A Flag At Half-Mast

11 September 2001 – Tuesday

5:46 a.m. Pacific Standard Time 

Healdsburg, California

            An indelible mark branded on our souls today a day that would be like no other, a day of fear and uncertainty, a day a war was born. The impact felt throughout the entire world, destroyed my sense of safety; an attack on our homeland was unthinkable but was unfolded right before my eyes. As dawn slowly crawled by darkness I woke to the routine of another day, and staggered into the kitchen still half asleep my body wrapped in an old green terrycloth bathrobe sizes too large, and turned on the television to see if the world was still there like I do every morning.  As I grabbed my diet lemon yogurt from the refrigerator, I sat down on the wooden kitchen chair and tucked my feet around the worn rungs to get them off the cold tile floor waiting for the old Wedgwood stove oven to begin to warm the room. I watched San Francisco’s Channel 7 news, which was broadcasting a picture of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. There was a live shot and an announcement that a small plane had struck one of the towers at 8:46 EST. That was interesting news and jolted me to the reality of the day. It made sense to me because the Towers were so tall. I had not long ago bought a book on the Towers while browsing around in Costco because I thought they were indeed an engineering marvel. I had read that Tower One was 1709 feet including its antenna, and Tower Two was 1362 feet. The news media blasted out their opinions and more facts that not too many of us knew or really at that time even cared about. I rushed through the house to wake up my husband, Lou, as I heard the announcers tell the television audience that in 1945 an Army Air Force B-25 crashed into the 80^th floor of the Empire State Building. It had to be a similar accident.  What else could it be? What had really happened was unconscionable. I was barely awake and these facts and thoughts of terrorism were cascading through my brain running stress throughout my entire system. For a fleeting moment I thought I might be dreaming and would wake up and everything would be okay.  I was confused and worried. I had not experienced WWII and didn’t know the fear people lived through at that time in our history. But, an attack on America was unthinkable. Yet, here it was no warnings, no nothing. This couldn’t be happening!

            The real story quickly unfolded. Terrorists had used American Airlines Flight 11 Boeing 767 non-stop from Boston to Los Angeles as a missile. It turned south from Albany, New York and headed to lower Manhattan and at 8:45 a.m. crashed into the north tower causing an enormous fire and explosion on impact. At