Salt Lake City

As you already know – if you’ve read my earliest posts – I travel frequently. As I write, I am on a United Airlines Boeing 737-300 headed for Salt Lake City, Utah. I go there with some hesitation in my heart. It’s purely psychological, as nothing happened to me there, and nothing happened there to anyone else to make me wary.

I had just gotten out of the shower in my room at the Little America Hotel. I had used the hotel’s alarm clock to wake up, and I left the radio on while I went about my morning preparations. As I toweled off, I heard one of the on-air personalities interrupt the others by saying something to the effect of, “I know this sounds crazy, but I just read on the news wire that one of the towers of the World Trade Center is on fire.” The day was September 11, 2001. The reactions to the comment were of incredulity. “Yeah. Apparently a plane crashed into one of the buildings.”

I immediately turned on the television, for some reason thinking that a hapless, wayward single-engine Cessna’s pilot had experienced the worst day of his life and had made a fatal mistake in the sky above Manhattan. I vowed to flip through the channels until I came to the first images of the scene. I wound up on the local CBS affiliate, slaved over to the network, and the image I saw was of both towers with thick, black smoke pouring out of them. By about two minutes I had missed the live shot of the second plane coming in. Of course, just as everybody else in the world, save for a sinister few, I had no idea what was going on. I saw a huge, gaping hole roughly the size and shape of a large airplane in the tower nearer the camera, and I thought to myself, “That was no Cessna…". And then they replayed what had happened only moments earlier: the second plane. I said aloud to the otherwise empty room, “That was no accident!” In the back of my head I had this faint hope that some navigational system had gone horribly haywire, but my logic, flawed as it may be at times, said that was impossible.

Within minutes I heard the unconfirmed report of four airliners – two from United Air Lines and two from American Air Lines – that were unaccounted for. And the even shakier rumor that there had been some hijackings. And then there was a report of a “bomb” exploding at the Pentagon.

“We’re under attack,” I muttered aloud. With a sick feeling in my stomach, I sat at the desk, fired up the laptop and sent e-mail to my wife. I couldn’t think clearly enough to know what time it was in Chicago at that moment, nor could I know if she was watching the events unfold on TV. All I know is that I didn’t want her to be in her downtown Chicago office tower where she worked at that time. I remember writing something to the effect of, “I may be overreacting, but I don’t think you should be downtown today. I know the Sears tower is a couple miles away from you, but if it’s a target it’s too close. Please go home where you’ll be safest.” (By noon, Chicago time, the downtown area was all but deserted, on the strong recommendation of Mayor Daley.) It was another full hour or so before I heard the word, “attack,” used by any reporter, interviewee or hired expert at CBS.

My co-worker and frequent travel partner was in the room across the hall from mine. I called him on the phone and asked, “Are you watching TV or listening to the radio right now?”

“No.”

“Turn on the TV and find any news program.”

“Why? What’s happening?”

“If I told you,” I said, “you wouldn’t believe me.”

Half an hour later he knocked on my door. When I opened it, the look on his face told me that he had done what I told him to do. We headed down to the hotel restaurant for a breakfast I certainly didn’t feel I could eat. We rode the elevator down to the first floor and walked to the restaurant, a trip of about four minutes. Where the hostess normally guided us past the bar and into the dining room, on this morning she took us straight into the bar where there was a television set in every corner, each tuned to a different network. I walked in to the bar and saw the same expression on every face. I looked at the nearest TV and saw nothing but clouds of smoke.

“Now what happened?” I asked to no one in particular.

Someone said, “One of the towers collapsed.”

I don’t remember what I said, or if I said anything. All I remember is that my knees buckled and I dropped to the floor. I kneeled in the middle of that bar for about a minute with my hands covering my mouth. As no one else in the country could at that moment, neither could I believe my eyes. And it seems in that moment I desensitized. Yes it was all horrible, and I was sad and angry at the same time, but I knew in that moment there was nothing I could do but watch as history unfurled in a dazzling electronic display before my eyes. When the second tower fell I simply said to my co-worker, “There goes the other one.” Inside I was screaming, but no emotion showed from me.

