September's black shadow

The morning of September 11, 2001, seemed no different from any other morning as I prepared to go into the office at the Center of the American Experiment in downtown Minneapolis where I was the Programming and Development Director. Earlier in the week I had been in conversations with New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to bring him in as our guest speaker for our annual dinner in the spring. My intent that day was to tie up any loose ends with the mayor and the speakers’ bureau that represented him, then set a date for his availability.

 

That was not going to happen, at least not that day.

 

I got into my vehicle and turned on the radio to listen to some classical music for my morning commute. The news hour came on stating that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York City. My thought was, what was that pilot of a small plane thinking, maybe he had a heart attack. At any rate, it would be a good conversation opener with the mayor’s scheduler.

 

I was one of the first to arrive at the Center. I was early, around 7 a.m. I wanted to get on the phones before the day got away and most of my calls would be made to the eastern coastline where they were an hour ahead of us. I figured I needed an answer for my board of directors concerning the annual dinner.

 

When I opened the office I was surprised to find my colleague, a former colonel in the military, there at this hour. He asked me to come into his office on my arrival. He was an interesting fellow whom I had first met during the Reagan Administration.

 

He had been the marine who carried the nuclear football for the President. It was a briefcase that contained the contents to be used by the President of the United States to authorize a nuclear attack while away from fixed command centers. He was also a friend and had raised the possibility he would run for a seat the United States Congress. I assumed that was what this early morning conversation was going to be about since no other staff were in the building.

 

When I walked into his office I could see he was concerned and a bit shaken. I asked if everything was okay. He replied absolutely not. He had received a call from a friend of his at the Pentagon who reported that American Airlines Flight 11 had been hijacked, at least that was the message relayed by the flight attendants and then to the FBI.

 

“These bastards are up to no good,” he said. His cell phone rang again. The plane that had crashed into the World Trade Center was Flight 11. He then said, “NORAD didn’t scramble fast enough to intercept and identify the damn plane.”

 

He was visibly shaken. I asked if there was anything I could do. He just stood at his desk not giving me a response. Clearly, by his nonresponse there wasn’t, so I returned to my office bewildered and shaken myself, not clearly understanding what was going on.

 

My colleague then came to me telling me to call the staff and tell them not to come in; we would be closing for the day. There was a fear that the IDS Tower might be a target due to its proximity to the Minneapolis Airport. Downtown Minneapolis was being evacuated.

 

He again shook his head and said, “We’re being attacked by a group of radical cowards.” I frantically called my contemporaries telling them not to come to work. My colleague, myself, and our founder and president Mitchell Pearlstein would remain at our office.

 

My colleague again came in and said it’s been confirmed: the hijacker on Flight 11 made two accidental transmissions to ground control. He had been identified as Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian terrorist working with al-Qaeda.

 

I don’t know what I was thinking, but I thought to myself, you need to focus on your work. This whole thing is under control, the damage is done, move forward. I began to call Giuliani and after thinking a moment hung up, realizing he would be busy with the attack on the tower. Within an hour the news was reporting the crash of Flight 11. The video showed the tower smoldering but still standing.

 

We didn’t have access to the news, it was being phoned in to us by family and friends.

 

My colleague came in again and said a second plane had crashed into the second tower. It was United Airlines Flight 175. He further stated that he understood that all flights leaving or coming into New York had been banned from the airspace.

 

At that moment I sat down in his office dazed by the communications he was hearing and working hard to gain my faculties so I could clearly understand the gravity of what was happening. As we all sat there trying to understand the conversations we were hearing from my colleague’s phone, another jetliner was hijacked.

 

He called his contact at the Pentagon, and it was indeed confirmed that the Federal Aviation Administration had gotten information that some of the passengers and crew on board Flight 77 were able to contact their family members on the ground stating that they had been hijacked.

 

The call he was on was abruptly cut short. He slowly hung up the phone and said that an airliner had just hit the Pentagon. His contact had dropped off the phone after what he thought was a loud explosion.

 

We could only assume that the plane was the missing Flight 77. It was confirmed that the explosion was a jetliner hitting the Pentagon.

 

Shaken, he was phoning frantically until he got someone else on the line. I didn’t catch whom he was talking to, but we knew from that conversation that for the first time in our country’s history, all flights over or bound for the continental United States were grounded, including 3,300 commercial flights being guided to land in airports outside of our country and over 1,200 private planes which were guided to land immediately.

