Memories of September 11, 2001

September 11, 2001 — My husband, Jon, and I were in a hotel room in Atlanta preparing to attend the Fall 2001 NetWorld+Interop conference at the Georgia World Congress Center. We had tuned in to CNN to catch the news as we were getting ready to go to the show — Jon was scheduled to give one of the keynote speeches — on that fateful Tuesday morning. I was in the bathroom, putting on make-up, when Jon called to me, “Come look at this! The World Trade Center is on fire.”

“What?” I asked, coming out of the bathroom and sitting on the bed.

“It looks like some dumbass crashed a plane into it, ” Jon said, pointing to the television set.

I saw what appeared to be the tail end of a plane, sticking out of one of the Twin Towers, “They must’ve been drunk or something,” I speculated, “either that or their navigation system screwed up big time.”

On the television, the CNN announcer who was covering the still undetermined fire was filling time, apparently waiting for more details so that he’d have something to say other than, “There is a lot of smoke… We are trying to find out more… For those of you just joining us…”

This went on for several minutes while my husband and I watched, still preparing for our business agenda while contemplating how somebody could have done something so stupid, what sort of drugs they might be on, etc.

Then, suddenly, the CNN reporter exclaimed, “Oh my God! There’s another one!” And we watched, on live television, as a full-sized airliner crashed right into the South Tower and burst into flames.

“Oh my God! That was on purpose! ” I shouted. “Somebody did that on purpose! Who would do such a thing?”

“Arabs,” Jon replied, “its gotta be Arabs, they already tried to blow up the World Trade Center once back in ‘93.”

“Well, it was definitely a suicide mission,” I said, “American nutcases don’t usually commit suicide when they do stuff like that.” For some reason, I was thinking of Timothy McVeigh.

By then, it was after 9:00am and we had a 9:30am meeting at the World Congress Center. So we left, knowing that we could catch up with all the news during our lunch break.

When we met my father, Anthony Romao — who was also attending N+I — in the hallway at our hotel he asked, obviously still in shock, “Did you see the news? Can you believe that?”

“At first, we thought it was an accident,” I replied, “but one is an accident, two is on purpose.”

My father and I started talking about it in a sort of nonsensical manner, one of those still-numb-from-the-shock exchanges in which no real information is conveyed just a lot of “I can’t believe it,” and “can you believe it?”

“C’mon, we can talk about it on the way there,” Jon said, knowing that the chattering goes on and on when father gets into the mix, “we’ve got to go. Now.” We were running a bit behind schedule.

The “I can’t believe it , can you?” conversation continued as we walked through Centennial Olympic Park on our way to the Georgia World Congress Center, which was only 2 or 3 blocks from our hotel. Along the way, we met some business associates who joined in. Some expressed their worries about friends and associates in New York’s financial district while others were concerned about how it would affect their own business interests.

When we arrived at the GWCC, we went straight to the media lounge where security personnel were scrutinizing press credentials more closely than they had in previous years. Once inside, we went to the information desk to see if there were any messages. But first, Jon asked the woman working at the desk, “Can you believe it about the World Trade Center?”

“I’ve never been so scared in all my life.” she answered. “Did you hear that the Pentagon is on fire!? God help us all, I just don’t want to know what’s gonna happen next!”

We had left our hotel just a few minutes after nine and arrived at the GWCC a little after 9:30, so we missed a lot, “My God! Are we under attack or something?” I asked, “Who would do this?”

Again, Jon answered, “Arabs. who else?”

“Yeah, but which Arabs?” I found Jon’s answer quite unsatisfying, “What country are they from? Or are they just some random group of radicals?”

“Probably some random group of radicals,” Jon replied. “We don’t have time for this right now, I have to give a talk in a few minutes and we need to get over there now.”

“Okay.” And off we went to the auditorium where Jon was scheduled to give his talk.

