Photo above of the female lion which is always located on the west side of a building while the male lion, which is considered more important in ancient times, is located on the east side, towards the rising sun.
Imagine living in a place where your reproductive life was controlled by the government. A place that not only controlled the number of children you were allowed to have but also the timeframe. A place that enforced stiff fines, allowed forced sterilization and even forced abortions when you were breaking the law. Imagine living in remote, impoverished parts of rural China. This is what life is like for most women in these far off, often forgotten parts of the world, a place that accounts for millions of China’s 1.3 billion people.
Sometimes in life, there is no better way to understand a complicated issue such as civil rights, than through the tender eyes of a child. I had the opportunity to volunteer in my son Max’s first grade class last week, and they were learning about Martin Luther King Jr. Through art and creativity, here are their dreams of the future….
September 11, 2001. A day we will always remember. A day that we will never forget. A day that changed our world as we know it. A day that made our lives never the same.
“First Pass, Defenders Over Washington” by Rick Herter. The painting depicts Capt. Dean Eckmann in his F-16, as he was the first to arrive at the Pentagon.
A copy of this print is hanging in my sister’s Virginia home in honor of her husband who was one of the three pilots.
Every American remembers where they were and what they were doing on that tragically fateful day. It was a brilliant blue September day in Minnesota without a cloud in the sky. Postcard perfect with a light breeze and a high in the love 70s.
A beautiful blue sky, September day that changed our lives forever.
It was past eight here in Minneapolis and I driving to work. I had the radio on and was singing along to my favorite songs when a strange interruption broke me out of my reverie. The DJ broke off the song, and life as I knew it changed forever.
Like everyone, I had no idea what on earth he was talking about. There was so much confusion and chaos as the terrifying events of September 11th began to unfold. All I heard was that some kind of “small plane” hit the World Trade Center. There was no more news at the time. I dialed my husband who was already at work to ask him if he heard. He didn’t know much more than me. It wasn’t until I arrived at my office in Eagan, located directly across the Minneapolis-St. Paul International airport, that I would see for myself live on TV, the horror that was unfolding this nightmarish day.
I walked across the parking lot with a pit in my stomach and shortness of breath, took the elevator up to the cafeteria and there right before my eyes live on CNN I saw the plane smash like a giant fireball into the World Trade Center. Without further thought, I turned on my heals, in absolute shock, and returned to my car where I called my husband and proceeded directly home in fear, completely unable to cry.
For the next two days, work was canceled (my husband’s downtown office was evacuated) while my husband and I sat terrified, motionless, and utterly glued to CNN as the events of 9/11 unraveled and the further confusion, chaos and attempted analysis went on. The normally busy sky above the lake and our house was eerily quiet: There were no planes for days as the entire nation’s airports system came to a startling halt.
Everyone was home and glued to TV. It was the most horrifying, frightening time of my life and to this day, I can never rid myself of the infamous image of the plane slamming into the World Trade Center. As much as I try to want to forget. I’ll always remember. The fruitless, tragic loss of innocent lives can not be forgotten or forsaken. The two wars that our country entered as a result of 9/11 and the war against terror can not be erased. Our world as we know it will never be the same. We will never feel safe.
Everyone has a story to tell that day.
My Mother was waiting in the Tucson, Arizona airport heading out to Virginia to visit my sister when she saw the first plane replayed across the TV. The entire airport went into shock as the events unfolded right before their eyes. Of course, knowing my mom was flying that day, I went into panic wondering if she was in the air. With all the chaos, confusion and uncertainty, no one knew how many planes were going to go down. By the time I finally reached her, she was hysterical but safe, waiting amidst the confusion at the airport. Finally her flight was canceled and she went home, like me, in horror and confusion, trying to make sense of what was happening. Life many others, she ended up packing her car and making the four-day journey across the country to reach my sister in Virginia, who was also in the heart of the situation.
My sister’s husband, Captain Craig Borgstrom, was one of the few men that actually saw 9/11 from the air. However, not in a commercial airline but in a fighter jet. As a Captain with the Happy Hooligans, the Fargo North Dakota National Guard Unit that was based at Langley Air Force base in Virginia, he was one of three pilots that was called into a scramble into the air in a race to save the doomed jet headed to the Pentagon. He arrived just after the jet crashed into the Pentagon looking down to see the terrifying, hellish fire burning at one of our nation’s most important buildings. Had he been a few moments earlier, he would have been faced with the orders to possibly have to shot down a passenger jet, an act that surely would have remained within his soul for the rest of his life.
