![]() ![]() ![]() Meanwhile American Flight 757 had left Dulles United Flight 175 left Boston at 7:58, and United Flight 93 left Newark three minutes later, bound for San Francisco. and headed west, over the Adirondacks, before taking a sudden turn south and diving down toward the heart of New York City. It was a Boeing 767 from Boston, American Airlines Flight 11 bound for Los Angeles with 81 passengers, that first got the attention of air traffic controllers. It was, of course, a perfect day, 70º and flawless skies, perfect for a nervous pilot who has stolen a huge jet and intends to turn it into a missile. And we watch, speechless, as the sirens, like some awful choir, hour after hour let you know that it is not over yet, wait, there’s more. Then, once we are transfixed, the second plane comes and repeats the theme until the blinding coda of smoke and debris crumbles on top of the rescue workers who have gone in to try to save anyone who survived the opening movements. The first plane is just to get our attention. Terror works like a musical composition, so many instruments, all in tune, playing perfectly together to create their desired effect. It was as though someone had taken a huge brush and painted a bull’s-eye around every place Americans gather, every icon we revere, every service we depend on, and vowed to take them out or shut them down, or force us to do it ourselves. Disney World shut down, and Major League Baseball canceled its games, and nuclear power plants went to top security status the Hoover Dam and the Mall of America shut down, and Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and Mount Rushmore. ![]() The Sears Tower in Chicago was evacuated, as were colleges and museums. Every city cataloged its targets residents looked at their skylines, wondering if they would be different in the morning. We couldn’t move - that must have been the whole idea - so we had no choice but to watch. It was strange that a day of war was a day we stood still. This was the bloodiest day on American soil since our Civil War, a modern Antietam played out in real time, on fast-forward, and not with soldiers but with secretaries, security guards, lawyers, bankers, janitors. And then again and again all across the country, as people checked on those they loved to find out if they were safe and then looked for some way to help. At Verizon, where a worker threw on a New York fire department jacket to go save people. At the medical-supply companies, which sent supplies without being asked. We don’t know yet how many of them died, but once we know, as Mayor Rudy Giuliani said, “it will be more than we can bear.” That sentiment was played out in miniature in the streets, where fleeing victims pulled the wounded to safety, and at every hospital, where the lines to give blood looped round and round the block. The fire fighters kept climbing the stairs of the tallest buildings in town, even as the steel moaned and the cracks spread in zippers through the walls, to get to the people trapped in the sky. 11, we valued heroism because it was everywhere. On a normal day, we value heroism because it is uncommon. ![]()
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