When we got to the meeting room, which should have been buzzing with the sounds and activities of the usual last minute preparations and frustrations, it was quiet. A small clump of people were huddled around the monitor on stage, watching the CNN coverage.

A man walked over to us and asked, “Can you believe it?” Then he said that everything was running late but they should be starting soon. But they never did. Everyone was too shocked and upset to think about the business for which we had all traveled to Atlanta and it was highly unlikely that anyone was going to show up to hear the keynotes anyway.

Oh well, we thought, there’s always tomorrow and Thursday. Since we were already there at the GWCC, we decided to see what was happening on the convention floor.

Now, N+I Atlanta used to be a really big event that filled the GWCC. In past years, over 50 thousand people attended and almost every network technology vendor set up a pavilion or booth. But on September 11, 2001, the GWCC was strangely quiet. People were just milling around as if they were waiting for something to happen. Some were wandering the aisles in a sort of daze, while others stood in small groups watching CNN on the large flat-screen monitors that were usually used for sales presentations and product demonstrations.

The three of us — Jon, father and I — walked the convention floor, taking it all in, slowly beginning to realize the seriousness of the situation and picking up new details — a fourth hijacked plane was still missing, the FAA had ordered all planes to land immediately and the White House and the Capitol had been evacuated — as we heard them along the way. Occasionally, we’d see someone we knew and stop to say, “Hi” and, “Can you believe it?”

Most people were keeping their cool — or maybe they were just still numb from the shock — but a few were visibly upset and crying, perhaps worrying about loved ones living in New York or Washington, DC. And a couple of people were angry, shouting into their cell phones about their flight schedules or how much money they were going to lose as the result of N+I being disrupted and possibly canceled.

Through all of this, I kept wondering, where’s the President? Shouldn’t he be on television making a speech or holding a press conference or something? People are freaked and they need — I need — to hear someone in charge say something like, “Remain calm, we are doing everything that can be done to resolve this situation.”

Now, at that time, I really hadn’t given Mr. Bush much thought. I did not vote for him or Mr. Gore and had no interest in the partisan silliness that was still continuing months after the Florida re-count and subsequent Supreme Court decision. But I was getting annoyed that we had yet to hear from our president, whom I had decided to give — as I would have if Mr. Gore been elected instead — every benefit of my doubt.

Bill Clinton would have been on the television already, I thought out loud (though I was never really a big fan of his, either) as we walked around.

Jon said that we would probably not hear from the president until all planes were on the ground and the Secret Service could ensure his safety, which made perfect sense to me.

We paused in front of one of the monitors to watch the continuing CNN coverage just in time to see the first tower fall. I heard a collective gasp echo through the crowd. And then a brief silence followed by some screams and a lot of crying. The emotion in that huge convention hall was so powerful, I swear I could smell it.

While CNN kept showing the footage of the crumbling skyscraper — over and over again — I remember thinking how it looked like a controlled demolition and surmising that the fire department must have decided to implode the building so that its collapse could be controlled, therefore minimizing damage to the surrounding area. Smart move, I thought, probably saved a lot of lives and property.

Between the first and the second tower falling — which, as it turned out, was actually the first one hit — I learned that the destruction was unexpected and that many firefighters were killed because they were still inside trying to rescue people when the buildings crumbled.

Well, I thought, at least the towers didn’t topple over sideways, because that would have caused a lot more damage. But still, to this day, I have a difficult time believing that two buildings collapsed, straight down, in exactly the same way just as a matter of course. Of all the 9/11 conundrums and conspiracy theories, this is the only one I still find rather mind-boggling.

Soon after that, we went outside to smoke cigarettes and try to decide what to do next. I looked up at the empty and silent sky, which should have been filled with planes on a Tuesday morning, and thought, is it really over? Or is the worst still yet to come?

I decided to call home where my mother and her friend, Alice, were looking after the kids while we were out of town. “Hello, Mom?” I said into the phone, “Can you believe it?”

“My God! We’ve been watching it on the television all morning,” mother replied, “I can’t believe it.”

