September 11, 2001

I woke up that morning and headed out to the job just like any other workday in the previous 39 years before. It was clear, beautiful day in Wise County. At the time I was a manager of a small company in Bridgeport that provided construction and service work in the oilfield. One of the trucks that I was responsible for over seeing had an issue with the brakes so the driver had taken it down to a local shop to get it worked on. I went down there to check on its progress and upon arriving, the owner of the shop and his son were listening to the radio and told me what they were describing on the radio about a small plane crashing into a building in New York. They didn't have a tv, but we had one in our office a few miles away. I headed back to the office and met the secretary arriving for work and told her what I just heard. We turned the tv on. It was an older model tv and wasn't hooked to either cable or satellite, so the picture was grainy and fuzzy to say the least. It was showing that the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane and by then they were speculating and had reports of it being a big commercial air liner. The tv was tuned to our local ABC station because the reception was better on that channel.  As we watched, all of a sudden a second plane hit the second tower. Immediately they started saying this was intentional and a chill went through me. We stood there watching in disbelief. The tv we were watching kept fading in and out so I left to go to my house, which was very near, and watch it on my TV at home. By the time I got home and turned the tv on, the stations were starting to broadcast different angles of impact and the chaos that was at ground level. I was mezmerized by this and watched in horror as the situation played out in front of me on the screen. Reports of other planes going down. Reports of other planes being hijacked. Reports of other planes being used as weapons. Reports of planned attacks? What? In our country? I started hearing Al Qadea, a word or name that we would all get to familiar with in the next few months. I started hearing about someone named Osama Bin Laden. All this was confusing to me and thoughts of war and visions of destruction were running through my head. I was never very political and most of the angles that the news stories were running seemed confusing to me. On this particular day, I didn't have to much going on and could basically "work by phone", so I just sat there and watched it all day. I watched as they started showing the video coming from the Pentagon and then reports of Flight 93 going down in rural PA. I would change channels and watch CNN then Headline news, then back to ABC, NBC. I sat there all day watching everything I could take in.

Later in the day as my girls started arriving home from school and I started explaining to them in the best way I knew how, without scaring them, about what I knew of the events of the day. We talked about how this might change our lives and how scary it was. My oldest daughter asked me a question that I will never forget. She said " Dad, will we still play the ballgame this Friday night?" I continued watching nonstop coverage of 911 and the girls got bored with it real quick.

Reflecting back on that day, I was scared. I was confused. I wondered if this was the beginning of the end. I was scared for the future of my children. Life has moved on past that day. Today has started out like many days in the last few years, nothing more than the same old day to day events. I hope and pray that it stays that way.