Needless to say, my sister was panicking not knowing where her husband was and whether or not he was safe. Little did she know he would be one of the many 9/11 heroes (see article below from AIRMAN).
My husband and my father were preparing to depart on a week-long trip to Scotland. Their flight was scheduled to depart a couple of days later and unfortunately the trip never happened. Yet if it had, they probably would have been stuck there for days waiting out the reopening of the world’s airports.
I was scheduled to fly to Chicago on 9/13 where my office was based and I had a series of client meetings set up for the week. Unable to fly, I packed up my car and made the seven hour drive from Minneapolis to Chicago, listening to NPR the entire way and watching the incredible display of patriotism across the roads as cars and buses drove by with flags and sayings printed across their windows. Since no one could fly, the roads were packed and instead of the normal honking, rude driving and insanity, for once it seemed as if everyone had pulled together. An accepted, unspoken calm and cooperation was felt wherever you went.
After those fateful days of confusion, chaos, horror and anger, we were finally faced with the long road to acceptance, recovery and redemption. Slowly the planes began to fly and life kind of moved towards normalcy. Yet every time I entered the airport to board a plane, it was obvious how much had changed. How much we lost. How the world would never ever be the same again.
Ten years later the memories remain as painful as ever. Everyone seems to know someone who was lost in 9/11 or its aftermath. Will the world ever forget? Or do we even want to? No.
My thoughts and prayers are with the many people who lost the ones they love in and as a result of 9/11. May we always remember! And let freedom ring.
Pilots saw unique view of Pentagon burning – from 1,000 feet above
Story by Randy Roughton
Photo above of Captain Dean Eckmann
Fifty to 60 miles from Washington, the sky was so clear that 9/11 morning the F-16 Fighting Falcon pilots could see almost everything.
“It was almost like a North Dakota day,” Col. Brad Derrig said.
That morning, Derrig, then a major, and Capt. Craig Borgstrom were flying behind Capt. Dean Eckmann and were scrambled over Washington in response to the 9/11 attacks. All three fly with the “Happy Hooligans” in the North Dakota Air National Guard’s 178th Fighter Squadron, which stationed pilots at an alert detachment at Langley Air Force Base, Va. At that time, the detachment was one of North American Aerospace Defense Command’s seven alert sites designed to protect the nation against an attack.
As he approached the city, Eckmann saw black smoke rising above the Potomac River. But because the smoke was blowing his direction, he couldn’t see exactly where the fire was. He didn’t know it was at the Pentagon, where American Airlines Flight 77 crashed at 9:40 a.m., killing about 180 people, not including the hijackers. Before long, Eckmann would be looking back at his F-16’s missiles and wondering if he would be firing them sometime that day.
“Normally, in cities when you see smoke, it’s going to be gray or white – industrial-type smoke,” said Eckmann, who is now a lieutenant colonel with the Fargo-based squadron.
“From my years of experience in the military, black smoke is bad because it usually means fuel or explosives are burning.”
The detachment squadron was scheduled to fly a sortie against a couple of other Langley F-15 Eagles on 9/11. It was a typical alert, with the pilots mainly trying to be airborne with a less than five-minute notice. Derrig wasn’t scheduled to fly at all, although he was trying to work his way into the training sortie.
A klaxon horn sounded to let the pilots know they were on battle stations, so Eckmann and Derrig headed to their planes. The lights in the hangar changed from yellow to green to let them know of the scramble order at 9:24 a.m.
Borgstrom, the squadron’s director of operations at the time, ran to Eckmann’s plane as he was awaiting the scramble order and said he was supposed to fly as the third pilot. This surprised the other two pilots because in a scramble order for the detachment’s two F-16s, Borgstrom would serve as the supervisor of flying and would be responsible for keeping the pilots informed on the mission. With him in the air, there would be no operations officer left at the detachment. Eckmann directed Borgstrom to the detachment’s third F-16, which was unarmed because it wasn’t on alert status with the other two planes.
