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The day after the attacks our tech support group was having a meeting. Since we had no idea how long the ban on commercial flights would last, and since several of our guys were trapped thousands of miles from home and having trouble making connections, some of us were going to have to go on the road (not a change for me) but we were going to be driving to various locations and plenty of time would be allowed for the drive at 400 to 500 miles per day. Someone brought up the fact that corporate rules for travel on a transfer allowed a maximum of 300 miles per day and shouldn't we be abiding by that standard.

Just as the boss started to answer, and it could not have been an informed answer just because of the way he was framing it, a pair of fighter planes flew by, very fast and very low, and we all sat there frozen for several minutes, and then the boss broke the silence by saying that he would check on it.

Never found out what the flight was about, despite two friends within FAA.

I was SUPPOSED to be at 60 Hudson St in NY City doing overnight upgrade scenarios on a telecom switch. The company whose switch it was had decided not to expand the switch after all and canceled, so I was NOT sleeping all day at the WTC Marriott after having breakfast at Windows on the World, where I used to watch the GA planes, below, flying up and down the Hudson and idly speculate about one of them getting caught in the wind or lost in the fog and running into one of the towers.

I was in my home office, working from home as I had not planned to be in the office that day anyway, when my stepson wandered in and said "Pop, a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center." so I took my phone out of the queue and walked into the next room where the news was on.

While I stood there telling my stepson that that couldn't be a small GA plane as I had first surmised, due to the size of the mark on the building, the second plane hit. I told my stepson he was not going to school that day and went in and called my wife and my boss, knowing that neither of them would have the news on. I also called my contact at the telecomm company that had canceled and thanked them, and at that time I was not aware of the massive amount of damage sustained by the Marriott.

I spent part of the morning worrying about, and trying to call once in a while, my friend who worked in the telephone central office right there in the building, only to find out that he had been transferred to Staten Island a couple of months before and was safe.

Another friend was the Chief Engineer for the TV tower and died.

Knowing that the telephone systems all across the US would get more and more blocked as everyone tried to call everyone else, I stayed off the phone except for one last call to my former boss at 140 West St, which was being evacuated as I spoke to him. 140 West St. is the building immediately north of the WTC and was featured in many of the news shots before the collapse, with Ashley Banfield stnding disheveled in the street and a building in the background with a black flag hanging from the front. That flag was a Verizon flag and that building is multiple floors of telephone central offices and switches as well as offices and control centers, and my former reporting location for a while at New York Telephone, although I worked upstate.

I put my phone back in the queue and never got a call all day, I guess no one had trouble with their switches.