Five years ago this morning I was in a hotel room in Minneapolis, getting dressed. I flipped on the TV and saw smoke streaming from a skyscraper. Nobody knew yet what it meant.
My plan had been to meet a colleague in the lobby and walk over to our meeting. Everybody in the lobby area was watching the big-screen TV in the bar. It’s there that I saw the second plane hit.
There was nothing to do but go to the meeting. Not much got accomplished and we all spent much of the day in my hosts’ conference room watching a projected image of CNN. Much later I visited the same room and found a big painting of a firefighter hanging near where I had stood that day.
My wife and I had just moved to Palo Alto, California for a sabbatical year. The attacks affected folks in Palo Alto and Princeton quite differently. In Palo Alto, it happened during breakfast. Families were together; many learned of the attacks by phone from East Coast friends and relatives, and spent the morning watching together. In Princeton, adults were at work and kids at school; most kids learned of the attacks from parents who had had a few hours to think about what to say. In Princeton, the horrible question was: Who do we know who works There? Many people commute from Princeton to New York. The social network buzzed. Exactly where does M work? Exactly which train does he ride?
We didn’t lose any close friends, but at least two people I knew died. Later, reading the 9/11 report, I learned that one of them had been killed horribly by the hijackers to intimidate the other passengers. Several people we know were scarred. One man, who had been staying in a hotel across the street from the Trade Center, was haunted by images of falling bodies. A new doctor who had emergency duty at a Lower Manhattan hospital sent an email that I wish you could read.
As for myself, I was stuck in Minneapolis. As the week went on with no definite date of departure, we extended our meetings, trying to put our time to use. The hotel quickly emptied, as cancellations flooded in and those who could get home bolted. The few remaining guests bonded with the staff. One morning in the coffee shop, I was the only customer. The waitress sat down at my table and we had a long talk about what it all meant. I visit that hotel occasionally, and it still feels different to me than every other hotel in the world.
Eventually the airports reopened and I was on one of the first flights out of Minneapolis. The security screeners were jittery and ultra-vigilant, but also polite. I was disconcerted to note that nobody ever checked my ID that morning. When I mentioned this to the flight attendant, she quietly told me not to bring it up again.
I was happy to be at home and looked forward to some quiet time. Little did I know that I was about to be called to Washington for the final settlement talks in the Microsoft antitrust case. A month working in a DOJ building, in immediate post-9/11, post-anthrax Washington, is an experience not soon forgotten. Perhaps I’ll write about that next year.
