September 11th 2001 (a journal)
To say that the September 11th attacks changed or shaped my life would be hyperbole. However the day directly impacted me as it did so many other Americans for the fortress America had finally fallen to what had plagued Europe and the Middle East for decades. This day still rings clear in my mind, the feelings, the thoughts, the experiences all come back to me. I relive it in vivid color and it all comes back to me, regardless of whether I want it to or not.
We had only been back on U.S soil for a year having spent four years in Japan prior to leaving military active duty. Having embarked on a new career at a large global energy firm and also as an Air Force reservist I was now looking forward to a small vacation with the family at Disneyland. It was still dark when we loaded the van and began our drive for the airport, a small one and a half hour trek from our suburban family home to San Francisco International Airport. The kids were asleep, my two-year old daughter strapped in her car seat and the boys sleeping with their heads tilted in awkward positions in the rear seats of the minivan. I was listening to the car radio when the disc jockey mentioned that a small airplane had hit the World Trade Center. “You have got to be kidding me,” I told my wife at the time, “how can someone fly a damned airplane into the World Trade Center?” I envisioned a small Cessna meandering around New York and blindly smacking into the side of the enormous building. “Must be the weather” I remember commenting and the music started playing again. Surely he was lost in overcast or fog, for I had no idea at the time that in New York it was a magnificent and crystalline clear blue day.
We were approaching the San Mateo Bridge when the announcer broke in and reported that a second plane, a passenger jet, had struck the World Trade Center. I immediately switched the radio over to KGO, the local news station where a concerned host was announcing that all flights in and out of the Bay Area had been grounded. I felt confused and was not able to comprehend how a plane crash in New York had anything to do with our flight to Orange County. As the newsman unveiled the details of the attack I couldn’t get information fast enough and as we crossed the bridge something struck me as odd. I could not see any aircraft forming the long line that is the ILS approach into San Francisco Airport. The skies were void of airliners as the sun now lit up the early morning sky. I mentioned this to my wife who just sat there, seemingly confused. I knew we weren’t going anywhere that day.
We continued on to the airport and the news was coming in fast now. Planes were missing, there was a possible attack on Chicago and there was a jet that they had lost contact with. We arrived at the airport and parked and then I sat in the van listening to the news while the kids and bags were unloaded. A fight ensued when I suggested we leave for my wife’s sister’s house in nearby Oakland immediately. I relented and agreed we would go and talk to the ticket agent but well by this time it was clear to me. Our nation had been attacked.
We caught the shuttle and headed to the terminal with a group of about a dozen or so unsettled passengers, some of whom were leaving for New York. They were mainly on their cell phones chatting excitedly about the mornings events when a woman put her phone down and announced to everyone, “Hey, the Pentagon was just hit!” I turned to my wife and not in a clairvoyant way, but most likely in a tone of acceptance, said to her, “Jesus, we’re at war.”
We were almost at the terminal now and the bus was noisy with chatter. My cell phone rang. It was a call from my Reserve Squadron. As we pulled up to the terminal my mind was racing. My wfe was panicking about our vacation and I was wondering to what part of the world I was going to be sent to the following day. “Sean, what’s your availability?” Jeff asked over the phone. I told him I was on vacation and available for whatever they needed. “Good, you’re in crew rest. You go on bravo alert in twelve hours.” I hung up the phone as the bus stopped and people started filing off of the bus but it was a short-lived venture as security people told the passengers to get back on the bus, the airport was being evacuated. Back on the bus now we headed back to the van awaiting us in the long-term parking lot. The wife was nearly beside herself about our vacation and my patience had by now run out. I explained to her that this was much more than just a vacation and if it would make her feel better she could call the airline and see about rescheduling which I thought would keep her busy for a while. I looked at the kids. My daughter was silent, I can’t recall what Christiaan was doing but my oldest, Michael, looked confused and scared.
The trip back out of the airport was eventful. I followed the normal exit out of parking and followed the signs to highway 101. I told my wife to call her sister and tell her we were coming. I desperately wanted to get the family as far away from the airport as I could. We were approaching the intersection leaving the airport when a police car screeched to a stop in front of us and the officer stepped out of the vehicle with his gun drawn, (for reasons I never understood) not paying the slightest attention to the startled family of five in the white van. “Dad!” Michael screamed and began crying as the wife muttered a small comment to our lord and savior. I made a u-turn and sped back through the airport, past the now empty terminal and eventually on to Oakland and the wifes sister’s house. I arrived at her quaint home, walked briskly inside, gave a cursory salutation to her sister and went straight for the TV
The towers had just fallen. Diane Sawyer was weeping. Three hundred firefighters were missing.
