Where were you?

There is a cheesy country-western song that always makes me cry. No, not the one about the mother about to die giving birth, or the one about the bus crash and the bible and the prostitute and the preacher (although those do it too). The one I am thinking of today is the one about September 11 -- the one that asks where were you when the world stopped spinning that September morn.

I was on my way to work. I used to drive 45 minutes to my job as a reporter at The Allentown Morning Call, a daily newspaper with a Sunday circulation at the time of about 175,000. I used to listen to books on tape during my drive, and during the first half of it that Tuesday morning on September 11th , just around 9 a.m., I guess, the tape got jammed. I pulled into a gas station parking lot to fix it, irritated that my story stopped, annoyed that my smooth-sailing commute to work had stalled.

The radio was an on all-news channel, and when I popped the tape out, I heard that a plane had crashed into one of the twin towers in New York City. The first thing I thought of was how blue the sky was outside my car. Impossibly blue and clear. New York is just two hours away from where we were living, and I figured they were probably having a beautiful morning, too. In my head, I immediately assumed it was a small airplane that somehow went off track, that somehow had some kind of mechanical failure. An accident, I was certain. I didn't worry.

I didn't put the tape back in, though. I kept listening to the news. A few minutes later, they announced a second plane had struck the other tower. I knew even if it was a small plane, it was probably no accident. I called John. He had the news on. He told me they weren't little planes. He was watching as the second plane hit the tower. What is HAPPENING, we wondered. We exchanged I love yous, said goodbye. Then I called my parents (who lived in a time zone two hours earlier and woke them up. I don't think I even said hello. "Turn on the TV," I remember saying.

I then kept driving to work. What else was I to do? And in about 20 minutes, I got there, walking in, asking "did you hear?" Of course they did...a newsroom is a perfect place, but a horrible place, to be when news is happening. Someone had turned the volume on the TV up loud. The police radio chattered. Our computers had AP wire alerts streaming across the top of our screens, an endless barrage of news and updates that got worse and worse as the day went on.

I didn't do much work at first. I remember calling my good friend C., who lived in New York City and worked in New Jersey. She was in shock... I had reached her at work, where she was watching the towers burning (and would later watch them fall from the huge windows in her office across the river). She later told me she had stopped at a bank machine at the bottom of the twin towers that morning. She withdrew some cash at 8:31 a.m. A few minutes later, she got on the train and left. Thankfully. A year or two later, she left New York City for good. She still has the receipt from that day.

AP news alerts kept coming across the screen. A plane had crashed into the Pentagon. There were reports (later proved false) of a car bombing in Washington D.C. My editor was on the phone with the editors in our main office. Reporters and photographers were being sent to New York. The reporter in our D.C. bureau was calling in updates, whatever small bits of news could be found. We watched the first tower collapse. How could a building just fall down? The second tower was still burning.

My editor sent me to talk to a superintendent in the local school district, maybe to see how the schools were going to handle the news. While I was there, one of the secretaries said the second tower collapsed. She said a plane just crashed in western Pennsylvania. Surely not an accident, I thought.

I went back to the office and got more details. At that time, they didn't know what had happened near Shanksville. But I told Tim, my editor, that I could go if the paper wanted someone there. He called up to the main office, and they said to leave right away.

I stopped at home to pick up clothes, food, water, my laptop and camera. I kissed John. I didn't know how long I would be there, or how many other planes might crash.

It was a long drive to Shanksville -- normally about five hours on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I got there faster than that, listening to news the whole way, to world leaders speaking in horror of the acts and in support of the U.S., to the incredible response of New Yorkers who were lining up to give blood, to theories and questions about who could have done this. I didn't listen to my book on tape.

I thought a lot about my brother, a firefighter in Denver, and how the firefighters who had died when the towers fell had little sisters and children and parents and friends, all waiting for word at home, all hoping that somehow they made it out. He and I talked during that drive and several times the next few days when I would report from Shanksville. We kept asking if the other had any news, any insights... but neither of us did.

By about 4:30 p.m., I arrived in Somerset County and I didn't know exactly where to go -- so I stopped at a fire department. The people there had been among the first responders, and said the horror of that site was that there was so LITTLE there... nothing bigger than a briefcase, they told me. They gave me directions and returned to the TV.

I drove to the site. There were reporters, FBI, police, local firefighters, and residents swarming the place. I talked to neighbors, a local pastor, local police, the governor, FBI spokesmen, and whoever else I could find. I got as much "color" as I could for the story, which I dictated to Tim over the phone, line by line, as there was no internet connection in the middle of that grassy hill.

I spent a restless night in the honeymoon suite of a Super 8 hotel near the turnpike (the regular rooms having been sold out), having bad dreams when finally sleep came. Another day at the crash site, another story. A lot of phone calls to John, to my parents, to my brother, to my editor. Because I was at the crash site all day, surrounded by sunshine and light winds, I didn't have the same visual experience most people did -- I only watched TV at night, and so didn't see the same scenes replayed again and again. I have talked to many others who recall being unable to leave the television that week, who saw those images in their heads as they slept. In a sense, I am grateful my own bad dreams only had to do with an empty field... and after one last night in my hotel room with that dream, I headed home. Five long hours. I didn't speed that time.

None of us would ever be the same again. Wherever we were that beautiful morning, something changed for all of us, I think.

