Freedom Tower NYC

Remembering 9/11: In a Series of Monochromatic Photographs

“A powerful monochromatic image is composed of a gradient of a single color, and has an emphasis on texture and composition. While the images I’ve shared in this post are not entirely monochromatic, they show the power that a simple color palette can have in a photograph”. – WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge Host, Jen Hooks

September 11, 2001.  Fourteen years ago today.  How long it seems since that fateful terrifying day.  How fast time has gone that it seems as if it was just yesterday.  The images and feelings of shock, anger, horror, sadness, fear and what ifs will forever be engrained in our minds.  The images and emotions are things that we will never be able to forget and will never stop seeing when we close our eyes.   The fruitless human lives that were lost.  Our freedom imprisoned.  Our hearts never the same.  Our lives forsaken.

Today, I want to honor the people whose lives were lost on that horrific day and every single day in this cruel world. The people of Syria dying in search for freedom and a better life. The endless murders and shootings of innocent human beings. All lives that are lost, everywhere on this planet due to another human being.

Will there ever be peace? Will the countless mass murders – many happening here in the United States – ever be curtailed? In a world of violence will we ever truly be free?

Freedom Tower NYC

1 World Trade Center Tower or “The Freedom Tower” is the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere, in July 2013. She looms directly behind the 9/11 Memorial.

“When we meet real tragedy in life, we can react in two ways – either by losing hope and falling into self-destructive habits, or by using the challenge to find our inner strength”.  – Dalai Lama

9/11 Memorial

Each name of a person who died on 9/11 is inscribed along the side of the memorials.

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9/11 Memorial Museum NYC

Remembering even when its hard: 9/11 Memorial Museum

Last week, I wrote about my emotional visit to the 9/11 Memorial in New York City.  It was a post that I sat on for a long time, not even sure how to begin to put my feelings into words. I realize that even thirteen years later, 9/11 still feels in some way like yesterday and the fear, emotions and horror of that day still remain vivid and raw within my soul. I didn’t lose anyone close to me that day. But many people around the world did. It is a day that we all would rather forget but can’t and should not.

Seeing the newly opened 9/11 Memorial Museum was very hard. It left me numb after walking through the remains of life and civilization within the very foundation where the two Twin Towers once stood. Yet, I will argue that it is a place that everyone should see and also that although the content and stories shared within the museum walls are tragic it also is done with hope, pride and resilience. A remembrance of the thousands of innocent and brave people who lost their lives that day and the ones that still remain alive.

Freedom Tower NYC

1 World Trade Center Tower or “The Freedom Tower” is the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere, in July 2013. She looms directly behind the 9/11 Memorial.

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Explaining the unexplainable to my children

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.

Copy of “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.

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Remembering September 11th

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.

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Article below from AIRMAN

http://airman.dodlive.mil/washington%E2%80%99s-defenders/

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.”

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