By Frank J. Diekmann
It was the morning of September 11, just after 9 a.m. I was standing off-stage and to the right of the audience at a meeting our company was hosting in Miami Beach, Fla. at which I was also the moderator, when someone approached me and said, “Did you hear about the airplane that crashed into the World Trade Center?”
To be honest, it sounded like the way a joke would begin. “No, seriously,” the other person told me before I could even reply. “A plane crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.”
At that moment it simply sounded like an incredible but unfortunate accident; there were no details that it was a commercial aircraft or around how many people were involved. Besides, the whole idea that there was something bigger going on was unimaginable and limited to the plots of far-fetched action movies and Tom Clancy novels.
So, I continued to stand there as the opening conference keynoter moved through her warm-up jokes and began her presentation, while the audience was still settling into what everyone assumed would be an informative but otherwise uneventful day full of speakers and Q&As and a buffet lunch. Not to mention some laughs and new contacts and who knew what else. Who knew?
With her presentation underway and the AV working, I exited into a hallway and heading to the hotel lobby, where I encountered the first sign this day was going to play out far differently than any of us in that hotel that morning had envisioned.
As I approached the lobby I could see a small crowd had already gathered around a television that was tuned to CNN. The second sign something unusual was taking place? The group glued to the TV included hotel employees who had stepped out from behind the front desk while bellman paused their luggage carts and stood next to the guests.
That’s when I learned that not one but two jets had struck, hitting each of the world-famous twin towers. People had stopped what they were doing and were watching in silence, whispering to themselves and each other and drawing looks of confusion from those who were entering through the hotel’s front door and confronting the kinds of facial expressions you can’t explain but you know just seem to say something isn’t right. Making it even odder was that cab drivers were following their fares in the door and joining the stunned viewers.
Planes are Grounded
I watched for a while longer when my cellphone rang. It was my sister, who was working as a travel agent at the time. She knew I travelled frequently and wanted to know where I was, informing me the federal government had just ordered all aircraft grounded immediately, something extraordinary that had never happened before. CNN soon announced the same unprecedented news that all flights were to land at the nearest airport. That included more than three-dozen transatlantic flights headed to the U.S. from Europe that would eventually touch down at Gander International Airport in Newfoundland. (The town of Gander, with fewer than 10,000 residents at the time, would touch many hearts when it played host to more than 6,600 stranded passengers and crew members.)
Like everyone else that morning, I watched the devastation as it played out on TV–some have said the World Trade Center attack was the most photographed event in history–before I began to walk back to the meeting room where the speaker was still giving her presentation. As I stepped inside I could just feel a small buzz in the room that something was going on.
A Changing World
A few attendees were already getting up and leaving. But the majority of attendees remained unaware of how their world was changing that day. In 2001 most people were still not carrying the now ubiquitous devices we all have in our pockets and purses. The bleeding edge folks at the time had a Blackberry. This was five years before the iPhone, and if you were carrying a phone that’s just what it was used for—making phone calls, not delivering updated news 24/7. I have no doubt some of those present were alerted thanks to a beeper on their belt.
I’ll admit I wasn’t quite sure how to proceed and I hesitated to interrupt the speaker. That’s when I noticed near the front of the room a woman was bent over in her seat with a phone pressed to her ear, and when she put it down I could see she was crying. (I would learn later she lived in northern New Jersey, not far from New York City.) I decided I needed to make an announcement.
I will never forget the look of the speaker as I stepped on stage and approached the podium; her remarks trailing off as she stared at me with a bewildered look as if to ask, “What in the world are you doing? I have 20 minutes left!”
Making an Announcement
I apologized to her, and then announced what little I knew at that point; that two airplanes had struck the twin towers in New York and news reports were saying it was terrorism. I also announced that all air flights had been cancelled and that we would be pausing the meeting to allow attendees to begin investigating how they might best get home.
What I won’t ever forget was the silence in the room that followed my announcement before one man’s lone voice called out from the quiet of the darkened ballroom, “Are you serious?”
More serious than anyone knew at that moment.
The word “surreal” is over-used, but it couldn’t have been more appropriate than on Sept. 11, 2001. There was this sudden, seemingly irrational reality that conflicted with the other reality in everyone’s minds, the thoughts for how the day would proceed, the plans for dinner along Miami Beach, and then a trip home as scheduled.
Busy Signals
It may seem odd in retrospect, but events were surreal enough that we actually had to debate for a few moments over whether the meeting would actually continue.
I was fortunate. I lived in Florida and had driven to the meeting. I spent that afternoon trying to help others as they scrambled to deal with all the uncertainty, including about how and when they would get home. We forget that in those early hours there were rumors and reports the whole country was under attack; people were panicked, especially those far from home and worried about their families.
Many of the attendees found themselves getting the same busy signals from airlines, and no answers at all when desperately attempting to get rental cars, as every other person in our hotel and every other hotel in Miami was making the same calls or futilely taking a taxi to the airport.
People Driving People
What I shall also never forget is one particularly inventive attendee who contacted a local credit union and, with assistance from his own CU back home, bought a Ford passenger van that had been repossessed by the Florida CU. He drove it all the way home to New Mexico, as I recall, dropping off a half-dozen other attendees along the way. The New Mexico CU then sold the van.
It was a small but wonderful people helping people story on a day when people needed the help most of all.
Frank J. Diekmann is Cooperator in Chief of CUToday.info and can be reached at Frank@CUToday.info. Mr. Diekmann is also author of a brand new book, “The Last Lyric,” a humorous satire about a murder investigation at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in which every line of dialogue is either a classic pop/rock song title or lyric. Available on Amazon, Apple iBook, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords.