Remembrance

I left the business hotel where we always stayed at about quarter 'til eight and walked a block down the hill to the headquarters building of the American College of Emergency Physicians in Irving, Texas, not far from DFW airport. About ten minutes later I entered the board room, five minutes before our meeting was scheduled to begin, and saw people clustered around a television set that someone had brought into the room on a rolling cart stand.

This was an odd sight. I had been in this room many times before and had never seen a TV set there. On the screen I could see the World Trade Center. From one of the towers was coming billowing smoke, and I heard the newscasters talking about a plane having collided with it. The sky was a brilliant, clear blue. How could that have happened? I had an uneasy feeling that someone had intentionally crashed a plane into this building. Then, as we were all standing there watching, at a few minutes after eight (9:03 AM Eastern), another plane crashed into the other tower. This immediately confirmed what we had all been thinking in the interval: a deliberate attack.

The meeting of the ACEP Board of Directors was conducted that day, but it was unlike any I had attended before, or any since then. We were all quite distracted. Not long after the meeting started, it occurred to me that the FAA was sure to ground all air traffic, although that action on the agency's part had not yet been reported. I took out my cell phone and, in a hushed voice from the back of the room, called my wife. She hadn't had the TV on and had no idea what had happened. I gave her a very brief capsule and asked her to try to find me a rental car, because I was sure my flight back to Pittsburgh early that evening was not to be.

We struggled through the meeting, covering the essential business that was on our agenda. At the end of the day I went back to the hotel and requested a taxi. My wife, ever dependable and resourceful, had found me a rental car at a Hertz location - not at the airport, which would surely have been inaccessible. The taxi driver had no idea where it was, but there was an address, and my wife, using MapQuest, gave us directions over the phone.

Three of my colleagues, two from Ohio and one from nearby West Virginia, were aware that I had procured a rental car and wanted to join me, sharing the driving. Twenty hours of driving? I would be delighted to share that, and to have the company.

When I walked into the Hertz place, I was thinking that a Dodge Intrepid would not be especially comfortable for four guys, three of whom were a bit bigger than average, even if all of our bags fit in the trunk, for a trip of that length. At the counter was one other customer, a middle-aged woman, inquiring about the car they had for her. "A Lincoln Town Car? That's pretty big, isn't it?" "Yes, Ma'am," said the desk clerk, "it is." "I'm not really comfortable driving a big car," she said, obviously hoping for an alternative. I thought this was too good to be true, but I immediately stepped forward and said, "Ma'am, I think I can help you with that problem." She left the agency quite pleased with her smaller Dodge Intrepid, and I left knowing that my friends and I would be very comfortable in the Town Car. When I got back to the hotel they looked at me in disbelief. "You da man!" (Or something like that. Some details are not as sharp as others.)

Driving across the country that night, our conversation was full of speculation about why this had happened and how the United States should respond. We had many questions, not so many answers. (Ten years later that is still true for me.) I recall being struck by the fact that every light I saw in the sky as we drove through Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky was a star, because all civilian planes had been grounded.

I do know we were all determined that the American reaction should be an iron fist. I think that was the way nearly everyone felt at the time. It was a time of ardent nationalism, certainly unlike anything I'd ever seen. My formative years were marked by Viet Nam and the intense questioning of the motives underlying everything the U.S. did on the world stage. The appearance of the American flag absolutely everywhere and the chants of "USA! USA!" filled me with feelings about being American that were, if not different from those I'd had before, certainly more impassioned. And yet there was a sense that it would not last long, that many of the ideals being espoused and the behaviors exhibited would quickly fade. We have such short memories. In the nation's capital partisanship disappeared, but I knew it would be back all too soon. And it was.

I am not writing this because I have unique or profound insights into the cultural clash between Islamic fundamentalist extremists and the Judeo-Christian West. Not because I have something to say about how we are different as a nation or about how the world has changed in the last decade. Not because, ten years later, I have found the answers to any of the questions that gripped me on that night with only stars and no planes in the sky.

No, none of that. I just want to remember.