Once every few generations there is an event, a moment, that changes everything for ever. There have been two in my lifetime. The first was when JFK was assassinated. That happened on my 4th birthday and I have absolutely no recollection of it. But I was reminded of it every year on my birthday.
The second occurred 9 years ago today.
I was still living in Los Angeles and I worked about 3 blocks south from LAX. The runway closest to us was the longer south runway that when you are driving on Sepulveda Blvd, you drive under the south runway and right past the end of the north runway. I always drove on Sepulveda to and from work.
That day I arrived at work at 5:30am and started my usual routine of booting up my computer, checking my email, and then a quick visit to some news related websites. I went to MSNBC's website first and saw the breaking news about a small plane crashing into the World Trade Center.
Since we had a television in the conference room down the hall (I worked for a cable television provider at the time), I went and turned the television on and tuned to MSNBC. With the exception of one other person, I was the only one there at the time.
I remember looking at the images on the screen and not really listening to what they were saying. I was thinking to myself, look at the clear skies, there is no way that was an accident. Then I looked at the damage and thought, there is no way that was a small plane.
Then comes the second plane. I was stunned. My mouth dropped open. It amazed me that the talking heads kept saying a small private plane because it was obvious to me that it was at least a 737 if not bigger.
More people were arriving at work and we all gathered there watching the TV, all of us just shocked. I called my father, then my mother, then one of my brothers.
For me even after all that, the moment when it really hit home was when they shut the airports down and all the planes at LAX went silent. I never realized how loud it was, the constant roars from jets taking off and landing until they weren't there anymore. That made it so real.
Later when it was revealed which flights were involved, American Airlines Flight 11 and Untied Flight 175, I felt sick to my stomach. See, I have flown on both those flight quite a few times coming home from seeing my family in Boston and New Hampshire. When I was packing my stuff in the months ahead, I found one of my boarding pass stubs for AA Flight 11. I still have it. It reminds me of how much life can be a chance.
People have so often would bring up who is to blame for this tragedy. Some would blame the Republicans and Bush, some would blame Clinton. But the ones who were to blame for this are the ones who did it, the hijackers and Al Quaeda.
One of my favorite miniseries is From the Earth to the Moon and in the first episode which dealt with the fire that destroyed Apollo 1 and the crew. They were asked by Congress to find out what happened and who or what was to blame. At then end, the guy investigating it told them that the reason it happened was that no one imagined the scenario that did happen. A lack of imagination. I have read some people (a very few) blame the passengers for not fighting back when their flights were hijacked. But why should they? In the past, you were hijacked, flown somewhere and negotiations commenced. We never imagined that someone would fly those planes into buildings.
But back to the title of this post. Recently I discovered a website that has archived television footage from September 11, 2001 as well as the following days (http://www.archive.org/details/sept_11_tv_archive). I watched some of it. It is in approximately 40 minute increments. The first ones beginning at 8:31am-9:12am. I watch the typical fluff they were airing until the news broke and it was like someone drew a line in time, before we were lighthearted and after, so much fear.
Everything changed and it was just a moment in time.
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