by Jude Coyle

Created on: September 11, 2010

My immediate reaction after the first Twin Tower fell on September 11th, was to find my family and assure myself that they were safe. My husband asked me why, and I honestly couldn't answer. Maybe it was because we had been so safe for so long. The last time we suffered this type of loss was sixty years earlier when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. At that time Hawaii was not a State, but an American territory. In my mind, that was a distant time in a foreign land. Maybe we had grown so complacent in our safety, that we began to see  National security as something the CIA dealt with, and not something the normal Americans worried about. And there we were on September 10th, at peace with the world.

There are so many images that come to mind when I think of September 11th. I remember the first responders working feverishly to unearth survivors. I can see the firefighters in my mind's eye raising the American flag over Ground Zero. I remember President Bush standing in the rubble, addressing the crowd with a bullhorn. I also remember Members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, standing shoulder to shoulder on the steps of the Capitol, singing the National Anthem. And I remember the uneasy quiet we all noticed and commented on because planes were grounded for three days following.

At that time I worked for a small newspaper in Chicago's South Suburbs, and I spent a lot of time commuting between the various towns, interviewing people, making notes and writing articles. Everyone seemed to have a story or a connection. 

I met a woman who worked for a bank located in Chicago's Loop. She was visiting her company's  New York offices with coworkers. On September 10th, her group visited an office in The World Trade Center, and then later dropped into a bar just across the street. She said her cell phone battery had died and she had yet to call home. The bar had a pay phone just inside the glass doors leading to the street. As she dialed home, she turned to see a view of the World Trade Center.She said that her stomach dropped. Even if she had no idea what would happen the next day, she felt a strong sense of foreboding.

She spent the night in Connecticut as they were due to meet at her company's Connecticut office the next morning.  When she heard what had happened, she said that foreboding reasserted itself. She mourned the lost of coworkers she had just met. On a personal level, the worst part of the experience

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