9/11/2001 Memories

Kathee and I road the bus that morning. A young man on the bus was listening to the radio and received the news. He announced "a plane has hit the World Trade Tower".

That day I had an important meeting with Mel Reis. I had just been reorganized into his organization. I walked over to the NOC from 111 Washington and when I arrived on LL3, there was a large group of people congregated in the Technical Conference Room.

It was about 8:50 a.m. I went into the conference room where CNN was on a large screen.

After my meeting with Mel, I walked back to 111 Washington. My office was on the 8th floor there. At about noon there was a voluntary evacuation of 111 Washington. Turns out the FBI is also in this building.

I did not evacuate that time. I called Kathee and we agreed to keep working.

At about 2:00 I was notified that there was now a mandatory evacuation of my building. When I arrived at the skyway level of 111 Washington there were FBI agents with machine guns.

Kathee and I met up outside and walked to the bus stop and caught the early bus home.

Roger was at Camp Pendleton CA for USMC combat training, but Rachel and Nathan were at the house when we arrived home.

Roger heard the news in an unusual way. He had cut his nose (combat training) and was with a Navy Corpman getting patched up. He received the news from this man. Later in the day a battalion commander - a Captain - gave Roger's platoon the news. It was not until Sunday when he had a day off that he was able to see still pictures of the tragedy.

Our world changed that day. War came to our shores. For my Mother she experienced as she was engaged to be married on the day we were attacked at Pearl Harbor.