Where were you on 9/11?
This was supposed to go out yesterday. I became too ill to finish it. I Apologize.
I was in Ottawa, Canada. The story really starts on September 9, when I was holed up in a hotel in Toronto. I spent nearly the entire day on the phone trying to talk my company out of buying Swiss Air’s IT service’s division’s book of business. At the time I worked for a Fortune 500 company, Electronic Data Systems, as the global director of aerospace and defense manufacturing. I was in Ottawa to covertly assess a company for purchase. It made a kind of software that could be used by both aerospace manufacturing and airlines. It could also be used by shipbuilders and rail manufacturers, although the company itself didn’t know that.
It might sound as though my attempt to scuttle a deal in negotiation would be against my own interests. It was not. Airlines are part of the Aviation industry. It buys the products produced by aerospace companies but is a retail and/or transportation company. Its needs are very different from the manufacturers’. We were over-invested in aviation, which includes plane leasing, reservation systems and the like. We put idle cash into financing aircraft leases, and had purchased Sabre, American Airlines’ reservation system. We were already running IT systems for an impressive portion of the world’s airlines. In business, that’s called being overleveraged in a single industry, which leaves the company vulnerable.
Ottawa or Bust
Anyway, on to Ottawa. I spent part of September 10 in Toronto, calling on a friend who was an executive with one of the world’s two manufacturers of flight simulators, then on our local office. We arranged for the two of us plus the woman who ran our office in Toronto to get together on September 12. I flew to Ottawa that evening and asked about nightlife at my hotel. The front desk clerk laughed. “Even we locals call the city ‘The town that fun forgot.”’ I went downtown to the entertainment district and found that both establishments were dead.
A Cropduster Flew into a Barn?
I returned to my hotel; the next morning as I was leaving my wife called. She told me a plane had run into a building. That happens regularly; I wasn’t impressed. I figured a crop duster had run into a barn. On arrival at the company I was scheduled to visit I learned that one or both World Trade Center towers were on fire and had been struck by large airliners. I knew that when the towers were designed, they were supposed to be able to withstand a strike from a large airliner. Surely this was a mistake.
Not at all. I had forgotten when the towers were built. At that time the largest commercial aircraft were four-engine Boeing 707s and Douglas Commercial DC-8s. Both I and the company had a lot to think about. They called around and found me a hotel for a few nights. I returned to my hotel and called to reassure my wife that I was safe because I was in the Town that Fun forgot.
I called my boss, Jane, leader of the Global Industry Group. I told her I would put out a forward-looking assessment on manufacturers, I assumed that there would be reduced demand for new aircraft, offset by increased demand for military equipment. Some first, second and third-tier suppliers would lose some business, but the large system integrators – Boeing, Lockheed, et cetera – would need to add capacity as they built drones, control systems and so forth. I was largely right.
Isn’t that Your Job?
The grounding of all aircraft presented another problem. How to get home? I called my company’s travel department, which told me not to waste their time until I could tell them what flight I wanted. I had thought knowing which flights were active was their job. Figuring out that huge cities were going to be active first, I rented a car and drove to Toronto. I called our office there and made sure to send the woman who ran it a copy of my analysis. Then I sat in my hotel room and ran up an impressive telephone bill talking to all of our aerospace accounts. I also ate and drank myself stupid from boredom.
Air Canada finally scheduled a flight to Dulles Airport, outside Washington, DC, but it was full. I called the office of the Prime Minister of New Brunswick, with whom I had met on my during my first stop on the tour of Canada; suddenly there was a seat. Two hours later I was home.
Anticlimax
On arrival home I learned that our oldest daughter’s boyfriend had stopped in Washington on his band’s way to Europe. He called my wife from Dulles, not knowing what had happened. She picked them up and housed/fed them for a few days until they rented a truck to take them and their equipment back to Nashville. I learned that one of the aircraft that had been used in the attacks was a flight I had taken at least once or twice a month to Los Angeles. I knew all the cabin crew, who were now dead. I grieved. Our youngest daughter had volunteered with the county Red Cross which operated out of a sleepy small city called Leesburg.
They were overwhelmed with donations of money and computer equipment. She set up a rudimentary network, found a COTS (Commercial Off-the-shelf) system to track financial donations and set up a schedule for volunteers to pick up money from donation jars.
I got reacquainted with my job and my family, then paid a call on Jane Garvey, head of the Federal Aviation Administration. I asked how she had grounded everything so quickly. She smiled. “I explained to VP Cheney that either we stress-tested the whole system every six months or he could find another Administrator.” Thank God Pete Buttigieg was nowhere in the system at that time.
We were in my in-laws' compound in a conservative city in the Frontier region of Pakistan. My son had just returned from his first day at his new school.
Our nephew called from Karachi and told us to turn on the news. We had CNN International as part of the cable package my then-husband's business was providing to customers of the city. It was a new business.
I turned on the TV in time to see the second tower fall in real time. It was impossible to believe it was real. It looked like every disaster film ever. We were mesmerized with disbelief and horror.
A week later Bush bombed Afghanistan. Then a mob tried to burn our business. We had security guards and they didn't get in. They burned our car instead. My husband hadn't bothered to get insurance for it.
The American Embassy let expatriates know we could seek financial recompense for losses caused by local reactions to the war in Afghanistan, but such claims must be supported by police reports of the damage. My husband registered a case.
It was made known to us, in the ways such things are made known to people, that if we didn't withdraw the case, my husband would be murdered. That wasn't such an unusual occurrence in that place. We withdrew the case.
Thereafter, we had 24-hr. police protection in our compound. I stopped being able to go anywhere on my own. Fortunately we lived on a street in a neighborhood named for my sister-in-law's late father-in-law and we were related, one way or another, to everyone on that street. So I could visit any of those people whenever I wanted. Whenever it was time for me to walk back down the street, three minutes to our own compound gate, my sister-in-law's watchman walked with me, wearing his AK-47. He'd tell me stories about how everyone despised my father-in-law. I agreed with everyone's feelings.
I still have very warm feelings for CNN International and their news anchors with their comforting Australian accents. They were a lifeline to me during those 18 months we stayed.
I'd never, since long before my marriage, ever felt unsafe traveling everywhere in that country by myself. I was always treated with courtesy and friendliness. Now I was afraid to be in the car (a different car) with my husband and son because I had an unmistakeable ferengi face and I didn't want someone, shooting at me, to kill them.
The Taliban and their brethren were greatly strengthened in the region and the city because of the war in Afghanistan. It became increasingly dangerous for women and for us to operate the women's center I'd founded. We kept it going for a couple of years after we went home, but without the protection of a man--my husband--as the public head of the center, we knew we couldn't guarantee anyone's safety or the integrity of the funds.
I'd thought I hadn't known anyone who died in the towers. A few years later I remembered that in my NY job, I'd spoken every month with a lovely young woman at Fiduciary Trust Company. But I couldn't remember her last name. I did remember that before I left that job and went overseas, she was pregnant with her first child. I don't know, now, if either of them is alive in the world. I remember her boss's name and of course it's not hard to find people via the internet these days. But I feel a little reluctant to look him up and ask if Michelle was killed that day.
Hey Bill can I list you as a contributor? If I quote you I will cite your substack. I am too busy writing to read much more than I read. I don't even need affirmation I have all that I need.