Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, a day most of us will probably never forget. Although it’s been 13 years now since those tragic events took place, I can still remember quite vividly everything I did on that day.
When I awoke in the morning on 9/11, I was still living in Falls Church, VA, mere miles from the Pentagon and Washington, D.C. After getting ready for work I headed out to Herndon, VA to the small company I was employed at there. I clearly remember looking up at the sky on my way there noticing how beautiful of a day it was going to be. Little did I know how the events to come would change all that?
It was 7:30am by the time I arrived at my job and sat down at my desk. I was a software tester back then at this company working on a biometrics based check-cashing program. I didn’t love this line of work too much, especially there, as I had frequent run-ins with the boss. But I can honestly say I was pretty good at what I did. After getting my morning to-do list out of the way I glanced at the time and saw it was getting close to 9:00am, which was when I usually walked next door to get a breakfast sandwich. I decided to check the news on the Internet before heading over there and noticed I couldn’t get on Washington Post’s site or USA Today’s. I quickly assumed it was a problem with the company’s Intranet/Internet connections and strolled over to the café feeling rather hungry.
After ordering my egg sandwich, one of the people there abruptly pointed at the television there and said, “Did you see the news???!!!” It was 8:50am and American Airlines Flight 11 had just crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Unbeknownst to me at the time, one of my brother-in-law’s family members had been sitting in the first class section of that plane having decided to take an earlier flight out to get home sooner to his wife.
As I watched the news with this stranger while waiting for my sandwich to be made, I silently thought to myself how a pilot could have been so far off course to have done something like that. I shrugged my shoulders and went back to my desk after being handed my bacon, egg, and cheese on a bagel. Sitting there at my desk while eating it, I tried again and again to get back on the Web solely to see more on this latest news headline, but to no avail. Suddenly one of my co-workers yelled out “Oh My God!” in horror causing me to swiftly race to her desk. Somehow she had gotten on the Internet only to discover at 9:03am that United Airlines Flight 175 had crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
My mind quickly raced from one thought to the next and it’s then I knew these crashes weren’t accidents. Most of us went back to the café after that to watch the news coverage of these disasters because we were told the Internet issues weren’t coming from within the company. There I would watch rather numbly, the live coverage of American Airlines Flight 77 after it too crashed but into the Pentagon at 9:37am.
I looked around at the empty stares and solemn looks on the people watching with me, as the Pentagon was not too far from all of us there. My only thought at that point in time was that World War 3 was beginning and all I wanted was to do then was call my partner to hear his voice. That’s when I, and everyone around me, started discovering the cell phone network was totally down.
When the South Tower collapsed at 9:59am, followed shortly thereafter at 10:03am with another plane crash of United Airlines Flight 93, I tried to pinch myself hoping it was all a dream. It wasn’t and that became more apparent when the North Tower collapsed at 10:28am. An image of me standing at the top of the observation deck of the World Trade Center a year earlier quickly flashed in my mind and I immediately realized I’d never be able to go to the top of it again.
The company would send us all home soon after this because none of us knew how much worse it was going to get. When I walked out of my building, I was half afraid of seeing some type of a missile fly through the air, but instead it was eerily silent in the sky. I continued to try calling my partner on my way home but couldn’t get any type of connectivity. It was sheer madness on the roads as well as it seemed everyone else was sent home at the same time. I watched driver after driver be reckless trying most likely to race to their own home just to see their loved ones like I was. When I finally reached my own my partner was already there, as he too had been allowed to leave for the day.
We embraced in silence and then turned on the television only to see the news highlight all the looks of horror in people’s faces near each disaster site. The buildings collapsing were then being replayed over and over and over again to the point where I just couldn’t take it anymore. So I went outside and cut the grass because it seemed like the most rational thing to do at the time. Looking back now it actually seems like it was a rather strange thing to do given the seriousness of what was taking place that day.
A few hours later my partner and I decided to drive down to the Pentagon because there was some part of us that still wanted to believe that none of what we were seeing on the news was real. The full impact and weight of the entire day’s tragic events solidified within me shortly thereafter when I saw Flight 77 sitting there on fire half in and out of the Pentagon with my very own eyes.
Things weren’t the same for quite awhile after that day in the Washington D.C. area. Each morning when I headed out to work, the skies remained empty except for an occasional fighter jet or helicopter. And each time I’d see one of them overhead I’d think another crash had happened. Thankfully there weren’t, but I knew then my life was forever changed.
My family would grieve the loss of Andrew Curry Green for a long time afterwards and because I was from New York, I would learn of others distantly connected to me who also perished from the terrible events that day. Making things even more difficult for my mental state, I’d infrequently get graphic updates from my cousin Brian, who was an NYPD officer at the time, as he was part of the initial cleanup process at the World Trade Center site.
For a almost a year after that, I continued to wish I could go back in time and make all of the horrors of that day go away. Ultimately the entire mental and emotional trauma I saw and heard from the events of 9/11 would catch up with me. I ended up having to go see a social worker for a bunch of therapy sessions just to work through it all. In time I did, much in part due to those sessions and the help of my Higher Power.
9/11/2001 is truly a day that I know I’ll never forget. It’s my only hope and prayer that all the souls lost that day are with their Higher Power now. Whether those terrorists believed their actions were achieving something for their God I really can’t say, but I know my Higher Power is one who would never advocate for any violence. Hopefully one day there won’t be any more acts of terrorism like this and we will all be living with a lot more peace, love, and harmony instead. Until then, 9/11 will always be a constant reminder for me of a spiritually sick world that still needs to get well. And my only prayer is that I may be one of the souls who help my Higher Power eventually get it there…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson