I've hesitated to tell our story of 9/11. There are thousands of other stories of loss, survival and divine intervention that should take precedence over ours, yet my husband John and I have a special connection to 9/11 that we will never forget.
We were in New York that week end. We flew in on Friday, September 7th. We had been given tickets to the Michael Jackson 30th anniversary concert at Madison Square Garden. We were excited to be in New York, and excited to be at the concert. The star watching was quite entertaining.
Some of the celebrities we saw were Elizabeth Taylor and Macaulay Culkin watching the show along with Michael Jackson. Michael blew kisses to the various performers and waved to everyone like a king giving nods to his subjects. The show had its bizarre aspects, such as watching a skeletal Whitney Houston perform, or Liza Minelli trying to stand on stage. There were also highlights, such as the performance of Beyoncé with Destiny’s child, Gloria Estefan, James Ingram & Marc Anthony. Michael Jackson and his brothers eventually performed, along with many others.
We stayed with our dear friends David & Danette in Manhattan and had a blast all week end sightseeing. Along with the M.J. concert, we explored the city, attended the theater, and made a special trip to the top of the Empire State Building.
When John and I were dating, the movie Sleepless in Seattle was popular, and since I lived in Seattle at the time and John lived in Kansas (OK…not New York, but still a long commute), that movie kind of became ours.
John had always promised me that someday we’d go to New York and go to the top of the Empire State Building, just like in the movie. What I didn’t know was that John had planned a surprise for me when we got to the observation deck. He had carried a back pack on our whole trip. While I was looking at the view and being unobservant of what he was doing (ironically while on the “observation deck”), John planted his back pack with a cute little teddy bear sticking out, right beside one of the telescopes, He then arranged for me to “find” the back pack. It was a great surprise and very thoughtful.
We took quite a few pictures while there, we didn’t realize until we got home that some of our pictures of John and I had the WTC in the background. We were oblivious to that backdrop at the time, we were just trying to get decent lighting.
We filled our week end with a ride on the Stanton Island Ferry, getting together with John’s niece and husband and daughter, as well as lots of walking, riding the subway, and more walking,
We were scheduled to fly home on Tuesday evening, September 11th. For some reason, on Sunday, even though we were having a fabulous time, I got this overwhelming feeling of wanting to go home. I haven’t ever had that feeling on a trip before, and especially not, on a trip where we were having so much fun.
I hesitated to tell John how I was feeling. I didn’t want to put a damper on his good time. But then, John said, “you know…we’ve had such a good time here, that if we had to go home tomorrow I’d be fine”. With him saying that, I felt OK telling him how I’d been feeling.
John decided to call the airline and see if there was any possibility of changing our flight from Tuesday to Monday. We thought maybe they'd let us fly standby. We both agreed that if it was going to cost us anything to change our reservations, we would just stick with our original itinerary. Surprisingly, the reservationist said that we could try to stand by for the Monday evening flight.
I was worried that our change of plans would offend our hosts. I didn’t want them to think that we weren’t having a good time. Since I couldn’t explain my feeling of urgency to get home, we weren’t totally truthful with them. We mentioned about going home on Monday, and they were surprised as they thought we were staying until Tuesday. We just kind of acted like they must have misunderstood, that we were always planning on leaving on Monday. In retrospect, it's really a shame we didn’t say what was really going on, as I now know they would have understood at the time, and especially a day later, my feelings would have made much more sense.
I did feel bad about leaving early, as our plans had included two more sightseeing events that we were going to miss. One was a trip to the World Trade Center early Tuesday morning, and a trip to the New York Museum of Television & Radio, before flying home Tuesday night. When we originally planned on going to the World Trade Center, our friends told us that it was important to get there really early so that we would miss the morning rush. We had planned to arrive there around 8:00 – 8:30 at the latest. I told John that I felt bad that we were going to miss those two things, he said, “That will just give a reason to come back to New York!”
On Monday morning, John and I took our suitcases and grabbed a taxi to downtown. We dropped our stuff off at David’s office, to be picked up before heading to the airport late that afternoon. For our last day in New York City, we explored around Rockefeller Plaza, ate lunch at a famous deli in the area, then worked our way back to pick up our things and head for the airport.
As it turned out, we got caught in traffic on the Triborough Bridge. It looked like we weren’t going to make the flight, and we began to wonder if trying to catch this flight was so wise after all. We considered turning around and going back to our friends’ apartment in Manhattan, but decided to at least try. If we didn’t make it, we knew we had a place to go back to.
We barely made it to the airport in time and ended up being the last 2 people on the last flight of the day that would take us from New York to Kansas City. We did have a 3 hour delay due to a thunder storm. As we sat on the tarmac, we once again questioned the wisdom of our decision to go home early. In less than 24 hours, we no longer questioned our decision.
After an uneventful flight, and a blurry eyed drive from Kansas City to Wichita, we arrived home around 3 am. I don’t think we even unpacked, we just got into jammies and crawled into bed.
Tuesday morning I was awakened by my cell phone ringing. We hadn’t told our grown kids that we were coming home early as we weren’t sure we’d make the flight. Since no one had to meet us at the airport, we figured it didn’t matter one way or the other. The last time we’d talked to our kids, we’d told them of our plans for visiting the WTC on Tuesday morning. It didn’t seem too important to tell them that our plans had changed….Until I got that phone call. It was our daughter, frantically trying to figure out where we were, and shouting something about New York and planes crashing. I was still half asleep and not sure what she talking about. After I assured her that we weren’t at the World Trade Center, or even in New York anymore, her relief was palpable. She then told me to turn on the TV.
As we watched the Terrorist attack unfold on TV with mouths agape, we had no words. Along with the rest of the world, we watched a surreal horror show. I don’t know how long it took for us both to wrap our heads around our early escape from New York, and the premonition that I had. I know that for some reason, God spared our lives. That makes me feel guilty though, as there were many lives that weren’t spared, and I don’t have a good answer for that, except to say, that someday we will understand.
I don’t know how many other people from Wichita, Kansas were in New York at the same time we were. All I know is that for some reason, we were told to go home, even though at the time, neither of us recognized the divine nature of my feelings of urgency.
As we mark a decade from that horrific date, John and I remember, along with the rest of the world. As we remember this date, we know that we have our own special connection to the tragedy of September 11, 2001, and it will forever be a part of us,
We were in New York that week end. We flew in on Friday, September 7th. We had been given tickets to the Michael Jackson 30th anniversary concert at Madison Square Garden. We were excited to be in New York, and excited to be at the concert. The star watching was quite entertaining.
Some of the celebrities we saw were Elizabeth Taylor and Macaulay Culkin watching the show along with Michael Jackson. Michael blew kisses to the various performers and waved to everyone like a king giving nods to his subjects. The show had its bizarre aspects, such as watching a skeletal Whitney Houston perform, or Liza Minelli trying to stand on stage. There were also highlights, such as the performance of Beyoncé with Destiny’s child, Gloria Estefan, James Ingram & Marc Anthony. Michael Jackson and his brothers eventually performed, along with many others.
We stayed with our dear friends David & Danette in Manhattan and had a blast all week end sightseeing. Along with the M.J. concert, we explored the city, attended the theater, and made a special trip to the top of the Empire State Building.
When John and I were dating, the movie Sleepless in Seattle was popular, and since I lived in Seattle at the time and John lived in Kansas (OK…not New York, but still a long commute), that movie kind of became ours.
John had always promised me that someday we’d go to New York and go to the top of the Empire State Building, just like in the movie. What I didn’t know was that John had planned a surprise for me when we got to the observation deck. He had carried a back pack on our whole trip. While I was looking at the view and being unobservant of what he was doing (ironically while on the “observation deck”), John planted his back pack with a cute little teddy bear sticking out, right beside one of the telescopes, He then arranged for me to “find” the back pack. It was a great surprise and very thoughtful.
We took quite a few pictures while there, we didn’t realize until we got home that some of our pictures of John and I had the WTC in the background. We were oblivious to that backdrop at the time, we were just trying to get decent lighting.
We filled our week end with a ride on the Stanton Island Ferry, getting together with John’s niece and husband and daughter, as well as lots of walking, riding the subway, and more walking,
We were scheduled to fly home on Tuesday evening, September 11th. For some reason, on Sunday, even though we were having a fabulous time, I got this overwhelming feeling of wanting to go home. I haven’t ever had that feeling on a trip before, and especially not, on a trip where we were having so much fun.
I hesitated to tell John how I was feeling. I didn’t want to put a damper on his good time. But then, John said, “you know…we’ve had such a good time here, that if we had to go home tomorrow I’d be fine”. With him saying that, I felt OK telling him how I’d been feeling.
John decided to call the airline and see if there was any possibility of changing our flight from Tuesday to Monday. We thought maybe they'd let us fly standby. We both agreed that if it was going to cost us anything to change our reservations, we would just stick with our original itinerary. Surprisingly, the reservationist said that we could try to stand by for the Monday evening flight.
I was worried that our change of plans would offend our hosts. I didn’t want them to think that we weren’t having a good time. Since I couldn’t explain my feeling of urgency to get home, we weren’t totally truthful with them. We mentioned about going home on Monday, and they were surprised as they thought we were staying until Tuesday. We just kind of acted like they must have misunderstood, that we were always planning on leaving on Monday. In retrospect, it's really a shame we didn’t say what was really going on, as I now know they would have understood at the time, and especially a day later, my feelings would have made much more sense.
I did feel bad about leaving early, as our plans had included two more sightseeing events that we were going to miss. One was a trip to the World Trade Center early Tuesday morning, and a trip to the New York Museum of Television & Radio, before flying home Tuesday night. When we originally planned on going to the World Trade Center, our friends told us that it was important to get there really early so that we would miss the morning rush. We had planned to arrive there around 8:00 – 8:30 at the latest. I told John that I felt bad that we were going to miss those two things, he said, “That will just give a reason to come back to New York!”
On Monday morning, John and I took our suitcases and grabbed a taxi to downtown. We dropped our stuff off at David’s office, to be picked up before heading to the airport late that afternoon. For our last day in New York City, we explored around Rockefeller Plaza, ate lunch at a famous deli in the area, then worked our way back to pick up our things and head for the airport.
As it turned out, we got caught in traffic on the Triborough Bridge. It looked like we weren’t going to make the flight, and we began to wonder if trying to catch this flight was so wise after all. We considered turning around and going back to our friends’ apartment in Manhattan, but decided to at least try. If we didn’t make it, we knew we had a place to go back to.
We barely made it to the airport in time and ended up being the last 2 people on the last flight of the day that would take us from New York to Kansas City. We did have a 3 hour delay due to a thunder storm. As we sat on the tarmac, we once again questioned the wisdom of our decision to go home early. In less than 24 hours, we no longer questioned our decision.
After an uneventful flight, and a blurry eyed drive from Kansas City to Wichita, we arrived home around 3 am. I don’t think we even unpacked, we just got into jammies and crawled into bed.
Tuesday morning I was awakened by my cell phone ringing. We hadn’t told our grown kids that we were coming home early as we weren’t sure we’d make the flight. Since no one had to meet us at the airport, we figured it didn’t matter one way or the other. The last time we’d talked to our kids, we’d told them of our plans for visiting the WTC on Tuesday morning. It didn’t seem too important to tell them that our plans had changed….Until I got that phone call. It was our daughter, frantically trying to figure out where we were, and shouting something about New York and planes crashing. I was still half asleep and not sure what she talking about. After I assured her that we weren’t at the World Trade Center, or even in New York anymore, her relief was palpable. She then told me to turn on the TV.
As we watched the Terrorist attack unfold on TV with mouths agape, we had no words. Along with the rest of the world, we watched a surreal horror show. I don’t know how long it took for us both to wrap our heads around our early escape from New York, and the premonition that I had. I know that for some reason, God spared our lives. That makes me feel guilty though, as there were many lives that weren’t spared, and I don’t have a good answer for that, except to say, that someday we will understand.
I don’t know how many other people from Wichita, Kansas were in New York at the same time we were. All I know is that for some reason, we were told to go home, even though at the time, neither of us recognized the divine nature of my feelings of urgency.
As we mark a decade from that horrific date, John and I remember, along with the rest of the world. As we remember this date, we know that we have our own special connection to the tragedy of September 11, 2001, and it will forever be a part of us,
