My 9/11 Memory

I was so excited to be working in the USA, I had been with Orange since March 2000 and my boss had asked me if I wanted to work in the Boston office for a few weeks to help the recently acquired US team to integrate into the British team I was considered the most social etc. I accepted thinking I'd be there a month and how exciting that was. I was there most of August 2000 and it was then decided I should be based there a few more months so in November 2000 I packed up all my belongings, some went into storage and off I headed to Boston in BA Business class (another thrill for me).  It was SO cold; I remember thinking it was a lot colder than I had experienced in the Northeast of England and the snow on some days was up to my waist, but it was exciting. I stayed in a hotel a few days until my apartment was ready, a cute little studio apartment in a brownstone apartment in Boston's South End, a mix of upwardly mobile gays, yuppies and doctors from the nearby Mass General. I loved it, slowly made friends and the office expanded. By September 11th, 2001, we were well established in an office on Brookline Avenue near Fenway Park, and it was a lovely walk from my apartment on East Newton Street. I got to my desk at 830am and said hello to the few colleagues in that morning, my boss, Rich, was flying to San Francisco that morning at 830 am on a United flight.  I sipped my coffee and probably ate a donut or pastry as my waistline was less of an issue at that age.  My colleague shouted at me to turn on the news, I did, it had been reported a plane had hit the WTC which seemed odd as I remember they were so big, how could anyone hit them by accident. I had been there in July 2000 and went to the roof. They were the largest buildings I had ever seen in my life, solid, iconic, amazing; so I watched the news and the morning's horror unfolded. Friends in London started to message me on AOL (remember that!!??) to ask if I had seen it all. I stayed in the office, horrified and scared, until the towers collapsed then I walked back to my apartment.  The contrast with the horror in New York and the beautiful September day, it was in the mid-sixties, sunny the kind of day you'd want to be off and sitting in the park with your friends. The biggest nightmare for me that day was Rich, on a flight, a United flight who should now be somewhere across the mid-west despite the creeping fear that the Boston flight that was hijacked was his. I was amazed at my lack of panic. I went through my notes and the bookings, I tried to ignore the gossip and rumours on the news and the idiot colleagues who were screaming at me to change their flights so they could get home. By that time the skies above the USA had been closed, everything had been grounded and anything that hadn't was possibly hijacked and a valid military target, a horrible thing to consider.  Around 11am Rich called me to say his flight had landed in Des Moines and was going to drive home to Boston with 3 fellow passengers, each taking turns on the 1000+ miles journey; Rich asked me to stay online or contactable until he was nearly home (in case they got lost which is ironic as I am British and know little of the mid-west).  They made it home in the early hours of September 12th and we were back in work on the morning of September 12th. The world had changed but work hadn't. America felt like a different place after 911, it was angry, raging, paranoid, and it was not the country I had looked forward to living in.  I didn't lose anyone that day, no one I know was harmed, friends of friends and contacts were caught up in it (Some American Airlines staff sadly) and some Tech people who were friends of my colleagues who were on the Boston to LA flight that was hijacked. We were relatively lucky. I was able to witness from a safe distance one of the worst days since WW2 and have sadly witnessed the carnage of revenge brought down on Iraq and Afghanistan ever since. I remained in the USA until June 2002 and despite 911 I loved every moment of it, made amazing friends and saw as much of the country as I could I have not stopped going back, even spending my 50th there but the USA is no longer the country it was on 10 September 2000, it may never be that way again.

 September 10, 2020