Well said, Harry. I was at work, building furniture for Cessna Citation X bizjets when we heard on the radio about the first plane. The entire shop of 250 employees went silent, except for several radios playing the same broadcast. We all sat in shock as they reported the second plane hitting. Up until that point, we thought it was just a bad accident. Then my cell phone rang, and Sunshine was calling me. She was hysterical because her son, Stephen, was in the Navy at the time, and all I could get our of her was that he was going to the Pentagon. I thought she meant he was already there on duty. I told her to come home, and I'd be right there. The company I worked for told anyone who wanted to go home to be with their families. On my way home, I heard about the third plane that hit the Pentagon and I freaked out thinking Stephen was there. I remember watching a long line of every type of aircraft imaginable circling Wichita as I left town, all waiting to land after the order was given to ground all aircraft. After I got home, I found out that Vickie (Sunshine) wasn't saying Stephen was at the Pentagon, only that she thought he'd be sent there. He was actually able to call us that night from his ship to let us know he was ok. We didn't think we'd hear from him for a long time, due to his security clearance with the Navy. We figured he'd be deep at sea until things got sorted out. Sunshine wasn't able to leave work, and had to suffer all day with no one to comfort her. My dad came over with my sister-in-law (the one from Viet Nam), and we sat and watched the reports throughout the morning, afternoon, and into the evening in silence. Thu Oahn had called my dad, terrified because she had only been in the country a couple of years and didn't understand enough English yet to know what was going on. All she knew was that CNN kept putting up the words, "America Under Attack", and thought that we had been invaded.
My company, being in the aircraft industry, suffered quite a bit in the aftermath. They ended up laying off about 40% of the workforce. I was spared my job. By the time I left 2 years later, they had rehired about half of those that were laid off. Wichita and Seattle were among the hardest hit in the nation, economically, due to Boeing's plants in those cities. However, Wichita also has Cessna, Bombardier (Lear Jet), Raytheon (Beech), and several hundred other support companies that supplied materials and parts to them. Total number of jobs lost in Wichita between September and January that year was 40,000. That's 10% of the entire Sedgwick County population. Many more lost their jobs in the next 6 months after that.
Shortly after I got home that day, I hung my American flag on the front porch. It stayed there day and night (illuminated by a spot in accordance with law) for a whole year. On September 11th, 2002, I gave it to our Boy Scout Troop to burn with their annual collection and ceremony they do to decommission US flags. My son, Stephen, now has the flag that flew on the USS West Virginia (his boat) on 9/11/01 hanging on his office wall.
I lost two acquaintances at the Pentagon that day. Another woman in town lost her brother in the towers. Two other people I know lost family on the aircraft.
I will never forget.
