Remembering 9/11

From the WTC Museum in New York City. Photo by Dan Winters.

September 11th means different things to a lot of different people. Everyone (especially people closer to my age) thinks of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. However I am one of those people whose birthday happens to be on that date.

A Bit of History

I have a tiny bit of history with the World Trade Center. In the early 90s, I worked for the Sabre Travel Information Network (STIN) division of then holding company AMR (later in 2000 Sabre became an independent company), the holding company that is basically American Airlines. While I started at the help desk for STIN that handled calls from travel agencies that used the Sabre system (and leased computer equipment for their offices to access Sabre), I eventually began working for a separate group that did consulting for larger travel agencies who wanted to integrate the LAN-based STIN software into their own networks as well as being able to set up “travel departments” inside of large corporations which were their own unique setups. My largest client was American Express whose main offices for their travel division were located on Church Street in New York City, and I made numerous trips out there. This was right near the World Trade Center. I had an odd habit of leaving the American Express office at the end of a consulting gig, and visiting the towers, just to stare up at them. I had always planned on going up and looking out from an observation deck, but never managed to have the time on those trips, and figured that someday I’d be able to.

On Friday February 26, 1993 there was a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center which consisted of a van loaded with explosives parked in the underground parking lot. The following Tuesday I arrived in the city for a consulting gig, and of course got to hear firsthand information about it from the American Express employees. One of them was on the street out to get lunch and said it was the loudest thing he ever heard. As I was leaving Wednesday to head back to the airport, I left the Church Street office and went over to WTC and was able to look into the massive hole under the towers. I could see down the equivalent of five floors - I cannot even begin to describe the scale of this hole, and I could not believe the towers were still standing. I still have vivid memories of walking up and seeing this damage, touching some of the debris and the building itself.

A couple of jobs later I was at a company called BindView, and while it was headquartered out of Houston I worked for the RAZOR research team, a security group based out of BindView’s Bedford, Massachusetts office. I was in that office for one of my periodic visits, and flew out of Boston Logan airport to head home on Friday September 7, 2001. I usually did not have a direct flight and connected through Chicago, but this time my connection was in Newark, New Jersey. I remember both landing and taking off in Newark, seeing the World Trade Center from my window seat, and remembering that giant hole and touching the building. The following Tuesday, terrorists also flew out of Boston Logan and changed everything.

The 2001 Attack

At BindView we had a private IRC server where those of us on the RAZOR team would converse as a good chunk of us (including myself) worked remote. On 9/11 I remember I got online a bit early, probably 7:30am central and was still drinking my morning tea when one of the people in chat said that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. From that description alone it sounded like maybe it was a small plane, but then it quickly was revealed to be massive damage. Some of us even thought a hijacker was responsible, because it seemed highly unlikely a pilot in even partial control would crash into a building in Manhattan, and would ditch into the water if necessary.

I turned on the television, and woke up my wife Kim (at the time the computer desk was in the bedroom in the corner) and said maybe a hijacker crashed an airplane into the World Trade Center. She doubted it was anything more that an accident, and said something along the lines of “yeah well, they’ve blown that place up before, wake me up if something else happens” and rolled back over to go back to sleep. I turned the sound off, and was watching a live feed from one of the national networks, chatting with work, and saw an airplane strike the second tower live. Holy shit.

I immediately woke Kim up again, if she was even back asleep as it couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes later. I don’t think I can stress how utterly weird this was - this was a different world at that point. We’d seen domestic terrorist attacks from right-leaning Timothy McVeigh and groups like the left-leaning Symbionese Liberation Army, but nothing on this type of scale. Even the 1993 bombing wasn’t even close. Most of the day was a blur. We spent most of the morning with her sitting on the edge of the bed and me sitting in the desk chair, both of us staring at the television.

Later came the Pentagon, the towers collapsing, the fourth plane crashing, and the various details slowly unfolding throughout the day. Everyone expected more attacks (the Sears Tower in Chicago was deemed a potential target by talking heads speculating on television), and most sky scrapers nation-wide were emptied. It would be hours before President Bush would make an official statement and it was reported that for hours he was traveling all over the place so a lot of people speculated that he was running to safety. His briefing was around midday if memory serves, with a second statement later that evening. But this delay from the attack time to the briefing contributed to growing fear which seemed to escalate every minute, with everyone feeling threatened and under attack. The world seemed to have stopped and nothing was going on but this. Every television station had nothing but coverage of the events all day, and in fact it was several days before any regular programming began to air.

Birthday Evening

That evening my family and I were supposed to have a birthday dinner with a couple we were good friends with. The plan was to go to this nice restaurant where they had a piano bar and have some fine Italian food and high quality wine. My friends called my wife and asked if we were still on for dinner, and it was decided a break from staring at the television all day might be a good thing. We were all looking forward to a sane dinner in a calm restaurant with gentle music coming from the piano.