I went outside, sat on the step and broke down.
The rest of the day continued to be tense with the family and more feelings and images come to mind as I write this. Back at our home I continued to watch the news. One image that is burned into my brain was the taped footage of the man and the woman leaping to their deaths from the burning Trade Tower. It was suspected that an airliner had been shot down by U.S fighter jets. Bad news just kept pouring in without yield. I told the wife to turn off the TV, we had seen enough and Christiaan was upset, worried that some bad men were going to now blow up his school.
“Dad’s going to go and fly tomorrow. We are going to keep everyone safe and you have nothing to worry about” I remember saying to him. But to be truthful I didn’t really know what was going to happen. I didn’t know if there were going to be follow-up attacks using buses or trains or trucks. The Oklahoma City bombing came to mind. How could I or my colleagues at my squadron really keep anyone safe? How did this happen? Who were these guys? Where was I going to be next week? It was obvious to me now that we would certainly be heading out somewhere, after all this rivaled the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, or worse.
I received the alert call the following morning. It was a beautiful clear day in the Bay Area for flying. I was not told what mission I would be flying but was given directions to a security gate at the base I didn’t even know existed, nestled away in some housing division near a high school. I showered, threw on my flight suit and kissed the kids goodbye, reassuring them once again that they would be safe and then made the drive out to the base.
After checking in with the gate guard I drove to the squadron building and met my fellow crew members in the flight planning room where I was informed we were going to be flying CAP (Combat Air Patrol) over San Francisco. The whole thing just seemed surreal; a feeling that was cemented when we were told that we would fly armed (with a 9MM Beretta) and as I took the crew bus to the armory, checked and loaded my weapon, it seemed that none of this could really be happening. It felt like I was in a war zone. Nothing seemed familiar anymore, it was if an invading army were waiting off of Stinson Beach preparing for an invasion. I arrived at the jet along with the Boom Operator and began my preflight checks. As I sat going through the preflight procedures the Boom Operator came into the cockpit and told me that the maintenance personnel had received an alert that the security fence had been breached and a possible terrorist was heading towards the flight line. It seemed unlikely to me that had actually occurred but never the less I told the Boom that if some asshole makes it to the cockpit he had better be holding eleven rounds in his chest. I was not in any mood to be hijacked. However I would periodically peer out through the windshield and scan the flight line for some guy running towards us with an AK-47 and a chest full of dynamite.
Thirty minutes after takeoff we took up position in an elliptical orbit pattern over the San Francisco Bay. The surrealism continued. It was a crystal clear day and from 24,000 feet you could see all of the way to Monterrey. We had two Marine Corps F-18’s from Leemore Naval Air Station orbiting with us, effortlessly cruising with AMRAAM and Sidewinder air to air missiles slung menacingly under each wing. The radios were completely silent save for the occasional message from the AWACS controller flying along the coast. Occasionally the radio would crackle as we were notified of a bogey somewhere near San Jose, or near Santa Cruz or Las Banos. There was no radio chatter, no planes in the air, nothing but a tanker and its ‘chicks’ (a term used to identify a tanker and its receivers of fuel). We were the only aircraft in the airspace between there and the Los Angeles basin and at any given time that day, on September 12th 2001, you could count the number of aircraft flying along the entire West Coast of the United States on two hands.
The next few weeks would be a time of uncertainty. I went back to work the following week after flying a few missions, including carrying a mortuary team to Delaware. After that I was asked again about my availability, only this time it was for an unspecified period of time. I told them I would give whatever they need, walked over to my bosses office and informed him I had just volunteered for deployment, which as I recollect, I had to in turn explain to him what a deployment was. I was one of only three people in our marketing department that I knew of aside from myself that had any affiliation with the Reserves or National Guard
A week later the phone rang. I was taking a jet to an undisclosed location; no one was to know where I was going or where I was when I got there and the period of time? Undetermined.
Once again I said goodbye to the kids. This time I had no idea when I would see them again.
– SC
