Dale Says

We woke to the sound of our phone ringing. It was Patty’s aunt Maxine calling from her home in Tulsa.

“Do you know where your father is?” she asked Patty.

“I thought he was with you,” Patty told her.

Maxine had dropped Paul off at the Tulsa Airport earlier that morning. He was flying to San Francisco to spend a couple of days with us before we were to go with him and Patty’s brother, Allan, on an Alaskan cruise. Maxine had driven home, turned on the news, and heard that a plane had flown into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York and that all U.S. flights were grounded.

We jumped out of bed and turned on the TV just in time to see a plane fly into the other World Trade Center tower. It was eerie — like watching a really bad disaster movie. We couldn’t believe it was really happening and I remember being frightened. No one knew how many more attacks to expect, and we were helpless to do anything about it.

Within an hour we received a phone call from Patty’s father. His plane had taken off, reached cruising altitude, then been summoned to land at the nearest airport, which was Wichita, Kansas. He had found a room in a motel there and was holed up in his room, watching the developments on TV.

We tried to reach Allan. As a pilot for Southwest, he was scheduled to fly out of Pheonix that day but his flight, like all others in the U.S., was grounded.

We called our jobs to see if everything was OK there and whether we should go to work. A recorded message told us not to come in, and to check again later in the day.

I was scheduled to speak to a group of company public relations executives from around the world at a hotel in San Francisco. I assumed the meeting was still on, so I dressed and had Patty drive me to the hotel. On the way, we noticed that many homes and businesses had already put up American flags, in a sign of patriotism and unity.

When I arrived at the hotel I found the meeting had changed into a monitoring session. Large TV screens lined the room and each was tuned to a different network, following the developments. We watched as a third plane crashed into the Pentagon, then as a fourth went down in rural Pennsylvania.

Several people were on phones, trying to determine whether any company employees were on the planes that had gone down (the two that were flown into the World Trade Center were headed for San Francisco) or in the World Trade Center buildings. My job was to try to figure out whether any of our banks or competitors had lost employees. I drafted letters to the CEOs of our two major competitors, expressing condolences and offering help, and then I began running Internet searches to see if I could find out what buildings had been damaged.

We finally called it a day mid-afternoon. Staff from San Francisco headed home to be with their families; those from out-of-town went to their rooms to call their families and monitor the news.

For the next few days we were glued to our televisions. It was a period of fear, anger, and uncertainty, but also a time of harmony. Everyone was friendly and concerned.

Looking back, the events on and after September 11 were extraordinary. For a few weeks the U.S. pulled together like never before. That unity is now gone, but in its wake is a knowledge that when we have to we can act together with a common purpose. Following such a sad and tragic series of events that’s a comforting feeling.