It is after 11 pm MDT, on 11 Sept 2002, and there is quiet comfort knowing that we survived the day unscathed and perhaps unlifted somewhat by the human spirit. On 11 Sept 2001, I awoke early because I had to teach a class at 8:00 am. I left my house at 6:50 am, about 6 minutes after the first plane hit Tower 1. I drove to work listening to CBC-FM, which played only classical music. I arrived at the university before the library opened, went in with my key, gathered up my instructional materials, and headed to the Chemical/Materials Engineering Bldg. I arrived around 7:45 to test the equipment, and then the students began to file in, about 60 of them. I lectured from 8:00 until 9:15 am, still unaware of anything happening in the world.
When the class ended, I approached the professor, Dr Suzanne Kresta, who told me one her students mentioned a plane hitting the World Trade Center in NYC. I didn't give it much thought, thinking it was probably a small aircraft, so we walked to her office to check the web. For minutes we tried to open news pages like CNN, The Globe and Mail, CBC, CTV, MSNBC, etc, to no avail. Finally we were able to open The Drudge Report, and the first words I read were, "Twin Towers Collapse". We stared at the screen, seemingly unable to comprehend what we read.
I walked back to my office in a daze, and upon entering the library could sense things had changed somewhat. People were acting differently, a radio was on describing events as they unfolded. I couldn't work, so walked outside to the Power Plant, a U of A student pub, and watched CNN on the big screen, numb with disbelief. I recalled the last time I was in the Power Plant watching a news report: 1986, when the space shuttle exploded.
By September 2001, I had visited NYC 9 times, and had developed tremendous affection for the city. I'd been in Tower 2 maybe seven or eight times to buy theatre tickets from the TKTS booth on the second floor (now located at the South Street Seaport), and in 1990 went to the top of the tower to the observation deck. So watching the events on television felt very surreal. Tonight I'm glad we've made it past one year. I don't understand why this happened, how people of any faith can be so calculatingly cold, as if ice water was coursing through their veins. On the PBS Frontline episode, Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero, one of the commentators interviewed (whose name escapes me at the moment), mentioned that President Putin of the Russian Federation, when asked for his reaction to those who carried out the attacks, replied, "We are as dust to them." Somehow the rest of the world must convince men of this ilk that we are more than dust, and that we all matter in the end.
One of the nicest gestures made to me today came from within an e-mail from Suzanne, which contained the line, "Thinking of you on WTC day." Thanks, Suzanne.
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