16 Years after 9/11/2001

[Charlie MacPherson]

16 years ago today, I dodged a big bullet.

Working as a sales manager covering most of the US and Canada, I would normally have boarded a Monday morning flight from Logan Airport in Boston to fly to work with with one of my many regional reps around the country.

American Airlines Flight 11 was one I took frequently to work with our company's rep in LA. But by the grace of God, I flew out of Providence, RI that day as I was working with a different rep in Oklahoma City.

As I was making a connection in Chicago O'Hare, an untold number of flights were being forced down.

Our flight was about to land - flaps down, gear down and almost on the runway, when the engines screamed, suddenly at full throttle and the landing gear came up with a loud "clunk".

WOW, I said to myself. I wonder what we almost hit. I wonder how close I just came to dying in a fireball on the runway.

Our United pilot flew that aircraft like a Formula 1 race car THROUGH (not over) downtown Chicago. I knew something was very wrong when I looked out of the aircraft window and saw offices inside skyscrapers - at my eye level.

The pilot, upon touching down, said "well, I'm sure you saw we went around on our landing. Air traffic control seems to think that we can stop this airplane in less distance that we do, so we went around".

Nothing yet said about the murderous, evil terrorist attack that was unfolding in New York. We had a few more minutes if blissful ignorance.

But just a few.

As I was waiting to "de-plane" (a term that I've always thought was weird), I checked my cell phone to get flight updates on my connection - and the phone rang.

"THANK GOD YOU'RE OK!!" My wife exclaimed.

I wondered how in the world she knew that we had a near miss on the approach to O'Hare. She's pretty amazing, but I had no idea that she could tell that I was that close to buying the farm from 1,500 miles away.

She kept trying to tell me that there had been a terrible accident in New York, but all I could focus on was getting out of that aircraft and making my very tight connection to Oklahoma City.

She finally said "just stop at a bar in the terminal. You'll understand." Sure, sweetie. I'm on it - I have to run!

She must have thought that I was more dense than a block of lead.

I made my way from one terminal to the next, but I suddenly knew something was very wrong when a complete stranger stopped me at the top of the escalator and said "Did you see it?? It's AWFUL!!"

As instructed by my wife, I made my way to a terminal bar where the news was showing the awful "accident" of a commercial aircraft flying into the first of the twin towers.

We hadn't figured it out yet. How could a commercial pilot be so careless?

There were announcements about many flight cancellations, so I made my way to the Continental Club (a nice perk for us road warriors), where I sat down to call my wife and then my pastor - after dozens of dialing attempts.

The cell towers were already overwhelmed and could not handle the volume of calls.

And then I watched on the TV as another aircraft hit the second tower.

We were under attack and I knew it. And I figured that O'Hare Airport would be a pretty good target.

I called my Chicago rep, Janet, and hitched a ride to her next appointment - mostly to get the heck out of what I perceived as place with a big bulls eye on top of it.

Thankfully, Janet hadn't left Chicago yet. She picked me up and not knowing what else we should do, we drove west toward her appointment in Des Moines, Iowa.

There was no playbook for a situation like this. We really didn't know what we were supposed to do. Our relationship changed from manager and subordinate to two people who had no idea what to do.

So we drove to Des Moines.

We were making good time, listening intently to every radio news broadcast that we could hear. For hours on end.

We both kept repeating, "I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it...". Over and over, until we both got sick of hearing each other - and ourselves.

And then we drove in silence.

I'll never forget driving through the corn and wheat fields of Iowa - fields of grain waving in the breeze as far as the eye could see. And almost out of nowhere, there was an overpass.

And on top of that overpass, all alone, there was one man, waving a big American flag back and forth as if to say, "No matter what you rotten, evil bastards do, we are AMERICANS and we will stand together!"

That scene still makes me choke up every time I try to describe it. It was the most profound statement that one lone man, overlooking one lone wheat field has ever made.

The next day, in spite of reports of federal agents armed with automatic weapons at every airport, I made my way to the Des Moines airport and to the Hertz counter.

I gambled that if those agents were really there, they would probably not shoot an unarmed man, who was only hoping to get home.

Hertz had ONE car left - and as it turns out, it had a Massachusetts license plate. That was a little ironic, but it was a car and it had wheels - and to Hertz's credit, they didn't gouge me on the price. (Thanks, Hertz. I have a long memory for these kinds of things.)

I was on my way home.

I stopped at the first Radio Shack I could find for some alligator clips and at a local department store for an American flag.

I used the former to clip the latter to the rear window of my rented Ford Taurus. I spread that flag across the real window and left it there for the duration.

It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. It still does.

I drove for hours on end, noticing that the skies were completely empty. Not a single aircraft in the sky. For the entire two days of my drive.

I left Des Moines at 4:30 AM and drove straight through to somewhere near Hartford, CT about 18 hours later - after several brief naps at rest stops along the way.

Along the way, I prayed.

Believe it or not, I actually prayed for Osama bin Laden. It went something like this:

"Lord, you tell us to pray for our enemies. You didn't say that we have to like it. So I pray for the soul of Osama bin Laden. I also pray that You will execute your justice, with whatever mercy you see fit."

I asked for God's blessing on the survivors and their families as well as for the victims. Especially for the first responders, who had been dealing with horrors that I couldn't even imagine.

I prayed for our country and for our government. And I prayed for our troops, who I knew would be delivering what I hoped would be the most devastating of counter-punches in the weeks to come.

In the days that followed, I was buoyed by the incredible singularity of purpose that seemed to enfold the entire country. Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, black, white, red and yellow - all of us.

Every single one of us.

We were all united in supporting our fellow Americans in New York, Washington DC and the families of those heroes who brought down Flight 93 in the empty field in Shanksville, PA.

Every single one of us.

We volunteered. We donated. We enlisted. We served.

My plea on this 16th anniversary of the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor is that we remember and recapture that unity we felt on those first days after the attack.

We are still Americans. And we need to stand together as one, just as we did on that awful day in 2001.

May God have mercy on us all and may he bless our troops as they work to extinguish the hateful, twisted ideology that seeks to kill us all.

God bless America, my home sweet home.

Let's Roll.