It was an ordinary day. It was bright and sunny. I was at my desk at work, and I was wishing not to be. Yes...an ordinary day until the phone rang a few minutes after 9am. My husband didn't say 'Hello, Love' as he usually did. He had an unfamiliar sound to his voice, and he said, "A plane just crashed into a building!" After a moment, he calmed down enough to tell me that a plane had just hit one of the Twin Towers in NY city, 120 miles west of where I sat. Moments later he said, "Oh my Lord! Something's happening!" and then he told me that a second plane had hit the other tower.
I had no idea what was happening, as he was watching the television at home that morning. We got a call over the mobile radio from one of our drivers who was listening to reports on the news. It was then that we turned on the tiny tv set in the kitchen area of our office, trying to watch through the snowy screen to find out what on earth was going on.
Our boss/owner of the home heating oil terminal where I worked came in 'powered up.' He was a guy who was always full of energy, but that morning, he was frantic. He determined that we should all be on our guard that day because if it was a terrorist attack, they might target fuel depots. We were instructed that we should be aware of anything out of the ordinary. I'm not precisely sure what would have tipped us off as to something being 'out of the ordinary', but we were to report it to him any suspicious persons should appear on location.
We listened to the radio. We tried to watch bits through the poor reception on the little TV. We really didn't know the magnitude of things, or the devastation until we went home that night to watch our own sets. Our hearts were broken as we watched. Our lives were being changed before our very eyes. Our country and our safe and secure lives as we knew them, wereunder attack. What would this mean for our future?
As time went on, some of us came to realize that we had lost friends or at least, someone we knew. I discovered that a girl from a neighboring village who I'd known twenty years before when she was in college, was aboard flight 93 which crashed in Pennsylvania. She'd been an attorney who lived in New Jersey, who boarded the plane in complete confidence that she'd be at her desired destination that afternoon. Just an ordinary day for her....until she braced herself for the crash.
Sept 11, 2001...just an ordinary day....until.....! Where were you? What were you doing on that not so ordinary day?
