Where I Was on Sept. 11, 2001

It seems strange that it has been ten years now. I remember the, "Where were you at when you heard" conversation coming up a lot the first few years after Sept. 11, 2001. Those that lived in New York at the time have the most telling stories. Many lost loved ones and had their lives forever changed because of the event. I don’t lay claim to any of that. I was living on the North Side of Chicago at the time. I worked in a 30-story building, for a division of Price Waterhouse, on the northern edge of the Loop. Here is my 9/11 story.

The day started out on a bad note. I woke up late and was struggling to get out the door on time. I was glad that it was casual day at work. I could get out the door a lot quicker. The company planned an evening outing at a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. My employer deemed that Tuesday a casual day. Morale was very low at work. They thought this might help.

I boarded the el like any other morning. The ride didn’t seem any different than any other day. The cars were crowded. I jumped on and hoped there would be no
delays. I remember getting into the building just before 8 a.m. I was still a little out of breath from running to my building from the el stop.

When I got into our office area, I noticed that the cubicles were empty. It was very quiet. I kept walking toward my work area and could hear the TV on. I walked past my cubicle until I found where the sound of  television was coming from. My colleagues were gathered around it. The television was on a cart and had been pulled into a hallway between our conference room and the work cubicles.

I couldn’t figure out what was going on. My first thought was that there was something going on with the company. We had just lost about 30 percent of our work force a few weeks earlier. But this was a news cast. I remember about ten people, including our human resources director, staring emotionless at the television. I looked at the TV and saw live footage of one of the World Trade Center Towers on fire.

A woman started to cry. Many of us communicated and worked with American Express Bank International which had offices in the World Trade Center. She was worried about someone she knew at the bank. The bank was located in Building 7 of the World Trade Center. I didn't know anyone there personally.

I asked what was going on. Someone said that it looked like a plane had accidentally flown into one the Twin Towers. I remember thinking, how is that possible? I watched for about a minute. I had just been to New York a few months earlier and could still picture what the towers looked like from street-grade level. That was when the second plane hit the South Tower. No one said anything. We all started to walk away from the TV and went to our desks. The newscasters were starting to talk about hijacked planes. Some were still in the air.

I remember making one phone call at my desk. I had a friend that I thought might be on an airplane at the time. He worked for United Airlines. Some of the hijacked planes were United flights. Just as I finished leaving a message on his voice mail, the HR director told everyone to go home. I grabbed my stuff and ran to the elevator.

I remember walking out of the building and seeing crowds of people walking in all directions away from the Loop. I knew I would never get an above ground
train. I was afraid to go into the subway. I thought it might be next on the terrorists' list of targets.

As I walked up Dearborn Street, I remember seeing a young man setting up tables at a street cafe. As I watched him, someone came out of the cafe and told him that they probably wouldn’t get any customers today. He asked, "Why?"  The guy said matter of factly, "Someone just attacked the World Trade Center in New York."

I walked two miles to Chicago Avenue and State Street. I realized I wouldn’t make the walk all the way home. I decided to take a chance and went down into the subway. It was swamped with people. No one could get on the trains because they were already full. Despite this, everyone was courteous and quiet. It took me twenty minutes before I could get on a train.

I don’t remember seeing the North Tower collapse on television. I was probably heading toward the elevator. I was back in my apartment when news of the Pentagon came in. My friend who I called from my desk left a message saying he was okay. He was boarding a plane at O’hare when all air traffic was grounded. He never took off.

All of downtown was closed down. By noon, my typically busy and loud city neighborhood went totally silent. You didn’t hear a single car on the road. The streets were empty.  All the bars and restaurants were closed. The Cubs game that I had planned to go to with my company was cancelled.

My compnay Price Waterhouse had an office Hudson River in New Jersey.  We didn’t hear from our colleagues at that office for almost three days. One of my responsibilities was to forward financial news to a client company in Indiana.  The New York Stock Exchange was closed until Sept. 17. I didn’t have any financial information to forward. 

About the time the stock market reopened, we started to get emails listing all of the Price Waterhouse employees that had been killed. Since it was such a large company, there were employees on all of the hijacked planes. There were also employees at the World Trade Center buildings. 

Working in that 30-story building on the edge of the Loop was never the same after that. Even though our building security saw me every day, l had to show my employee badge every time I entered our building. The world had changed.

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