09/11/2001 I was 7 months pregnant and working at the Pentagon

[Hekate]

40. Just a side point: Elementary school students should have stayed in place until parent or guardian

…were able to get them. I’m sure there is such a plan for children too young to be let loose in an emergency.

About 1956 a military jet crashed on the athletic field of the jr hi school next door to my elementary school. It was class change at the jr hi and they lost 13 kids, but we in the elementary school were indoors and okay. As far as anyone knows the pilot, clipped by another plane at altitude, aimed for as open a space as he could.

In any case, my mother claimed my brother and me, plus two neighbor kids whose parents were at work.
💔💔💔
I am glad you were okay — thank you for sharing. I’m starting to tear up at people’s reminiscences. My daughter was at work and I was sleeping in after a late night writing on my dissertation. About 9:00 our time in California she phoned to order me to turn on the TV because New York was under attack.

No matter how far away you were from NYC and the Pentagon, you were in some way touched personally, far closer than “6 degrees of separation.” My sis in Massachusetts — well, 4 of her children’s schoolmates lost their grandmothers on flights out of Boston that day. When Bush got his war, one of my niece’s friends, by then 18, joined up out of patriotism; called his dad from Italy and said how badly they were equipped — and died outside Kirkuk. My best friend and her husband were civil servants working in D.C. when the city shuddered with the impact on the Pentagon. In years to come they ultimately changed the family name to something less recognizable than Akbar, because of all the blowback.

My life changed too. I had so many plans for my activities after finishing my dissertation and getting my PhD. I did finish — knowing that BushCheneyRumsfeld would neither know nor care if I failed to do so, but I’d care. But afterward, I shelved my book and joined the war resistance, knowing there would be no going back.