Remembering 9/11

It is not difficult to remember what you were doing on the morning of September 11, 2001. The following events were burnt into my heart.

In 2001, we were living in Maryland, Dan was an active duty Air Force Officer working at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). I was a campus staff with China Outreach Ministries.

For us, September 11th started on September 10. We received a call from the hospital in Andrew's Air Force Base that my pregnancy result came back, we could go to the hospital to get the result in person. Because of previous miscarriages, Dan would like to go with me to either celebrate if the result was positive, or support me if the result came back negative. However, Dan told me he couldn't go the next morning because there was a meeting scheduled in the Pentagon that he had to attend. I wanted so much for Dan to go with me, so I told him I had a meeting to go to also, I asked if he could go a bit late. He said no, that was a meeting with some important guys "up top".

So I went to the hospital alone. The nurse pointed out my name on a piece of paper and guided my eyes to the column that has the words "test result" on it. "Positive". I couldn't believe my eyes! I asked the nurse, "That means I am pregnant!" She said, "The result came back positive." I wanted to call Dan, but he would be in a meeting in the Pentagon. (We didn't have cell phone at that time.) The nurse suggested that I walked over to the medical record department and get my records, so that I can see the doctor the next day. My heart was jumping with joy, however, my joy was guarded by my previous miscarriages.

I walked over to the Medical Records counter down the hall and handed in my ID card, while they were getting my record, a male nurse walked over to the counter to talk to the female nurse who was helping me. "A plane just hit the World Trade Center." The female nurse at the counter said, "Hit the what?! People who don't know how to fly should just stay on the ground." I thought I heard it wrong, asked the male nurse again, he repeated what he said.

I was perplexed. A plane hit the World Trade Center, it must be a private jet with a new pilot, or could it be that he or she had a heart attack? I knew someone must have died from this, I just hoped the number would not be high. I went on my way to the meeting. I didn't even turn on the news while driving to the meeting, there was no reason too be too concerned about the plane that hit the World Trade Center.

When I arrive at the meeting, everyone's face was quite serious. Harriet asked me, "Have you heard about the plane that hit the Word Trade Center?" I repeated what I thought, a new pilot, maybe a heart attack. Harriet said, "It was a commercial airliner." Evelyn, my supervisor was not in the room. She entered a few minutes later, with an unbelievable news, "A second plane hits the south tower of the World Trade Center."

We were all silent, didn't quite understand what we heard. We decided that we had to pray.

Bill asked if anyone wanted to share anything. I then remembered I just received a positive result on the pregnancy test. But under such circumstance, should I share? Should I tell Dan first? I eventually shared it with my team, they were happy for me, but the circumstance prevented them from what could have been a more uplifting congratulations.

Evelyn asked me if Dan knew, I said no, and related to them why I had to go to the hospital alone. Harriet, who was in and out of the room trying to get some more news of the "accidents", came back in and said, "Another plane just hit the Pentagon!"

My heart stopped. The words she said swirled round and round before my eyes. "Another plane just hit the Pentagon....another plane just hit the Pentagon...." Before I knew what to say, Evelyn asked me if I knew a phone number in which I could call at the Pentagon where I can reach Dan." "No, I don't know whom he is meeting with."

"Go home, Amy." They urged. I grabbed my backpack and walked out of the room.

Wanting to make sure what I heard, I tuned into all the radio stations I could find when driving home. All of them confirmed the fact that a commercial airplane crashed into the Pentagon. Thinking about the worse, I was holding back tears. What should I tell the child that I was carrying? Should I say your father was killed on the day I found out that he/she existed?

I didn't remember how I got home. When I was driving down the road to our house in a off-base military housing area, I found it strangely quiet. No one was walking their dogs, no kids were playing outside, nobody was strolling on the bike path, it was eerily quiet.

I pulled my car in the parking spot in front of the house. Dan walked out from the back of the house, wearing his uniform still, but he was not wearing his hat (which is against the rule not to wear your hat on the outside while wearing your uniform), something were missing on his uniform also, but I didn't have the mind to figure out what was wrong with his uniform, I got off the car and gave him a hug.

"How come you are home?" I asked him. "They let us leave DIA." "DIA?! I thought you have a meeting at the Pentagon!" "Yes. But they canceled it. I didn't go to the Pentagon." When we have calmed down a bit, he asked me about the pregnancy result. That was supposed to be a sweet moment, but it was robbed by the unthinkable tragedy that was unfolding in front of our eyes. (This pregnancy also ended in a miscarriage after 12 weeks.)

Not until after we saw the damages that was done at the Pentagon did we realized how close Dan was to this attack. The area that was struck was very near to the DIA center in the Pentagon, seven DIA employees died in the attack. "I could see thick black smoke coming out from the Pentagon from the windows in my office, they evacuated us right away. (DIA is located just across the Potomac river from the Pentagon.) All officers were told to take off their hats and the ranks on our shoulders. They didn't know what was going on, but was sure it was some sort of attack. They didn't know what other forms of terrorism were out there. They didn't want the officers to be targets." Then I realized what was wrong with his uniform when I first saw him, the ranks were missing.


The explosion of the airplane penetrated 4 of the 5 rings of the newly renovated, super reinforced walls of the Pentagon. (Dan told me about the construction of the Pentagon, since he went there for meetings once in a while.)

While we were talking, our next door neighbour came out of the door with her 2 year old son. "Mike is in the Pentagon, I couldn't reach him, all phone lines were dead." It then stuck me like a ton of bricks. All of our neighbours are military personnel, many of them work in various departments of the Pentagon!

We went into our neighbours' house, we were glued to the TV while our neighbour was glued to the phone, that was her only "lifeline", but she simply couldn't get through. We saw the horrific scene of the twin towers collapsed, over and over the TV flashed the image. They almost look like Hollywood production. Then another plane crashed in Shanksville, PA.

For hours, no news from Mike. At 5:00pm, our neighbour came over and said, "Mike called, he is OK, but he can't come home tonight, everything is at a standstill. He will sleep somewhere tonight."

The following week, we received news that 2 of our neighbours didn't come home, they went missing, efforts to locate them failed. Two weeks afterwards, they identified their bodies.

The world is never the same after 9/11. Good and evil are at war. However, there is a debate on who is good and who is evil. Terrorists have a new name - Freedom Fighters. Those who were killed in the attacks are infidels. Over the years, numerous conspiracy theories about the attacks of 9/11, pointing fingers at the U.S. government as the conductor of what had happened on that fateful day. I visited those sites, all I can say is that they are basically at the same level of those who said the Americans never landed on the moon. Six years later, Osama bin Laden called for the western world to abandon capitalism and democracy, to embrace Islam.

I think of the "Freedom Fighters" who believed they were going to heaven when they took on this mission to destroy America. If they only knew where they were going. They knew the truth in the morning of September 11, 2001 when the planes they flew crashed. Standing in front of the God that did not worship, what did they have to say?


Forty slate angels grace the memorial site - each marked with the name of one of the forty heroes of Flight 93. A nearby angel plaque reads:

"Few can begin to understand what drives
men to such acts of desperation.
But the World must now know
the resolve of this great nation is both
unshakable and unstoppable.

This ordinary Americans took
extraordinary steps to help their
fellow Americans and by doing so
gave the greatest sacrifice.

And so these Angels of Freedom stand
not as a memorial to those who died,
But rather as a celebration of their lives
for which we will be forever in their debt.

God Bless the Families and Friends of the
True Heroes of September 11, 2001."