Where were you on 9/11?

This day being the 10^th anniversary of 9/11 brings back vivid memories for me.

We were living in Las Vegas, and on that fateful morning I was driving my son, who was three at the time, to his grandma's on my way to work. I was about to turn onto the Desert Inn Flyover, which is a bridge that goes over the Las Vegas Strip. I had turned on my favorite radio station and noticed that they were not playing music. The DJs’ voices were not their usual upbeat and conversational tones. I turned up the volume, and the morning DJ was talking about the latest news bulletin. He said it was originally reported that the airplane that had crashed into the first World Trade Center Tower in New York City was a tragic accident. Now, there was the report that another plane had purposely flown into the second tower.

I was stunned, my mind was reeling.  What were they talking about? What was going on in New York this morning? As if to answer my questions, the local radio station turned over the airwaves to the national news. On my drive over the Flyover, I was brought up to date of the horrific calamity. I remember looking up through the windshield at the clear blue sky and noticing there were no planes, which was very unusual, especially in Las Vegas. I quickly glanced in the back seat at my son, who was dozing in his car seat. He was too young to know the world was is complete turmoil.

I arrived at my mother-in-law's apartment.   It was very common for her to be watching the news this time in the morning. I had this urgent need to fully understand what was going on. However, as I carried in Derek into her living room, Linda was watching a Western movie on TBS! She greeted me with a smile and asked quite casually what was going.

I advised she turn on the news right now. When she turned the channel, she and I were dumbstruck. The images were so much worse than what was broadcasted on the radio: the New York skyline pouring with smoke and wreckage, people in business attire covered in ash, running from the buildings. It really hit me hard as a working mom—the Towers were filled with innocent people that wouldn’t be going home again.

Since there were no announcements of attacks in Las Vegas, I decided to try to keep things normal as possible.  I kissed Derek goodbye, gave my husband a call and set off to work at a construction company.

As soon as I arrived, I could tell everyone had heard the news. There were a few wrinkles that developed:

• The assistant controller left early to try to contact friends he knew that worked at the Pentagon. He wasn’t getting through by phone and he was very upset. Thankfully, he was able to reach them and they were not in that area of the building that was destroyed.  
• We had a few superintendents that were literally stranded in the Phoenix airport. All flights were grounded for the entire United States. The superintendents were trying to line up a car rental to drive back to Las Vegas, but since everyone else at the airport were doing the same thing, chances were slim they would make it back to the office tomorrow.
• No houses were constructed by our company that day.  Somehow, a television showed up in the break room and all of us at the office gravitated towards it throughout the day. When we weren’t watching the news, we worried if there would be an attack on the Las Vegas Strip—after all, our office was in the shadow of the Stratosphere!

At the risk of sounding like a movie cliché, there really was a great disturbance in the Force. At the end of that terrible day, my husband and I had headaches that wouldn’t quit.  It was only made worse by watching the news.

In the weeks that followed, the positive thing that glimmered was the spirit of community and patriotism. At work, we all wore red, white and blue ribbons, neighbors put out the American flags in front of their houses and the radio was filled with inspiring songs. Even though we were far away in the West, we were affected by what was going on at the East Coast. We were all in this together and together, we were all we needed.