A Look Back

Where was I on September 11th? I was at work sitting at my desk. One of my co-workers who sat behind me about 4 desks away was coming back from the direction of the break room. She stopped by my desk and said that a plane just flew into one of the World Trade Center Towers. She is a jokester anyway so I just looked at her and said, "year right!" I just knew it was one of her jokes. She said she was not joking and she repeated her statement again. I looked at her and told her that could not possibly happen. She repeated it to me again and said she was serious and to come with her. She was the first one to know in our office what had happened. I was the second.

I followed her to the breakroom and sure enough, the first plane had just flown into the tower. I alerted others in the office and people began to stream one by one into the break area. We all watched as the 2nd plane flew into the 2nd tower. We were all stunned and needless to say, we were all glued to the tv for the rest of the day. Work was hard to do. Almost pointless but we tried as we all found various news cites like CNN or Fox on our work computers to keep up with the news.

I called my mother and told her to turn on the tv. She did not know. It was a day full of disbelief. Disbelief that went on for days and into weeks.

Something else I recall was the on one of the evening news shows the media interviewed the employees of the rental car company that rented them the cars that took them to the airport. The man said that all seemed okay with them, nothing out of the ordinary. They were insured with ______________________. That blank is who I worked for at the time. I picked up on that and I listened for the name again on other news reports. That was the ONLY time I heard that name. All other reports that showed this interview was cut right before the employee made that statement. I am sure our homeoffice marketing department had that squashed and rightly so.

We lost an entire office of people who worked in the World Trade Center.

I was curious to see if the news report was true. Did we insure the hijackers? They would have appeared perfectly normal to all to pull this off. I wrote down all their names from the news and when I went to work the next day I looked in our Florida database. They were all there. We had insured all their cars and their homes in Florida.

I asked others if they had heard our company name on any news reports and noone else had caught that detail. I showed a few others that we had indeed insured them. Well I guess that set off some flags somewhere. Next thing I know the main office manager called me into the office and told me to NOT go anymore into those files or look up anything else on the hijackers. The authorities were looking into everything and my tracks needed to be out of their files.

You did not have to tell me twice. I wanted not affiliation with them and surely did not want whoever....FBI, CIA affiliating me with them. It was a most curious thing.

Each year I pay homage to all the victims who died that fateful day. Last night watching all the tribute shows brought that day at work back to me like it happened yesterday. The price of freedom surely is not free!