NINE ELEVEN REMEMBERED

 There's a little town north of Iowa City where I lived in a house I bought on Main Street.  Every morning I got up and drove about 25 miles to my job. I was the librarian in a community hospital.  It was my second library job since graduating from Library school.  The first one was at a library in a midwestern university.

The Catholic based hospital had two librarians.  There was Sister Angelica--the librarian for the patient library; and me, the librarian for the medical library --that the doctors and nurses used. 

The job of a librarian in a community hospital is far different from the job of a reference librarian in a major university.  It is much quieter.  You work alone except for a few volunteers and a paid assistant.  For several years, I came in every morning like clockwork, and opened up the small library, and closed it at the end of the day.  

On 9/11/2001, I drove in from small town, USA as usual.  I came to the back door of the library and unlocked it, then turned on all the lights and warmed up the xerox machine and booted the computer.  The back door to the library led to the Family Clinic.   There was a small waiting room with chairs and a television.  I found myself passing through it a couple of times a day.  On this particular day, I barely glanced at the TV screen or noticed the video being played at around 8:30 am.  

Later in the morning, it came to my attention that something had happened in New York City.  And the video being played again and again was of an airplane crashing into a high rise building, and a small hole in the side of the tower.

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That's about all I remember of where I was and what I was doing.  Not all that exciting.  It really took a few days for the implications of the event to sink in for me.  Being there in North Liberty where I lived and in Cedar Rapids where I worked, I felt fairly removed from it all.  Now, I know that many Iowans went out to help with the devastation.  and I have empathy for those who saw an icon of their city--the World Trade Tower, turn into rubble.   And I know about 3000 died.

There was a strange thing that happened that morning.  Maybe 3:30 am lying in my bed, my eyes opened suddenly from being sound asleep.  I heard some sort of humming and couldn't figure out what it was.  It didn't come from inside the house, it came from outside, it sounded like generators being turned on.  And yet, I was in North Liberty, a small town so very quiet in the middle of the night all you would hear is the silence.  And for a brief moment I pictured the engines of a jet and had the most ominous feeling, and then I fell back to sleep.

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WHAT HAPPENED ON 9/11/2001

The September 11 attacks were a series of airline hijackings and suicide attacks committed in 2001 by 19 terrorists associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda. It was the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil; nearly 3,000 people were killed. The attacks involved the hijacking of four planes, three of which were used to strike significant U.S. sites. American Airlines flight 11 and United Airlines flight 175 were flown into the World Trade Center’s north and south towers, respectively, and American Airlines flight 77 hit the Pentagon. United Airlines flight 93 crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers attempted to overpower the hijackers. The plane was believed to be headed to the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C.

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The attacks had a profound and lasting impact on the country, especially regarding its foreign and domestic policies. U.S. Pres. George W. Bush declared a global “war on terrorism,” and lengthy wars in Afghanistan and Iraq followed. Meanwhile, security measures within the United States were tightened considerably, especially at airports. To help facilitate the domestic response, Congress quickly passed the controversial USA PATRIOT Act, which significantly expanded the search and surveillance powers of federal law-enforcement and intelligence agencies. Additionally, a cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security was created.

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The exact number of victims—particularly the number of those killed at the World Trade Center—is not definitively known. However, the official death toll, after numerous revisions and not including the 19 terrorists, was set at 2,977 people. At the World Trade Center in New York City, 2,753 people died, of whom 343 were firefighters. The death toll at the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., was 184, and 40 individuals died outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

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Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is considered the mastermind of the attacks, though Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the operational planner. Mohammed came up with the tactical innovation of using hijacked planes to attack the United States, and al-Qaeda provided the personnel, money, and logistical support to execute the operation. Mohammed Atta was selected to head the operation. He and 18 other terrorists, most of whom were from Saudi Arabia, established themselves in the United States, where some received commercial flight training. All 19 hijackers died in the attacks, bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in 2011, and Mohammed was captured in 2003.   www.brittanica.com

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