In Your Own Words: Remembering 9/11

By Wendy Adams.

I remember sitting in the admin office of the Pentagon Athletic Centerlistening to the radio with my co-workers, talking about the planes hitting the Trade Center when my phone rang. It was the supervisor from the membership desk telling us that a member just told her a plane just hit the side of the Pentagon. Well, our first reaction was that rumors were already going around, then not even a minute later, the fire alarm started going off and PFPA (Pentagon Police) came in to clear everyone out of the building. 

As soon as I walked outside the reality of what happened set in.  I could see black smoke billowing over the top of the building from the side of the building the plane hit, people were running around all over the place, PFPA were telling everyone to get away from the building in case another plane was coming (like in New York).  Parents were trying to get to their children that were in the day care on the reservation.  I was scared and anxious. I tried to call my mom ­– she worked in D.C. – but they had shut down the cell phone signal by then.  My friend who worked with me was shaking like a leaf and we just walked straight to the truck and left. Of course they had Interstate 95 shut down completely so we went some random direction, just wanted to get away from the chaos. 

This day was very traumatic for me. I just thank god that I was not over at the actual site of where the plane hit.  Every day I had to walk over near that area (about that time of day also) to get mail from the mailroom. Luckily I was procrastinating that morning and was not over there. A couple days after, I was over there to get the mail and saw down the burnt hallways and just got goose bumps. The building smelled like smoke several weeks also, a constant reminder of the tragedy of that day.   

Editor's Note: This is the first in our series of first-person perspectives on memories of 9/11. Do you have a story you would like to share? Leave a comment or e-mail laurenj (at) patch.com.