On Tuesday morning, September 11th, 2001, I left my house in Alpharetta, Georgia for Hartsfield airport about 6 a.m. I had an 8:15 am Delta flight to Chicago. My husband Ed and I had just returned to Atlanta from a weekend in Houston where we had helped to host a 50th wedding anniversary party for his parents the weekend before. I unpacked from that trip and repacked for my business trip. That was pretty much how I lived back then as a partner in a marketing services company. We had divisions in several sites east of the Mississippi and I traveled weekly.
So, I was flying back and forth between either Atlanta and Chicago or Atlanta and New York every week. This day was not eventful - I had taken the flight many times before. I left my house with my husband still snoozing upstairs in bed. My regular car service picked me up for the 45 minute ride to the airport. Everything went smoothly as I arrived at the airport and checked in. I learned I was upgraded, which was also a plus. All went fine until I arrived at O'Hare airport in Chicago.
I was one of the first people off the the plane and immediately realized something was terribly wrong. There were no people in the terminal. No one from Delta to greet us or even open the door to the terminal. We had not been told anything unusual on the flight so this was very odd. O'Hare is always busy and this looked like something out of a movie. I turned on my cell phone and saw that lots of messages were registered, but the phone would not work to call out or retrieve the messages.
As my fellow passengers and I walked down the deserted hallway, we passed a bar where a TV set was on. I paused and saw on the monitor that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon. That was too bad, I thought, not registering that anything else had happened. I found a pay phone along the hallway and called my office in Atlanta.
Candy, our executive assistant, accepted my collect call (I hadn't used a pay phone in years) and immediately asked, "Where are you?" "In Chicago," I answered, "I just landed and my cell phone won't work." "Thank God you are OK. All the cell phones are jammed," she said in her Southern accent, "Let me put Bill on." Bill was my boss, my business partner, and the CEO of the company. I had known Bill for years and worked for him in a previous corporate life. Bill was also a highly decorated Vietnam veteran who still carried himself with a military bearing.
"Laura, thank God you are OK. Do you know what is going on?" Bill asked me. "No," I answered, getting worried for the first time. Bill answered, "Terrorists are hijacking planes and crashing them into targets around the country. Get away from O'Hare airport as fast as you can." Bill was talking in his clipped military manner now. "Where should I go?" I asked. My mind was racing - I used to live in Chicago and had a lot of friends there. Could I get somewhere safe? "Can I go to the office? Is it safe there?" I asked. Our Chicagoland division was in a suburb. Bill said, "It should be far enough away and should be OK. I will send someone from the office to pick you up. In the meantime, Ed has been worried sick about you so we are going to patch you through to him at the house."
I did not appreciate the fear that had been going through my husband and my colleagues while I was in the air. No one knew what planes were being hijacked or where they were going. I soon learned I was on one of the last planes allowed to land at O'Hare and that the airport had already been evacuated, which was why it was deserted. Airline operations were being halted and planes were in the process of being grounded all over the country.
Candy put me through to Ed and I could hear the relief in his voice. He had awakened after I left and put on Good Morning America. He saw the World Trade Center being hit and knew my flight had taken off at 8:15, the same time as the hijacked planes. He feared the worst. He had tried to reach me, unsuccessfully, and had been constantly on the phone with my office or with family. The enormity of what was happening was beginning to sink in for me. We reassured each other, told each other I love you, and I told him that I would get home as fast as I could.
I left the terminal to go outside to meet the colleague who was picking me up. I assumed he would be in the usual passenger pick-up area and I was right. People were milling around outside O'Hare yet it was eerily quiet. No plane noise. We drove to the office, speculating on what was going on in the world. When I arrived, people hugged me and told me how worried they had been. We had several TVs in various places and gathered around to watch what was happening. Some people tried to maintain a regular work day, but it was increasingly difficult after the WTC towers collapsed. That was beyond belief and was one of the scariest things I have ever seen.
One of my best friends lived in Chicago, and I managed to reach her to see if I could stay with her that night. It was clear that O'Hare was closed indefinitely. I needed to be around people I loved, and I felt horrible that Ed was down in Atlanta by himself during this national crisis. I had to get there, because that was home......where he was. That night, watching TV with my friends, was really when the enormity hit me. I felt blessed that I was not on a plane that was hijacked. I prayed for those who were killed and their families, and our country. There but for the grace of God......as they say. I felt very fortunate but was still concerned.
At this same time, a big printing trade show was happening at McCormick Place in Chicago. I was supposed to host a Japanese delegation for a meeting and tour at our facility, and there were many people I knew in town for the show. We were all stranded now. I contacted my Japanese contact and canceled the tour - there was no way I could conduct business as usual. I needed to get home.
A company that makes printing presses, Heidelberg, has its North American headquarters in Atlanta. A guy I know there contacted me and asked if I wanted a ride back. They had rented a coach bus and were going to head out later in the week. Heidelberg had a large contingent of employees in Chicago for the trade show, but they could fit me and another Atlanta-based colleague of mine on the bus. No one was sure when air travel would resume, and everyone was in a state of uncertainty and rallying around one another.
My Atlanta-based colleague and good friend, Mark, had arrived in Chicago on Sept. 10, and he had gotten a rental car. Little did we know how scarce rental cars would be after Tuesday but since he had a car, another option was to drive back ourselves. I called Avis to ask if we could take the car to Atlanta, and they said, "It's your rental car, so you can drive it wherever you want." Although I thought the bus might be a better alternative, Mark was going to drive himself no matter what. After all, he wouldn't be able to smoke on the bus and since he is a heavy smoker and this was a stressful situation, he needed his nicotine. I did not want him to drive by himself - there was still a lot of uncertainty around - and I decided I would rather drive back with a friend than a bus full of strangers. So we left to drive back to Atlanta on September 13.
It was a strange journey. Not many cars on the road, including the interstates. We listened to the news, Mark smoked and drank his diet cokes, and I didn't care. The weather was glorious and we could roll down the windows. We needed to get home. We talked about how this event would be one of the more memorable our lives, and it has been. Mark wouldn't let me spell him at the wheel ("you'll only slow us down.....") but we did stop at a Waffle House along the way. That was my one and only time at that chain, despite all my time in Atlanta. Funny how I recall that clearly.
I arranged to have Ed pick me up at a restaurant that was between our house and Mark's so Mark didn't have to go further out of the way. I was so happy to see Ed and give him a big hug. I was home.
Postscript: 1) To this day, Ed insists we have a land line phone in the house. It is purely for the reason that cell service jams during national emergencies. 2) I had to go back to work in NYC shortly after 9/11. At that time I stayed at a hotel in midtown every week, and my room often had a balcony. I was in NY when the blue lights shot up into the night sky from where the WTC stood and I could see the lights clearly from my room. I will never forget them, and I get very emotional when I really think about 9/11. 3) I get mad at terrorists when I watch movies such as "Working Girl" that show clear images of the WTC.