The reality was quite different. We arrived and the piano player wasn’t there, the television behind the bar (which I had never noticed before) was not only on, but the volume was up enough so the entire restaurant could hear it. The interactions with the waiter were awkward because there was that uncomfortable thing where normally he might say “So are we celebrating anything special tonight?” and found himself starting to say it automatically and then catch himself and try to recover without sounding insensitive to world events. My wife apparently had arranged in advance for me to get a surprise cake as well, but told the waiter that there was to be no singing of “Happy Birthday” and when the cake came out it should have no candles at all. Just bring the cake and leave it at that.

After we got home, we went outside and were standing out in the front yard looking around. Kim said “Wow, what do you see?” I looked around, and then immediately got what she meant. In Arlington, the house is a few miles south of Dallas/Ft. Worth International airport. I don’t know about then, but DFW is ranked now as the third busiest airport in the world. Normally there would be at least half a dozen to a dozen airliners in the sky either leaving or making their way to that airport. In addition to that, the house is really close to both the Arlington and Grand Prairie municipal airports - both of which served (and continue to serve) as a test area for four different aircraft companies that mainly made helicopters and other experimental aircraft for the military. This was in addition to small planes and private jets heading in and out constantly. So the skies were usually filled with aircraft. Now they were completely empty, and remained so for several days as the FAA had issued orders that closed airspace to aircraft for at least the remainder of the week.

Aftermath

I was due to give the keynote at Toorcon 3 on September 28, 2001. My wife didn’t want me to go because she was afraid of another attack. I pointed out that the attackers would most likely attack using some other methods, and she did decide I was probably right. It was interesting. Many friends who had planned on attending the conference were not there, as many were either now helping out with setting up new data centers and offices (mainly) in New York, their companies had not reinstated flight reimbursements and work travel was forbidden, or they were coming from outside of the USA and were simply not going to be able to make it.

My Toorcon flight out and back was in a near-empty plane, security at the airport was insane and rather sobering to watch. Remember, the TSA didn’t exist until November 19, 2001 and then only on paper, so these airport security checkpoint personnel were winging it, many had little to no real security training or experience, and now were under immense pressure. If you think TSA is unpleasant and unevenly organized now, imagine post-9/11 pre-TSA airport security measures. September 10, 2001 one could get past security without showing ID or a boarding pass by simply getting past the metal detectors. Now a little more than two weeks after the worse terrorist attack ever, it was absolutely crazy at the airport. Spouses and parents wanted to see their partners and children off to the gate and wave as they boarded the plane like before, and now they could not, or maybe they could at this other gate because the rules were so uneven. It was crazy, and fortunately not a lot of people were flying so it wasn’t crowded, but still. I think this is why I am as patient with TSA as I am at this point - I’ve personally seen it far worse.

Before 9/11 there was a running joke with family, friends, and co-workers that if you traveled with me you’d see me (and usually just me) get stopped by security on at least one leg of the trip and getting searched. Remember, this was a time when body searches were rare, and I was averaging at least once per trip. In Europe it was even worse. On one trip with my boss for a conference where we were going to do some training, my wife tagged along for fun, and on the trip back the security detail at the airport pulled me aside and gave me one of the most thorough pat-downs that my boss had ever seen. It was like they really needed to check out that crotch area, and as it was Europe they had no problem doing this in a common area in full view of everyone else (in the USA they pull you behind a screen). My boss was rather shocked and said something along the lines of “wow he wasn’t kidding about those security encounters” and Kim replied with “yeah this is typical”. After 9/11, this behavior completely stopped. Why? To put it bluntly, I was white. Every friend I had that was aware of my not-so-random search stories and was not white, black, or Asian told me they were now getting stopped at least once on every trip. My friends usually said something along the lines of “I assume they just let YOU through now.” They were right. I no longer fit the “profile”, which was quite frankly fully aimed at a specific ethnicity based solely upon skin color.

Afterwards

For several years afterwards, Kim and I made it a point to try and take a vacation outside of the USA for my birthday, to avoid the inevitable “remembrance” television specials. And many times when there was a situation where I had to give my date of birth as an identifier like at a doctor’s office or a pharmacy, saying “9/11” got quite a reaction, especially for the first few years following the event. Yes at this point I have seen several of the detailed documentaries on 9/11, but in general I try to avoid the major news outlets on my birthday. Even this year I am taking a “stay-cation” this week, and this blog post will auto-publish. I want the week off to reflect without distractions, and I’ll probably go outside, look at the airplanes flying in the sky, and remember.