We mostly talked about the morning’s events and how the news kept playing the same awful footage over and over again. Somewhere in there, I asked how the kids were and they were fine, completely oblivious to the horrors of the day. My oldest, who was four at the time, understood that some bad people had stolen airplanes and crashed them into buildings, but was more interested in watching Barney and Blue’s Clues than the boring old news.

I closed my phone and asked, “So what should we do now?”

Jon suggested that we go back to the media lounge to get some coffee and see if they were still going to serve lunch. He had overheard some talk of the convention being closed for the day, possibly for the rest of the week, and wanted to find out if that was true.

When we got back inside, people were still going in and out of the convention hall and the media lounge was open — they still had coffee and other beverages, but no lunch would be served. We learned that the show was canceled for the day and that decisions were still being made about the balance of the week. The bulletin board was filled with notices of canceled parties and other events, but the press reception was still on. We also heard that President Bush was about to make a televised statement, so we went to the convention floor to watch on one of the monitors.

After hearing Mr. Bush’s statement, I felt a bit better knowing that someone in charge was doing something. I actually knew that all along, but needed to hear it anyway. This is America, I thought, it’s going to take a lot more than this to shake us up.

Jon said he was hungry and father said he needed a drink so we walked to Jock’s and Jill’s Sports Lounge at the Omni CNN Center and had lunch. After that, there wasn’t much else to do but go back to our hotel and watch the news (as it turned out, that was pretty much all there was to do for the rest of the week — our “September 11 baby” was born during the subsequent mini-baby-boom of May 2002) until the press reception later that evening.

The press reception — where free food and drinks would be served at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse — was not much of a party, but it was pretty crowded with many already-intoxicated press and PR flacks. A large wall-sized screen, which had been set up for presentations of new product announcements, was tuned to CNN.

We met with several colleagues there, but all anyone could talk about was the events of the day. One man, a PR guy, talked about the plans and meetings he had made for the week and how they were so important to him the day before but that they now seemed rather trivial and meaningless. I told him that none of us could have predicted such a thing and that we all probably felt the same way — it was supposed to be a convention, after all. And we drank a solemn toast to the firefighters who had died trying to save people.

A few drinks later, the room became quiet because President Bush was about to address the nation. I don’t recall exactly what he said off the top of my head, but I do remember feeling inspired by it.

Soon after that, the party — if you could call it that — started breaking up because the bar was closed. Jon, who had run into Mike Linett, a friend and business associate, was ready to leave and wanted to know if father and I wanted to go have a nightcap with Mike.

In the many previous years when Jon, father and I attended N+I in Atlanta, we always closed our evening festivities at the rotating bar at the top of Peachtree Plaza, one of the tallest buildings in downtown Atlanta. It was a sort of tradition.

There was a little apprehension expressed about going up into a tall building, but there weren’t any planes flying that night and, at that point, we were too deep into our cups of liquid courage to care anyway. So off we went.

On the way, the men talked about terrorism and world politics, but I was too buzzed to care until Mike said that the FBI would know the identity of the hijackers by the next day.

“How’re they gonna figger that out so quick?” I asked. “It’s not as if there’s gonna be any bodies that dint get vaporized.”

“C’mon Margaret,” Mike said, “you know all the technology involved here. The FBI is probably looking at the flight records and security tapes right now. I’m tellin’ ya, they’ll know who all of ‘em are by tomorrow night — at the latest.”

Well, duh. I knew he was right, I just hadn’t thought about it very much. After all, the perpetrators were obviously dead and it was not as if there would be anyone to arrest — I wasn’t thinking about details like how the terrorists probably had accomplices who weren’t on the planes.

I am not much of a drinker, so my memory after that is rather foggy. Somehow, we made it back to our hotel room where I awoke, hungover, on September 12. It was the first day of a New America, one which promised a renewed unity but ultimately delivered only more of the same partisan politics that had plagued us before — and still do today.