“Normally, the East Coast is filled with airplanes, big and small, on a daily basis. Flying that afternoon, the only airplanes that were up were basically military fighters and tankers. It was almost eerie, how quiet it was.”
The tower controller gave the order from the Northeast Air Defense Sector for the pilots to fly east for 60 miles, and the three F-16s took off 15 seconds apart by 9:30. As they flew, one of Eckmann’s wingmen learned their new coordinates, which meant they were headed to Baltimore.
“What it meant was we pretty much have priority over everyone, and civilian air controllers need to move people out of our way,” Eckmann said. “That was my first indication something serious was happening.”
Soon they were given new coordinates – to set up a combat air patrol over Reagan National. They set up the patrol over Washington by 9:45, and air traffic controllers notified Eckmann about a “couple of unknowns heading north on the Potomac River toward the White House.” From 25,000 feet, Eckmann headed straight to the aircraft, but quickly learned they were just a military and police helicopter headed to the Pentagon to assist.
Before long, Borgstrom relayed a NEADS message to Eckmann that the formation was directed to provide a battle damage assessment of the Pentagon. Earlier, Eckmann was suspecting a cruise missile attack from Russia, which had a long-range aviation exercise scheduled that week. Now he began thinking it was a truck bomb, similar to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people in 1995. Because of all of the smoke, it wasn’t until he was 1,000 feet directly above the Pentagon that Eckmann could see the building sustained a direct hit.
“We saw something that day that very few saw from the air,” Eckmann said. “That’s because once that happened, [the Federal Aviation Administration] shut down the airspace, and we were the only ones airborne.”
After flying over the Pentagon, Eckmann reported to NEADS that the building’s two outer rings were damaged in the attack. When asked his opinion of what happened, his best guess at the time was a large tanker truck because of the amount of flames and smoke. The pilots wouldn’t learn it was an airliner until after they landed back at Langley that afternoon.
They spent the next five hours intercepting unidentified aircraft above Washington. To intercept, the F-16 pilot approaches the suspect plane on the left wing since the captain on an airliner normally sits on that side. He makes visual contact with the pilot and gives him signals, then flies by and rocks the wing to signify for him to follow.
At one point, when Eckmann was on the radio with civilian air controllers at the Federal Aviation Administration’s Washington Center, Secret Service agents asked to speak to him. He received a short message: “We need you to protect the House.”
“I’m assuming that means the White House,” Eckmann said.
About 45 minutes after they set up the combat air patrol, Derrig saw a second view of the Pentagon on fire when he escorted a Lear jet carrying Attorney General John Ashcroft into Reagan National after the FAA had shut down all civilian air traffic nationwide.
“I had to fly over the Pentagon at a relatively low altitude, and I could see people on the ground working,” Derrig said. “Once I got back into the [combat air patrol], it was a sense of ‘All right. Now, we’ve got to protect these people.’ Our focus was on future attacks if future attacks were planned.”
Eventually, the pilots worked with F-16s from Andrews Air Force Base, Md., which set up a low combat air patrol over the city while the Langley formation maintained the high patrol. The normally crowded East Coast skies were uncharacteristically quiet, Derrig remembers.
“Normally, the East Coast is filled with airplanes, big and small, on a daily basis,” he said. “Flying that afternoon, the only airplanes that were up were basically military fighters and tankers. It was almost eerie, how quiet it was.
“When Andrews [Air Traffic Control] put out the statement that any aircraft into Andrews Class B air space will be shot down, I was thinking we’ve got the missiles. It wasn’t like we were out on a combat air patrol over Iraq or somewhere in Europe – it was within the United States. So that was kind of a gut-puller for me.”
The combat air patrol operation Eckmann and his wingmen started on 9/11 continued until the following April, when they went to more of a scramble and peak type of patrol, he said. When the morning began, seven sites were on alert with 14 airplanes, as there had been since NORAD reduced the number of alert sites in 1994. By nightfall, there were 40 to 50 sites with 200 planes, Eckmann said.
In a day filled with sights and sounds they thought they would never experience in their own country, one more remained when the pilots returned to their squadron.
