9/11

 Extract from my Family Christmas Letter in 2001

No mention of 2001 would be complete without talking about the murder and mayhem of 9/11. I was usually up early as the princess had to be out of the house by 7;00am to get to school for Hélèna's 7:30am start. I was up somewhat earlier than usual at about 5:40 and unusually for me I put the TV on as I was making a coffee. Whatever it was I was watching, one of the News Channels, there was a sudden interruption just after 5:45. It said that there were reports of a plane crashing into one of the Twin Towers. Nobody seemed to quite know what had happened, the feeling was that it was a tourist sightseeing plane that had clipped a wing.

I must confess that my initial thoughts were that it was sad; but that I hoped it would all be sorted in time for our planned trip to New York the following summer. I was also starting to get some messages over our internal messaging system, no social media back then, from UK colleagues. The consensus seemed to be that the “yanks’ were all getting rather hysterical about things. Then the second plane struck at 9:03am (6:03 in San Jose) and it all went very sombre. It was somewhat more important than our planned trip to New York. Whilst we were all trying to digest what was happening at 9:37 (6:37 for us) the plane struck the Pentagon.

Then we were getting calls from parents of Hélèna’s friends – would school be open today? I think I was called as I was the “terrorist expert”, London and the UK having been struck by the IRA. I said that it was several thousand miles away and so we should continue as normal or as near normal as we could. There was school that day although, if I recall correctly, there were no sports after school.

I went into the office and they were streaming TV into various places and they day was sent talking and speculating about what was happening. It was a strange and scary time. Like many employers IBM put an initial ban on business trips without senior management approval. Various planned events such as kick-off meetings were cancelled although later reinstated.

My thoughts and prayers for all those killed and affected by the atrocity