From 9/11 to 1/15
I began the morning of September 11, 2001 in about as inauspicious a fashion as possible, clad in an ill-fitting bathrobe and shower shoes – the uniform of choice when you find yourself with bathing options marginally superior to those found in a state prison.
I was living in a dormitory at Belmont University in Nashville, having begun my freshman year of college – and having left my family behind for the first time– only about three weeks prior. As a result, my world had already changed a bit too much for someone of my reactionary tastes long before I turned on the television that morning.
By the time I returned to my dorm room and flipped on the morning news, the first plane had hit the World Trade Center. The news coverage was still emphasizing the chance that this had all been some sort of terrible accident, but I suspected otherwise. My parents had professional contacts throughout the national security world, and the prospect of such seemingly unconventional acts of terrorism had been uncomfortable, if prescient, dinner-table fodder in my house for years before. Thus, when I got my mother on the phone from California, her reaction was more resigned horror than abject panic. “There will probably be more”, she said. About three minutes after we hung up the phone, the second plane crashed into the twin towers.
My next phone call was to the dorm room of my girlfriend at the time. Her roommate – a dear friend of mine to this day – answered the phone and I asked her if she knew what was going on. When she responded in the negative, I attempted to explain the facts to her in as calm a fashion as possible. She was one of the most preternaturally composed people I knew, so I was taken aback when her reaction was a painfully prolonged silence, followed by a soto vocce “not again” and a dial tone. As I placed my phone back on its cradle, I remembered that she had moved to Nashville from Oklahoma City.
I had an exam in my first morning class, so my overwhelming instinct to remain transfixed on the television was overrode by some combination of academic diligence and the need to be around others who were also processing this in real time. Upon arriving in class, our professor made sure that everyone in the room knew what was going on and passed on an ominous piece of news – a plane was reportedly missing somewhere near Kentucky. This would prove to be American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon shortly thereafter. And while none of us were anticipating an attack on the Grand Ole Opry, nothing seemed beyond the pale that morning.
The reactions I saw throughout the day were a microcosm of what was happening throughout the country. An English professor of mine canceled class, unable to face her students because her husband was supposed to be flying out of New York that morning. A math professor who had retired from the army with the rank of colonel began his class forcefully, but devoid of emotion: “If terrorists want to take over planes with box cutters, that’s a reality of the world we live in. They ought to have factored in that we have some resources at our disposal too.” That was one of many moments on that day that I found myself proud to be living in the South. Others came as I watched the news coverage in the commons area of my dorm. Every five minutes or so, another patriotic son of Dixie was declaring his intent to join the armed forces.
I discussed that fact with my girlfriend as we watched President Bush deliver his remarks to the nation from the Oval Office that night. I too wanted to be of service to the nation. “What do you want to do?” she asked. “I know it sounds crazy,” I replied, looking at the president on television, “but I’d like to help him.”
More than seven years later, I walked into the Oval Office with the rest of President Bush’s speechwriting team to discuss with the Commander-in-Chief what he wanted to say in his farewell address to the nation. He looked at us solemnly and without hesitation said “The message is that we kept the nation safe.” Neither my circumstances at that moment nor the truth of the president's statement would have been foreseeable to the newly minted underclassman of September 11, 2001.
A few weeks later, on the evening of Thursday, January 15, 2009, I strode across the alley outside my office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building into the basement of the West Wing. The president was due to give his speech in a few hours. I was met there by my good friend Emily Soeder, the invaluable staff assistant to the speechwriters. She asked, “Did you hear what happened?” “No”, I replied. “A plane went down in New York”, she said. I felt my blood go cold.
Shortly thereafter, we would learn that the plane crash of January 15 only resembled those of September 11 insofar as it demonstrated American heroism; it was U.S. Airways Flight 1549, where not a single soul was lost thanks to the bravery and poise of Captain Chesley Sullenberger. Secure in that knowledge, I took my place in the back of the East Room of the White House with the rest of the speechwriters a few hours later. And I closed my eyes in a moment of quiet thanks when President Bush said, “As the years passed, most Americans were able to return to life much as it had been before 9/11. But I never did.”
A thought on that line: the first sentence was only true because the second one was too.
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May '10
Re: From 9/11 to 1/15
Lovely. Thanks, Troy.
May '10
Re: From 9/11 to 1/15
Yes, thanks...I only hope that history is more truthful about President Bush's success than our news media has been.
May '10
Re: From 9/11 to 1/15
I remain a big fan of GW Bush, an underrated man who demonstrates grace afoot every day- beginning with his refusal to allow his staff to publicize the juvenile vandalism committed by Clinton's staff on the WH computer keyboards when leaving- to even today not speaking ill of his petty, immature, and incompetent successor.