Parkway, and, yes, directly past the Pentagon via 110, right in front of the burning, fiery maw.
25. My neighborhood was due south of the Pentagon by a few miles, & the wind was blowing due south. So when I arrived home, drivers had headlights on way-too-early in the evening, w/ visible smoke in the streets & the stench of burning horsehair (old Pentagon insulation).
26. That night, after dark, the road at the end of my block (we learned later but assumed at the time) had become an emergency vehicle corridor, where hundreds of fire trucks, ambulances, and safety vehicles of all sorts—sirens usually blaring—headed to the Pentagon & D.C.
27. Many feared further attacks on the capital city, so emergency vehicles were streaming in from all over the surrounding counties and states, through the night, trying to help, ready for whatever might come. (Running to danger is what heroes often do.)
28. The U.S. Air Force (I assume) had fighters in the air all day, but at night, their continued sonic booms and roaring fly-by's were much more noticeable, for they signaled a state of war over our own skies, which gave my housemates and me an unpleasant and unfamiliar feeling.
29. In the very late evening, I was on the phone with my girlfriend, who lived out of town, when I heard the air-raid or tornado warning sirens fire up their haunting din in the smokey night. Something a bit more eerie than this:
30. I turned on the TV, to see if the sirens were signaling another attack. But the local networks had nothing but the general 9-11 coverage. I said goodbye, and stepped out onto my front porch. And I simply looked up into the dark of the night and listened. And waited.
31. And I was not alone. All of my neighbors—the druggie girl up the hill, who never believed us young bachelors when we honestly told her we didn't have weed; the sweet old couple down the hill; the "mayor" of the block, w/ his Bass Pro Shop ball cap, shorts, and tube socks;...
32...the lesbians across the street, who always kept a muzzle on their male dog; my roomies—almost everyone was out on their front porch, listening at nearly midnight, waiting, breathlessly, peering into darkness above. The siren then came to a slow stop. And then, a voice.
33. It took a second to realize that the sirens themselves were now doubling as megaphones, & it was hard to hear what was being said, slowly, & repeatedly—& truly, truly hauntingly—it was a haunting experience; it is haunting now in recollection of that dark, smoke-foggy night.
34. The siren tower was on the far side of a great hill as well, and the words came slowly over the hill, echoing around the hillsides of Del Rey, a little bohemia, north of Old Town Alexandria.
35. Eventually, we could make them out: "Disregard -regard -regard," it echoed almost gently but antiseptically, "the previous alarm alarm alarm. Disregard -regard -regard...the previous...alarm alarm alarm."
36. After sifting the echoes and the faint snatches of this mantra, everyone on the block discerned the words together, at the same time. And all at once—I am not joking—every woman on the block began to sob, some loudly, some softly. Their menfolk hugged or comforted them.
37. The sobs were of both relief and sorrow at the whole situation; you could tell the tone of their stifled cries and gentle sobs. Men, myself among them, gave out audible sighs. A few even whistled in wonder as if to say, "strange days."
38. It really wasn't until then that I sensed the communal injustice of the attack. I understood the murder, the attack, and the attempts on our symbols and centers of govt. and power. But not until then did I understand the attack on the peace of country.
39. That violation of our peace has been a reminder of the vigilance required to keep the peace, to revere the peace, and to hate anything and oppose anyone who would seek to destroy it. Pray for the dead and the living. Pray for peace. And God bless America.
40.
Cc @hughhewitt @Peggynoonannyc @Heminator @IngrahamAngle @RichLowry @JayCostTWS @JonahDispatch @asymmetricinfo @michaelbd @ChristineEmba @docMJP @p_m_robinson @EdWhelanEPPC @monacharenEPPC @TPCarney @brithume b/c I thought you would appreciate &, if fitting, share the thread.
