And our flag was still there

In a week we'll never forget, Americans remain united in grief, courage in face of devastation

09/16/2001

By BARRY HORN / The Dallas Morning News

It was the week that America will never forget.

The New York City skyline was forever altered and our nation's psyche was reshaped.

Our airplanes were grounded. Our sports teams were sidelined. Our financial markets closed. Our hearts remained heavy.

On the day the World Trade Center was toppled, we watched Air Force One fly around the country in an effort to keep the president out of harm's way. The White House, some believed, was no longer a safe house.We watched men and women jump 80 stories out of a teetering skyscraper, engulfed in flames, forced to choose one horrible death over another.

An attack on the Pentagon, symbol of American might, was relegated to second-tier news status.

During the week, we mourned the loss of thousands of victims and watched our commander in chief fight back tears.

We watched and read tales of incredible bravery. We witnessed members of Congress break out spontaneously into singing "God Bless America." We displayed our flags in our offices and in front of our homes. And we saw it wave defiantly above the wreckage in Lower Manhattan.

Through it all, we yearned for swift and devastating justice.

As much as we might wish, as hard as we might pray, there is no rewind button for the horrible week that first appeared to be straight out of a Hollywood movie.

The grim legacy bestowed upon us is a new point of reference. It has given us life before and after Sept. 11, 2001.

Some have referred to the events of Tuesday morning as "a second Pearl Harbor." Others have called it "an act of war."

It was the bloodiest day on American soil since our Civil War. It was a modern-day Antietam. But there was no battle. There were no soldiers. Many of the dead were secretaries, securities traders and security guards, guilty only of reporting for a day of work.

Pearl Harbor in 1941 was on a far-off Pacific Island. This was Manhattan Island. This was the deadliest day ever to come into America's living rooms live and in color.

"It's the most god-awful wakeup call we've ever had," Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told a television interviewer.

In an instant

Before it was "ground zero," it was the World Trade Center, the twin 110-story towers on the southern tip of Manhattan Island that served as symbols of a city and our nation.

Appropriately, the Statue of Liberty, on a nearby island, stood sentry.

All was well until Tuesday morning.

That's when terrorists, wielding low-tech weapons such as knives and box cutters, were transforming American Airlines Flight 11, en route from Boston to Los Angeles, into a weapon of mass destruction.

At 8:45 a.m. in New York, just as another workday was beginning, the big Boeing 767 jet, with 92 people aboard, slammed into the North Tower, 1 World Trade Center.

Meanwhile, an identical scenario was unfolding on board a United Airlines 767, also scheduled to fly from Boston to Los Angeles.

Some 18 minutes after the first missile hit, United Flight 175, with 65 people aboard, smacked into the South Tower, 2 World Trade Center.

The South Tower collapsed first, then the North. By 10:30 a.m. there was only rubble.

"The number of casualties will be more than any of us can bear," New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said.

"If people don't believe in the devil, they can believe in him now," the Rev. George Rutler would tell the New York Daily News, pausing for only a moment before returning to giving last rites to dozens of victims.

But the rain of planes from the sky was not limited to New York.

At 9:43 a.m. in Washington, an American Airlines Boeing 757, headed from Dulles Airport to Los Angeles, with 64 people aboard, crashed into the Pentagon.

Some 17 minutes later, a United Airlines Boeing 757 scheduled to fly from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco, carrying 45 people, crashed into a field about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

It wasn't long before stories began emerging that passengers on the planes had been able to use cellphones and air phones to make haunting and chilling calls to authorities and loved ones in their final minutes.

Only God knows – and maybe the black boxes will help reveal – what kind of heroic acts took place at 30,000 feet.

One of the flight attendants on American Flight 11 called her airline's flight operations center in Dallas-Fort Worth with details of the hijacking before her plane hit the World Trade Center.

On American Flight 77, Barbara Olson, wife of the solicitor general of the United States, locked herself in a lavatory and speed-dialed her husband before her plane crashed into the Pentagon.

Calling home

"Mom, this is Mark Bingham," is how a passenger on the United flight from Newark to San Francisco began his final phone call home.

Mr. Bingham told his mother, Alice Hoglan, that three men had taken control of the plane.

"I told him I loved him, and it went dead," said Ms. Hoglan, who lives in Sacramento, Calif.

Putting others first

In New York, they call their police the "finest" and their firefighters the "bravest." There are 11,500 members of New York's bravest.

While the men and women who worked at the World Trade Center scrambled to get out of the fiery, crumbling towers, firefighters and rescue workers were headed in the opposite direction.

Between 200 and 300 New York City firefighters still could not be accounted for by week's end.

"You kind of lose touch with what can happen to yourself in situations like that," said fireman John Chaney, who works out of Station 19 in East Dallas and wasn't surprised to watch his fellow firefighters charge into action. "I doubt anyone up there ever thought of death."

The Rev. Mychal Judge, a Fire Department chaplain, was giving last rites to a fireman killed by a woman who had jumped from one of the towers. The priest was killed by a large piece of debris from one of the towers.

Against such a backdrop how could Paul Tagliabue, who works less than five miles from the rubble, have allowed his NFL games to go on?

And so for the first time in its history, the NFL has reacted to real-world events and canceled its games on Sunday. There has been no baseball played since Monday night.

The last time baseball put off playing so many games was 1918 when the season was cut short by almost a month because of World War I.

There is no professional golf or college football this weekend. And the gentlemen shut down their engines on the nation's auto racing tracks.

Across America, some airports reopened and then closed again. The search for the guilty continues. Friday was declared a national day of prayer and remembrance.

In New York, week-ending rains began to alleviate the one thing that television hasn't been able to convey. The smell of tragedy.

"It's been pungent and burns and smells like nothing you can imagine," said John Solberg, a Fort Worth native who lives in Brooklyn Heights, less than two miles from where until Tuesday the World Trade Center stood.

"It makes you cry, it makes you sick to your stomach, it makes you angry."