Twenty Years Ago
A little while after 6am Pacific time, we were awoken by a phone call. The phone never rang in our apartment, let along at this early hour of the day. Unlike today, we were not accustomed to start our day this early. It was my mother in law calling from Argentina.
“Are you all ok?”
I had no idea what she was talking about. Did we miss a California earthquake? What was going on?
“Turn on the television. An attack on New York.”
My wife, then 7 months pregnant of our first child, joined me in the living room to watch the news coverage. We were in shock.
When we saw the first tower collapse, I was in utter disbelief of what I was witnessing. Those feelings were quickly replaced, not by anger (I skipped that stage), but by the knowledge that many in the United States were already lacing up. This is going to escalate quickly.
That’s my earliest recollection of what transpired on September 11, 2001.
Later the day, I recall standing huddled with my colleagues at Sun Microsystems in Menlo Park around a television in the break room. Somebody had set one up, and hung an antenna on the window. Nobody was doing any work. We were all glued to the news, all day long.
Only much later did we learn that one of our Menlo Park colleagues was on the hijacked flight from Boston. The company placed a small memorial bench in the campus court yard.