“I remember I landed at Langley and taxied by the three squadrons of Eagles, and they were arming every flying F-15 on that base,” Eckmann said. “I’ve never seen so many missiles in one spot being put on airplanes. They were putting eight missiles on each F-15 at Langley. That’s another sight you just don’t forget.”
As Eckmann reflects on the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, the memories of the images he saw from his F-16 in a day that began with such a clear sky remain fresh and painful.
“Has it been 10 years already? For me, it will always seem like it wasn’t that long ago. I’ll have those pictures burned in my mind until the day I die – seeing the Pentagon burning from the air when I flew over it, and you knew people were dead inside, and people were suffering,” he said.
“Ten years later, we are still fighting the global war on terrorism. For me, it’s very personal that not only 3,000 people died in New York, but also approximately 180 people died right beneath me. I think about that often.”
I arrived home in one piece, thankful to be safe and sound and home with my family. After the hugs and kisses from my two young children, my mother and my wonderful husband who allowed me to leave him for 17 long days half way around the world, I unpacked my suitcases and tried to settle back in to life at home. For some reason, I found it hard to readjust. Everything back home seemed so over the top. The house felt too big, my closets of cloths felt too large, the cupboards of food felt too full. The house felt claustrophobically full of too much stuff. Too many things. Guilt and shame spread throughout my body like a chill. How could life here be so incredibly different than in Nepal? How could we have so much, too much, when people in Nepal live happily and peacefully with nothing. It didn’t make sense.
I realized immediately that I was going through a reverse culture shock similar to what I had experienced after returning home after eight months living in France. But this time it was different. This time it motivated me and inspired me to do something about it. I had changed, that is for sure. Now it was time to do something about it.
Over the last few months I’ve been in contact with HANDS IN NEPAL and other non-profit organizations in hope to someday help make a difference. It is hard to say right now exactly what I’ll be able to do and when, but I’ve promised myself that I’ll do something whether it be fundraising for a school in Nepal or even volunteering there in the future.
For now, I try to keep myself abreast of news in Nepal by following the news, keeping in touch with Hari and reading books on Nepal. I recently picked up a book titled “Little Princes” by Conor Grennan, which is a phenomenal, highly inspirational read about a young, American man’s attempt to find the families of trafficked children in Nepal. It is an unbelievable story and beautifully written. Proceeds of the book sales go to the non-profit organization that Conor started called Next Generation Nepal (NGN) (www.nextgenerationnepal.org). I highly recommend reading this book! Here is a link to the review on Amazon.com:
Now that I am finished telling my travel stories of Nepal, I am next moving on to the other part of the globe, Central America, to discuss my recent volunteer trip to Costa Rica, another highly inspirational experience that taught me a lot. I hope you enjoyed my Nepal entries and look forward to writing about Costa Rica! Pura Vida!
As our jet plane took off and climbed five thousand, ten thousand and then eighteen thousand feet, I realized in awe that only a few days ago I had been at almost the same altitude as the plane. It was a wild thought. Almost a little frightening.
As I looked down, out the airplane windows, I finally was able to conceptualize how high 18,000 feet truly is. The buildings became smaller and smaller, the cars like ants lining the roads. The vastness of the green, voluptuous rice fields stacked one on top of the other, bursting in color and life. Then, for the last time, I saw the godlike, mighty Himalayas, strikingly beautiful, like a mirage of flying towers soaring upwards into the heavens of the sky. I had to pinch myself to believe that I was really here and had really been there. It was all like a dream.
Months before I left for Nepal, I made a decision that I no longer wanted to be simply a tourist that visited a country, enriched myself in all its culture and beauty, and left nothing in return, no gift behind. My new way of thinking all began on a recent trip I made which was different from anything else I’d ever done: A volunteer trip to work in Costa Rica. Although I was only there for one week, the impact volunteering made on my life and the people I helped during that short time led me to believe strongly that you must give back. You receive a gift when you travel, and it is important to give one back.
I wracked my brain for different ways I could raise money. I knew that I wanted to donate money to a non-profit organization that focuses on education in Nepal. After reading several inspirational books on education in poverty-stricken lands (Two Cups of Tea, Stones into Schools, Half the Sky), I knew that this was the area to attack. I searched Lonely Planet who has an excellent listing of non-profit organizations as well as volunteer opportunities, and found just the organization I was looking for: READ Nepal.
