9/11: 14 years and counting …
Do you remember where you were 14 years ago today? Senior Correspondent Mike Causey says in many ways it changed everything for all of us.
Like many Americans of a certain age I have both vivid memories and blank spots as to what I was doing, what I felt, and how I got through Sept. 11, 2001. It was a beautiful, clear day. It was a Tuesday.
I had just joined Federal News Radio and was in a training class run by our sister station, WTOP. Our building is located on some of the highest ground in the District of Columbia.
Our training was in a fourth floor office. There was a knock at the door and a woman, from another company that rented space in the building, asked us what was going on? Of course we didn’t know, but soon found out.
She said an airplane had hit the World Trade Tower in New York. I immediately thought about the American Army Air Corps bomber that crashed into the Empire State building in 1945. History repeats itself, I thought! Wrong.
Next came the other airplane, then the attack on the Pentagon. We were hearing everything. That there were bad guy snipers in the Pentagon parking lot. That the State Department had been hit. That the CIA had been hit. Most workers at the CIA and other federal offices were told to go outside. To get away from the building. Friends at the Interior Department and Office of Personnel Management called me to say they were being moved, because they are so close to the White House.
I remember working that day, but I don’t remember when or how I got home. One of my sons was catching a bus at the Pentagon. He was opposite the side that was struck by the airplane. Another son was at Dulles Airport when the plane that crashed into the Pentagon took off.
But for everything I can remember there are many more things I can’t. I found this column, written years after 9/11. The subject, not exactly original, is how that day changed everything.
Meantime, if you have any thoughts, memories, let us know. We may never — we hope — go through anything like that again.
View a photo gallery of the opening of the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania.
Nearly Useless Factoid
There are 31,536,000 seconds in a year.
Source: Wonderopolis
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Mike Causey
Mike Causey is senior correspondent for Federal News Network and writes his daily Federal Report column on federal employees’ pay, benefits and retirement.
Follow @mcauseyWFED