Where Were You on 9/11/01?

Most people recall where they were and what they were doing that day.  I remember driving to work and listening to the news.  The reporter said that an airplane had just crashed into the Twin Towers in New York.  Having been to New York, and having flown out of La Guardia, I remembered the pilot guiding the plane into a steep climb in order to miss the tall buildings in Manhattan.  I assumed that the crash was caused by a lapse in judgment from a pilot who was just leaving La Guardia.

Moments later I arrived at the office, and I heard the news that another aircraft had crashed into the second tower.  It was not pilot error.  When I heard that, the first word that came out of my mouth was “terrorist.”  I called Ann. She hadn’t been watching the news, and she couldn’t believe I was serious.  Of course I would never joke about something like that.

By this time, we had hooked up a television set at the office, and we saw smoke coming from the Pentagon in Washington.  We watched the towers fall. We didn’t get a whole lot of work done that day.  Later, there was a report of another plane that went down in Pennsylvania.  We knew something was terribly wrong in our country.   Even so, Pennsylvania, Washington, and New York seemed a long way from Shreveport, Louisiana.   Then we learned that the president had been flown to Barksdale Air Force Base.  That was less than fifteen miles from our house.   Suddenly, we realized the disaster affected every one.

Later that day I received a call from a church secretary of a local church in a different faith community from my own.  She told me that their church was hosting an interfaith prayer service that evening, and asked if I would participate.   I felt honored to do so, and quickly accepted the invitation.

When I arrived I was immediately taken to the church office where the order of service was being hastily organized.  As I looked across at the ministers in that room, I realized they represented several different theological persuasions.  On another day, and in other circumstances, we probably would have felt some strong points of disagreement with each other.  I will never forget one thing that happened in that room.  The local minister’s wife was helping her husband put the program together.  She said, “Regardless of our differences, today we can agree on one thing.  What we saw today was evil.”

And so it was.   Because of that terrifying interruption in our daily lives, we forgot about social, cultural, political, economic, and even theological differences for a short period of time.  In the days ahead, the popularity of George W. Bush would soar.  By the time he left office, it would be at the bottom.   Why was it different on 9-11? Because something had happened that threatened the security of us all.