We walked the half-mile from the Little America hotel to the Salt Palace convention Center. Our stage had been up for a couple of days already with one general session already under our belt. When we walked backstage there were heated discussions about canceling the rest of the convention. We set ourselves up as an information center, projecting onto the huge 9x12 screens the convention center’s CNN cable feed. The reactions varied from people crying as they watched, to people making angry, anti-Muslim comments or threats, because by that time the general consensus among the expert analysts was that this was an al-Qaida operation.

Also by that time, the FAA had ordered closed all airports nationwide, so our client decided that, since everybody was essentially stuck in Salt Lake City, they might as well put the convention on, if not as planned, then slightly altered so as not to focus so much on fun, but rather patriotism.

In the vast hallways of the convention center there were TVs set up every fifty yards or so, and every one of them had a crowd of people in front of it. It was mesmerizing: even while looking at the images of the rubble and carnage of the fallen towers, no one could get his head around the reality that they were gone. They were really gone. I stood toward the end of the convention center farthest from our session hall, staring, just like everyone else, at a TV monitor. There was a woman beside me. I don’t know if she was with our client or not. Then, between us from behind stepped up a short Asian or Filipina woman who, judging by her uniform, must have been a convention center employee. And she must have been working alone deep in the bowels of the convention center because she stared at the TV with us for a few moments, and then asked the two of us, “What happened?”

I looked at the other woman beside me as she looked at me. If the look on my face showed only half as much shock as hers did, then I would be surprised. The first thing on my mind to say was, “Where the hell have you been all morning?” But I didn’t say that. I just told her that there had been terrorist attacks in Washington and New York City, where planes had been hijacked and crashed into the buildings.

The poor woman’s eyes nearly fell out of her head and her hands came up to her mouth. “Oh my god!” she gasped. “My husband works there!” And then she turned and ran away through the crowds of people. To this day I have no idea which “there” her husband worked in. The other woman and I looked at each other in horror, for we had just casually tossed out the facts, but we had brought this woman’s world crashing down around her. Of course, we had no way of knowing, but I still have that awful feeling of responsibility for, at the very least, frightening her nearly to death.

A couple of hours later my wife called me on my cell phone. I had not heard of anything bad happening in Chicago, so I was confident that she was okay. Nevertheless, when I heard her voice and knew she was safe, I couldn’t contain my emotions. I ran outside with the phone to my ear, both to get good reception and so that as few people as possible would see me blubbering on the phone! But blubber I did, and I don’t know why. I can only guess that it was being freed to release my emotions to someone close to me, as well as the relief that she was indeed home and safe. It took me a while to compose myself.

The convention continued, but it was a very somber, subdued event. But the number one concern on our minds, after wondering how many people might have died in the attacks, was how we were going to get home. There was no sign that the FAA would be opening the airports soon. Local news reports and people who were trying to get home were saying that all of the rental cars were gone from the city. However, the owner of our company saw an angle. All rental cars were gone, yet all airports were closed. All major airports have car rental offices on or very near their properties, and he knew for a fact that the Salt Lake City airport had them ON the property. He had one of the crew drive him to the airport where he was stopped by security. He told them that he had flown out of Salt Lake City a few days earlier and had just made it back to town, and now he needed to get his car out of the parking garage. The guard let him pass. He promptly went to his favorite rental agency and rented the two biggest vehicles they had available: a Ford Excursion and a Ford Expedition.

The next morning fifteen of us in two large vehicles set out from Salt Lake City for Chicago. For the most part the two days on the road were somber ones, listening to the radio reports from the World Trade Center and by the many “experts” who had a point to make. There were a few laughs, a few jokes to help lighten the mood, but it was one of those times when, though it felt good to laugh, it was a laugh laced with guilt, and with dreadful wonder about what the future must now hold for our nation.

And now, a hair past four full years since that awful day, I’ve returned. She’s a beautiful city, best bedecked in sunshine or a blanket of snow, or both. But there are certain corners of the convention center, certain views down a street or of a unique architectural structure that trigger memories of that sad, sad day. It is my hope that this stay in Salt Lake City will erase the bad memories I have of her that are not even her fault.


dassall