 

By 9:00 a.m. we were hearing that other national sites might also be targets, including the White House and the United States Capitol. Around that same time, the South Tower of the Trade Center collapsed. We were a country under attack by cowardly Mideastern terrorists who stole our planes, kidnapped our citizens, and used them as their missiles to try to break our country. I don’t know if I will ever trust anyone from the Middle East again as long as I draw breath. I have never felt so enraged in my life.

 

We had gotten information by 10 a.m. that Flight 93 had crashed into a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Our thoughts were that the terrorists didn’t have control of the plane and must have inadvertently crashed it. At around the same time, the North Tower of the Trade Center collapsed.

 

At 10 a.m. I received a call from Giuliani’s office saying that the mayor would have to postpone our event indefinitely. My response was, “I understand, thank you for taking the time to call. Tell the mayor that I and the rest of the nation are praying for him and New York.”

 

I felt as though I was in a nightmare. Everything that was happening seemed so surreal. My words during that brief phone conversation with the mayor’s scheduler were succinct and void of emotion. I sat at my mahogany desk that was once in United States Senator Dave Durenberger’s office wondering what was going to happen next.

 

I, along with the rest of the nation, sat waiting–wanting to act and to hear what our next step as a country would be. Thousands of our fellow Americans had been murdered. I wanted revenge, I wanted retaliation, but most of all I wanted every person in the world who is identified as a member of, or whoever is associated with, al-Qaeda removed from the face of the earth in as painful a way as possible.

 

I was interrupted by a phone call from a colleague of mine whom I had worked with in United States Senator Rod Grams’ office. The conversation was devastating.

 

“Have you heard from Erik Ammoth?”

 

“No, why? What’s going on?”

 

After a long pause and his voice quivering, he said, “You may want to call him. His brother Gordy was killed this morning.”

 

“You’re kidding, was it a car accident?” I was thinking, what else could go wrong today? Erik lost his brother in this horrific moment in time. Is there no mercy in this world?

 

“No,” he replied, “Gordy was killed at his office. He was working on the one-hunred-and-fourth floor of the World Trade Center’s South Tower when the jetliner hit it this morning.”

 

“My God, I’ll give him a call. He must be in shock.” He was. There was a noticeable sigh of anguish in both of our voices as our call ended.

 

The attack on America had now hit close to home for me. The numbers of those murdered we were hearing about all day now had a name attached to them, Gordon Ammoth, 32 years of age from Wayzata, Minnesota, the brother of a colleague and friend. He was innocently working at his desk when he was murdered by a group of radicals who had no place among the living in our world as far as I was concerned. I make no apologies nor ever will for that statement.

 

As I was putting away my files and preparing to go home, my phone rang once more. I paused, not wanting to pick it up ever again.

 

My emotions were raw from the last conversation. It was Ralph Burnett. I had gotten to know him and his wife Peggy through my years spent as a fundraiser for various entities that I had worked for. They were always gracious enough to open their home on Lake Minnetonka whenever I needed it.

 

This time it was Ralph who needed a favor. He wanted to know who to contact at the State Department. He went on to say, “We lost Tommy and we need to get him home.”

 

He was confused and wasn’t making sense. His words were disjointed and his sentences fragmented.

 

After some time I was able to figure out he was talking about a relative who was on Flight 93, Tom Burnett. I asked him if he was sure that he was on the flight.

 

He stated, “God damn it I know he was. His wife talked to him before the flight crashed. He pulled together a group of guys to take out the hijackers. The damn plane was crashed on purpose. You have to help me.”

 

His last words to her were, “Oh my God. It’s a suicide mission. Don’t worry, we’re going to do something. I love you and tell the kids I love them too.” He hung up and now he’s gone.

I was shaking my head in disbelief. Tom Burnett had gone to Jefferson High School in Bloomington, Minnesota, with my former wife. He was their star quarterback. Our paths had crossed on numerous occasions but it was always small talk at events.

 

I gave Ralph my contacts at the State Department but warned him calling might be unproductive because most of the lines had been shut down to most incoming calls.

 

I left my office in downtown Minneapolis that afternoon. Once outside, the clear blue September skies were quiet, the traffic was gone from the city, all was eerily still. As I looked to the heavens I took notice, not a plane in the sky, not even the white wisps of jet exhaust.

 

Today, September 11, 2001, the morning that woke us to the threat of terrorism. This day will be forever bookmarked in the annals of our history as the day when Americans knew that the actions of a few would change us forever.

 

If you murder Americans, we will crush you. We will hunt you down, and death will be your only reward.