READ Global pioneered the concept of sustainability as an international development organization dedicated to combining education and private enterprise to make rural communities viable places to learn, build, and prosper. READ partners with rural communities to create, sustain and grow projects in a manner that is politically and culturally appropriate. READ has helped establish forty nine Community Library and Resource Centers paired with for-profit enterprises throughout Nepal and India that serve over a half million people annually and has also recently opened up a center in Bhutan.
Finding the right organization was the easy part. The hard part was figuring out how a “thirdeyemom” could raise the money. A mom, who had voluntarily left the workplace to raise her two young children (aka a mom with no income). Of course we could just write a check out of our own money but that didn’t feel right. I wanted to earn the money. Furthermore, I wanted to involve my children in the process so they could learn the importance of giving back.
That was where my creative thinking came into play. It was summer in Minnesota—-a time to be outdoors, out of our long winter’s hibernation, and back into the world again enjoying our 10,000+ lakes, beautiful parks and nature. There was no school for the children. Thus opportunities lurked. Why not host a “babysitting extravaganza” all in the name of charity, at my house? I sent out the email to my group of trusted friends with small children. Parents who knew what I was doing and who also wanted a break. I set up three Friday morning playgroups with ten children each ages 5 and under (yes I’m crazy), with a suggested donation of $10 per child. A pretty good deal when you consider it usually costs at least $10 per hour for a sitter. It worked great (except for the huge mess I had to clean up afterwards). I was able to raise almost $300, which was only $200 shy of my initial goal of raising $500 for READ Nepal. Hurrah!
After the initial joy of raising the money, I realized that I still had to figure out how I would earn the rest. That was when I came up with the idea of having a “lemonade sale” on the corner of our street. This may sound funny to people who don’t live in the United States but it is one of the trademark events of childhood. Every American child at some time in their life have a lemonade stand in which passing people stop to purchase an ice-cold glass of lemonade on a hot summer day. It is a tradition. So why not do one for charity? I made four pitchers of ice cold lemonade, some handmade signs and we set up shop on the corner of our street with hopes of staying until we sold it all. Unfortunately sales were very slow despite the singing, shouting and jumping up and down of my 4 year-old blond-haired daughter. My six-year-old son quickly became bored. After making a disappointing $25 we closed the stand and drank the remainder of the lemonade. Not such a great idea after all.
Summer was quickly ending and my trip to Nepal was rapidly approaching. I was well short of my goal but didn’t give up. My last ditch effort was the all-American yard sale. Again, for those not familiar with the American “Garage Sale” or “yard sale”, let me explain. Basically you go through all your closets, boxes, and drawers and gather up all the stuff you don’t need or use anymore, and place it in a pile. You meticulously go through each item, one by one and put a ridiculously low price on the item. Then you haul all the items outside either to your garage or your yard, place up a few advertisements (aka homemade signs) around town, and wait. Believe it or not, people go absolutely NUTS about garage sales. They are out at the crack of dawn, sneaking around like cats trying to get the best deal they possibly can. Before I had even set up all my tables of stuff, they were knocking on my door trying to get a deal. It was pathetic in a sense. My large sign said “all proceeds are being donated to charity” yet people still tried to weasel down the price. Go figure! After three hours, the sales piled in and my old “junk” was packed away in other people’s cars, to be used or stored in their house. The garage sale wound up being a huge success and brought my total up to $550, well past my goal!
Exhausted, I cleaned up the remaining items and my husband packed everything up to donate to a local charity. I had met my goal and felt proud. But little did I know there were others (friends, family, neighbors, etc) who noticed my effort and contributed to the cause. The money raised eventually made it to $2,000 which was matched by my husband’s employer, bringing the total donation to READ Nepal up to $4,000! Wow, just like that a small idea ended up being a big help. The funds were donated a week before I boarded the plane to Kathmandu. READ Nepal was delighted with the donation and informed me that the money would be more than enough to open up an entire library and reading center in rural Nepal. The gift was given and I realized that it is the things you do for others in life that make you feel the best.
The beautiful smile of a young child in rural Nepal:
