I think just about everyone has a 9/11 story, or at least everyone who was old enough to know what was going on that day. A story of what they saw, what they experienced, what they felt. Most of these events took place months after that fateful September day, but I still think of this as my 9/11 story.
On the day itself, I was more than 10,000 miles from New York City, Arlington, and Somerset County. I was a 26-year old Navy lieutenant serving onboard the aircraft carrier USS ENTERPRISE, and we were crossing the Indian Ocean on our way back home to Norfolk, Virginia. We were in the final weeks of what had been a memorable deployment: months of conducting training exercises in the Mediterranean frequently interrupted by relaxing (and sometimes rowdy) port visits in Portsmouth, Cannes, Rhodes, Palma de Mallorca, Lisbon, and Naples, followed by a few tense but uneventful months in the Persian Gulf.
We didn’t know it then but this was the last relatively care-free “see the world” deployment that U.S. Navy ships would enjoy. The ships in our battle group worried about security--the USS COLE had been attacked by suicide bombers while docked in Yemen the previous October--but our Sailors and officers were allowed a degree of freedom ashore that was about to disappear for decades.
We learned about the attacks in NYC. I entered CVIC (the carrier’s intelligence center) after coming back from working out in the ship’s gym. Everyone’s eyes were locked on the TV. “A plane flew into the World Trade Center!” I immediately thought of a small Cessna whose pilot had a heart attack or other unfortunate health event. Then I saw the TV. Like most of the rest of the entire world, we were shocked and fearful for our friends and families back home. The TV then cut to billowing smoke coming from what looked like the Pentagon.
My immediate fear was for my boyfriend, now husband, who was serving as an aide-de-camp to an admiral stationed at the Washington Navy Yard but who frequently commuted across town to the Pentagon with his boss for meetings. I was able to reach him at his desk via POTS (plain old telephone service - yes, really) and was relieved to hear his voice and learn that he was safe.
Others I knew in DC were not so lucky. With the deployment nearing its end, I had received orders for my next assignment months ago, part of the Navy headquarters staff in the Pentagon. I’d been communicating on and off with the lieutenant I’d be replacing in my new job, and was horrified to hear from him that his department, located near the impact site on the southwest side of the Pentagon, was missing 29 personnel.
Besides shock and sadness, the strongest feeling everyone on the ENTERPRISE shared was frustration, that we were hopeless to help, halfway across the world from our home. We were almost frantic to do something, anything, to help or fight or somehow contribute to the events of that day. We wouldn’t have to wait too long for the chance to do so. Immediately upon hearing of the attacks, the captain of the ship came on the 1MC: “Terrorists have attacked our homeland. We are turning around.” and a roar of cheers echoed through the ship. For the next few weeks, we waited in the Indian Ocean, preparing and awaiting orders. I kept busy in my job as a targeteer and #2 officer on the team responsible for target mensuration for the air wing and planning Tomahawk missile missions.
On October 7, our waiting was done. We launched six waves of Tomahawk missile strikes followed by precision air strikes against Taliban and Al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan.
Eventually the battle group was ordered to sail home to Virginia. It had been seven months since we left, and the world was a different place.
By December, I’d moved into my first apartment in Arlington, walking distance to my new assignment at the Pentagon. 9/11 was inescapable there, the physical wreck of the impact zone, the increased security measures everywhere, the sense of shock and loss that was still in the air. I was in awe of how my new colleagues were stoically carrying on despite the losses they had suffered. They were making regular visits to the victims’ families, and the families visited our office. I held the newborn daughter of one of our shipmates who would never meet her.
My immediate boss was a Rear Admiral, Russian scholar, Submariner, Cold War hero who had just taken over not long before. He was the best mentor a young officer could have. The War on Terror was underway and the Joint Chiefs were furiously planning and strategizing. As I took notes in his daily Council of Captains meetings, he would routinely turn around and say, “do you know what ___ is, LT Booth?” And when I didn’t, which was often as I was a junior officer on a senior staff, he would explain it to me in detail. When I asked for leave to be part of a sword arch in my friend’s wedding because he had lost several of his groomsmen in the twin towers, the admiral asked if I had a sword (I did) and offered me his if I didn’t. As another officer described him, he was a prince.
The office where I worked was OPNAV N51, the Navy’s Strategy and Policy Division, part of the larger OPNAV N3/N5 (Navy Operations, Plans, and Strategy). After 9/11, it was relocated to a cramped, previously demolished section of the Pentagon, which we lovingly called the “gated community.” Our staff worked long, arduous, emotional days simultaneously re-writing Navy strategy documents and plans that would shape the next decades while caring for the families of our lost shipmates. But in true Navy fashion, with a sense of humor when possible. Some of the officers would take turns “green lighting” the surviving spouses, a concept where you call someone’s house and if they pick up, you yell “green light!” and you and all your buddies raid their house to party. The military has many traditions, including how to deal with the deaths of young colleagues. The Navy family is real.
Across the hall from my apartment lived a Muslim family. We didn’t interact much, but I would occasionally pass the man in the hallway as I walked to work. I remember feeling uneasy, and getting looks of suspicion as I would walk toward the elevator. I suppose my uniform didn’t exactly invite friendly banter. Often there would be somewhat large gatherings in that tiny apartment.
For those who remember the days and weeks after 9/11, the entire country was on edge, but especially Washington, DC. Anthrax-filled envelopes found their way through the mail to the offices of lawmakers. There was “intel” that there could be “sleeper cells” planning the next attack. Whether watching the news or riding the Metro, we were told “if you see something, say something.” I decided that I would ask my boss for advice on what I should do.
That morning, I walked into the admiral’s office and asked if he had a few minutes for me to bounce a situation off him. I told him about my Muslim neighbors in the apartment complex just feet from the Pentagon. I told him about the gatherings and the suspicious looks. I asked what I should do.
Do you know what he said?
Remember, he had just lost 4 of his own Sailors and dozens of other close colleagues in our office in the worst terrorist attack in American history just weeks before.
Do you know what he said?
“They’re probably scared.”
Those gatherings - comfort from the surrounding suspicious, fearful, hateful glances (and worse). Those perceived looks of suspicion - fear that I would do the exact thing I was doing.
As I walked home after work that night, his answer looped over and over in my head. As I walked inside my apartment, the only thing I could think of doing was to bake. I baked oatmeal crisp cookies, the kind my older sister and I used to bake when I was growing up. And then I took them over to my neighbors.
It was such a simple, if inadequate, gesture. I don’t remember what we said to each other, if anything, but I remember we both gave smiles of relief.
The next day, the man brought over a box of sesame rolled dates.
We never really spoke after that, but we’d always smile at each other as we passed in the hall.
That conversation with the admiral could have gone one of two ways. I shudder to think what I would have done had he not shocked me with the humanity of my neighbor.
Bake the cookies.
In Remembrance
CAPT Gerald F. Decanto, USN, 44, Sandwich, Massachusetts
CAPT Robert E. Dolan, USN, 43, Alexandria, Virgina
CAPT Larry Getzfred, USN, 57, Elgin, Nebraska
CDR William H. Donovan, USN, 37, Nunda, New York
CDR Patrick Dunn, USN, 39, Springfield, Virginia
LCDR David L. Wiliams, USN, San Rafael, California
CDR Robert A. Schlegel, USN, 38, Gray, Maine
CAPT Jack D. Punches, USN (Ret.), 51, Clifton, Virginia
LCDR Eric A. Cranford, USN, 32, Drexel, North Carolina
LCDR Robert R. Elseth, USN, 37, Vestal, New York
LCDR Patrick J. Murphy, USN, 38, Chicago, Illinois
LCDR Ronald J. Vaulk, USN, 37, Mount Airy, Maryland
LT Scott Lamana, USN, 31, Alexandria, Virginia
LT Jonas M. Panik, USN, 26, State College, Pennsylvania
LT Darin H. Pontell, USN, 26, Columbia, Maryland
ITC Gregg H. Smallwood, USN, 44, Overland Park, Kansas
ITC Donald M. Young, USN, 41, Roanoke, Virginia
IT1 Johnnie Doctor, USN, 32, Hampton, South Carolina
ET1 Ronald J. Hemenway, USN, 37, Bolling Air Force Base, D.C.
AW1 Joseph J. Pycior, Jr, USN, 39, Arlington, Virginia
IT1 Marsha Ratchford, USN, 38, Detroit, Michigan
OS2 Nehamon Lyons, IV, USN, 29, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
DM2 Michael Noeth, USN, 30, New York, New York
SK3 Jamie L. Fallon, USN, 23, Towson, Maryland
Mr. Julian T. Cooper, 39, Washington, D.C.
Ms. Judith L. Jones, 53, Woodbridge, Virginia
Mr. James T. Lynch, Jr., 55, Washington, D.C.
Mr. Khang Ngoc Nguyen, 41, Fairfax, Virginia
