Part I of a three-part series about my memories of and connection to 9/11.

Terrorists unleashed an astonishing air assault on America’s military and financial centers yesterday morning, hijacking four commercial jets and then crashing them into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania countryside.

This was the opening paragraph in the Washington Post’s first article about 9/11. Thirty-seven words, but the one seared into my memory is the fourth word: “astonishing.” Wasn’t that a synonym for “amazement,” “breathtaking,” “spectacular,” “stunning,” etc. — all words I associated with art and beauty? I remember looking up the definition: “To fill with sudden and overpowering surprise or wonder; amaze.” However, synonyms included, “confound,” “overwhelm,” and “stupefy.”

Yes, perhaps I was astonished after all.

The morning of 9/11, I was in Orlando, FL — 865 miles from my home working on my laptop in a conference room of my largest client. Shortly after 9 a.m., a colleague came in and said, “I just heard the strangest thing on my car radio . . . that a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. Are you getting anything on your laptop?” I looked back at my laptop and everything was frozen. I quickly walked to a cafe in the building that had a television . . . it wasn’t working. I then went next door to City Hall and asked a guard if he knew anything about a plane crash at the World Trade Center. He pointed down the hall to a large group of people standing in a doorway. I walked down and joined the crowd which was riveted to a small television in a very small office. The first image I saw was a replay of the second plane hitting the second tower. Astonished, I said aloud, “How can they fly such big planes by remote control?”

“It was deliberate. There are people on those planes,” someone said.

“What?” I replied, “You mean they crashed with the passengers still inside?”

“Yes.”

“So everyone is dead?”

“Yep, plus people in the Towers.”

I walked back to the conference room I was using and learned that my client was closing for the day. The CEO said to me, “This is our Pearl Harbor. We need to prepare.”

Back at my hotel, I had no idea how I was going to get home. All airports were closed. I called my car rental agency and no cars were available. I spent the rest of the day in my hotel room watching the 24/7 coverage. A third plane had crashed into the Pentagon. A fourth in a field in Pennsylvania. The Towers had collapsed. I was unnerved. Frightened. Astonished.

The next day, the car agency called and told me that a car might be available, and the sooner I could get to the agency, the better my chances of claiming it. Another colleague drove me to the agency and when I got there, I learned that the only vehicle available was a 12-passenger SUV. Did I want it? Just as I was about to pay for it, I learned that a red Mustang convertible had become available.

I drove 280 miles on Rt. 95 without stopping until I got near Savannah, GA and spent the night at a Holiday Inn. The next morning, I was the only customer in an IHOP until I was joined by a businessman driving to New York City from Miami. He didn’t want to eat breakfast alone. Neither did I.

I stopped only once for gas as I drove the remaining 580+ miles back to my home. When I got to the outskirts of Washington, DC, I could see smoke still rising from the Pentagon. I walked into my home less than 24 hours after I left Orlando, now not feeling frightened as much as I was feeling angry. I kept hearing, “There are people on those planes. There are people on those planes. There are people on those planes.”

The title of Lance Morrow’s Time magazine column immediately following 9/11 was, “The Case of Rage and Retribution.” It opens:

For once, let’s have no “GRIEF COUNSELORS” standing by with banal consolations, as if the purpose, in the midst of all this, were merely to make everyone feel better as quickly as possible. We shouldn’t feel better.

For once, let’s have no fatuous rhetoric about “healing.” Healing is inappropriate now, and dangerous. There will be a time later for tears of sorrow.

A day cannot live in infamy without the nourishment of rage. Let’s have rage.

Yes, I thought, let’s have rage.

TOMORROW: 9/11 –25 Years Later, Part II

United with Flight 93