Life and Times in SoCal

9/11 — Twenty-Five Years Later

It hardly seems possible that twenty-five years have passed since September 11th, 2001. There are certain days in our lives that gradually disappear into the fog of memory, while others remain remarkably clear. We remember where we were, who we were with and what we were doing when something happened that changed the world around us. September 11th is one of those days for me, although my memories of it are perhaps a little more personal than they might otherwise have been.

I was working in Corby, Northamptonshire, and it was around two o’clock in the afternoon when news began to reach us that an aircraft had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. At first, like millions of people around the world, we tried to understand what we were seeing. An aircraft hitting a skyscraper was almost unimaginable, so the natural assumption was that it must have been some terrible accident. Then the second aircraft hit, and in that moment any possibility of an accident disappeared. Something extraordinary and terrifying was happening in America.

For me, however, there was another reason why the news suddenly became very personal. My parents were flying to New York that very day. At the same time that my colleagues and I were watching events unfold on television, my mum and dad were somewhere over the Atlantic, heading towards the eastern seaboard of the United States.

I had no idea where they were.

It is perhaps difficult today to remember just how different communications were in 2001. There were no smartphones allowing us to follow the progress of an aircraft across the Atlantic. There was no WhatsApp message saying, “We’re fine.” There wasn't an airline app sitting in your pocket giving you an updated arrival time and showing you exactly where an aircraft was. Chris and I simply knew that our parents had left for New York, that the United States was under attack and that American airspace was being closed.

Then we heard nothing.

Their aircraft, like many others crossing the Atlantic that morning, had been prevented from continuing into the United States and diverted to Newfoundland, Canada. They eventually landed at Stephenville, a small town on the western side of the island. The passengers were kept aboard the aircraft for hours before eventually being allowed to disembark and were later given temporary accommodation in a dormitory at the local college.

The problem was that Chris and I knew none of this.

For approximately thirty-six hours we had no contact with them. We didn't know where their aircraft had landed. We didn't know where they had been taken and, most importantly, we didn't know whether they were safe. Thirty-six hours is not particularly long in the normal course of life, but when you are watching aircraft being deliberately flown into buildings and you know that your parents are somewhere in the middle of a suddenly closed North American airspace, thirty-six hours feels considerably longer.

Eventually, the call came. They were safe. They were in Newfoundland. I cannot remember every telephone conversation I have had over the past twenty-five years, but I certainly remember the enormous sense of relief that came with knowing where they were.

My parents' story, thankfully, had a happy ending. For almost 3,000 other families, September 11th did not.

That is something I think becomes increasingly important to remember as the years pass, because history has a habit of turning people into numbers. We talk about 2,977 victims, four aircraft, two towers and one terrible morning. They are important numbers, but nobody who died on September 11th was a statistic. They were somebody's husband or wife, mum or dad, son or daughter. They were friends and colleagues. They were people who got out of bed that morning expecting an entirely ordinary Tuesday. They had meetings to attend, telephone calls to make, children to collect, dinner plans and weekends ahead of them.

They simply never came home.

Then there were those who, when confronted with something almost unimaginable, ran towards it rather than away from it. Firefighters climbed the staircases of the World Trade Center while thousands of people were desperately trying to come down. Police officers, paramedics and ordinary New Yorkers helped complete strangers. On United Flight 93, passengers who began to understand what was happening made the extraordinary decision to fight back, knowing full well what that decision might cost them.

There is something about that which has stayed with me for twenty-five years. At our worst, human beings are capable of terrible things. At our best, we run up the stairs.

My parents' experience in Newfoundland showed another, quieter version of the same human instinct. When American airspace closed, thousands of passengers who had expected to land in cities across the United States suddenly found themselves arriving in small communities across Atlantic Canada. They hadn't booked hotels, nobody had prepared for their arrival and nobody really knew how long they would be staying. They simply appeared.

And the people there looked after them.

Schools, colleges and community buildings became temporary accommodation. Food was provided, beds were found and complete strangers did whatever they could to make frightened and confused travelers comfortable. My mum and dad were two of those travelers, suddenly finding themselves in Stephenville instead of New York and dependent upon the kindness of people they had never met.

I have always found something rather wonderful about that. On a day that demonstrated just how cruel a handful of human beings could be, thousands of others quietly demonstrated exactly the opposite.

For my generation, I think there will always be a world before September 11th and a world after it. Before that day, flying seemed a much more casual affair. Airport security was something you passed through rather than something you thought very much about. Families could accompany passengers much further into airports, cockpit security was very different and nobody had yet become accustomed to removing shoes, separating liquids or navigating the security procedures that are now simply part of international travel.

The world before September 11th wasn't necessarily safer. We just felt that it was.

Much happened in the years that followed. There were wars, political arguments, investigations and enormous changes to national security. New buildings eventually rose where the World Trade Center had stood. Children grew up, families moved on and another generation was born. Life, as it always does, continued.

And now a quarter of a century has passed.

Perhaps the strangest thing about the 25th anniversary is realizing that there are now millions of adults who have no personal memory of September 11th at all. To them it is history, something learned about through photographs, documentaries, books and stories from their parents. That is inevitable, of course, but it also means that those of us who do remember the day have a responsibility to keep the human stories alive.

Not necessarily the politics. Not endlessly replaying the horror. Simply remembering the people.

I remember sitting in Corby that afternoon watching events unfold thousands of miles away. I remember the realization that my parents were somewhere over the Atlantic heading directly towards the country that was under attack. I remember Chris and me waiting for news and the long period when we had absolutely no idea where they were. And I remember the tremendous relief of eventually discovering that they were safe in a small town in Newfoundland that, before September 11th, I had probably never given a moment's thought to.

Twenty-five years later, that is perhaps what September 11th means to me more than anything else. I remember the terrible images that the entire world saw, and I remember the thousands of lives that ended that morning. But I also remember the firefighters climbing those stairs, the passengers of Flight 93, the ordinary people helping strangers in New York and the communities hundreds of miles away opening their doors to people like my parents.

September 11th showed us humanity at its absolute worst, but it also showed us humanity at its very best.

Twenty-five years later, both are worth remembering.

And the people who never came home should never be forgotten.

RIP