I would go back to Shanksville two more times -- in January 2002, when I spent several days there with Cat, the amazing photographer I worked with, talking to the people about how their little town had changed. And then I returned on September 11, 2002, leaving three month old Jack at home with John and John's mom to cover the one-year anniversary stories. The security at the site was astounding... bags searched (with a young FBI agent looking worried about my breast pump -- "is this a weapon?" he asked with all seriousness), mirrors used to check for bombs under the bus that took us to the site, ID required to go anywhere.

We moved away before the second anniversary, but although we've been far from Shanksville and the Pentagon and Ground Zero these last seven years, this day never goes by without thoughts of and prayers for the people whose lives were lost that day, and the people left behind, especially those in that small town in western Pennsylvania, those in New York and Washington like my friend C whose everyday lives were changed by the attacks, and for all of those little sisters (and brothers and children and parents) whose big brothers (and sisters and parents and children) ran into those burning towers.

So that's where I was. Where were you?

***

I wanted to end by pasting in one last story about Shanksville. This is the one story in my six years at the Morning Call that elicited the greatest response from readers. No, it wasn't the stories about corrupt politicians or polluted water or even the funeral for the police dog who died in the line of duty (which did receive an impressive response). Nope. It was the story about a cat -- and the unexpected kindness of strangers -- that drew the most comments to my inbox.

I hope you like it too.

Glimpses

Fate of feline near crash site proves to be a victory for spirit.

By Lisa Kozleski

September 28, 2001|The Morning Call

I met Larry Hoover near a place he called one of the prettiest spots you'll ever find.

It is also a place that has haunted America's dreams since Sept. 11 -- a reclaimed strip mine in western Pennsylvania scarred by a Boeing 757 that plummeted to the ground, moving tons of earth and, with the other terrorist attacks that morning, a nation to tears.

But a small story of hope emerged Monday from this place near Shanksville, Somerset County, one that speaks of the kindness and goodness of people even when confronted with the worst imaginable reality.

The story starts with a cat named Woodie.

Woodie was the beloved companion of Larry and Linda Hoover's 34-year-old son, Barry. Barry lived with Woodie in one of two cottages the Hoovers own in Stoneycreek Township -- a rural area less than a half-hour drive from the couple's home in Shanksville. While Barry made one cottage his home, the other cottage remained an ideal getaway for the elder Hoovers, which is just what they had in mind when they bought them in 1968.

Thankfully, Barry was at work when United Airlines Flight 93 carrying 44 people crashed a few hundred yards away from the cottages. But Woodie -- a 7-year-old mixed-breed stray who Barry said looks like a groundhog, sheds like crazy and drools all the time -- was left alone at home.

Now, the three Hoovers were reluctant to admit their concerns about Woodie in light of the tremendous death and devastation that had been wreaked upon America that day.

"Keep in mind that 44 people died in my back yard," Barry said. "My concern for the families of those victims who were tragically, needlessly and senselessly killed was far greater than the concern of a stray cat I've given a home to for seven years."

After a moment's pause, he added: "But certainly I was concerned. I live alone and she's the first thing I see in the morning. The last thing I thought about each night is whether she had died."

Larry Hoover didn't even mention Woodie's plight to me when I met him the day after the attacks -- although his wife told me later it was on everyone's mind.

Instead, Larry, a pastor at St. Andrew's Lutheran Church in Boswell, about 12 miles from the crash site, told me about the special church services that had been held the night before and about his sermon in which he mentioned Christ's words on the cross: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." He said the country needed to remember that message of forgiveness, even in these tumultuous times.

Whatever worries he had about Woodie, he kept to himself.

But when I met Linda Hoover later that night at the Eat-N-Park in Somerset near Exit 10 of the Turnpike, she told me about their fears. Had something happened to Woodie, she wondered? She was an inside cat, but had she run away after the crash had shattered the windows and blew out the doors? If she was alive, what kind of effect would the crash have on her? Was she alive?

All of the Hoovers said they knew that losing Woodie seemed insignificant compared to the human loss suffered that day -- but love is love any way you look at it. And they couldn't help worrying about Woodie.
They tried to check on her. First, they asked the FBI and state police if they could just go back quickly to the cottages and pick up Woodie, if she were there. But they were told no. The shattered evidence -- tiny shards of metal, plastics, jewelry or teeth -- must first be collected, the investigators said.

Then Barry Hoover had an idea. He had been living at the Holiday Inn in Somerset since the crash and met a state police officer there. A few days after the crash, Barry told him about Woodie -- and the officer agreed to take a bag of cat food to the cottage and leave it open in case she was alive and still in the house.
For 13 days, the Hoovers were kept away from their cottages and Woodie's fate remained uncertain. On Monday, at last, they were allowed to return.

"It looks bad," Linda said. "All the windows are shattered in, and there is debris all over the roof, but not like it had been, I guess, because they had cleaned most of it off for the investigation."

Finally, an FBI agent took Barry inside the cottage. Barry stepped through the area where the door used to be, and said, "Here, kitty, kitty. Here, kitty, kitty."

About 20 seconds later, as Barry made his way into the bedroom, Woodie emerged from her hiding place in a run, looking to be in fine form and fatter than ever.

Relief and happiness washed over Barry. The FBI agents and police, however, were sad to see Woodie leave.

"They said to Barry, "You're not gonna take our cat, are you?"' Linda recalled with a laugh. "And Barry told them, "No, I'm taking MY cat."' And he did with a wide smile on his face, Linda said.

Unknown to Barry or the officer he met at the Holiday Inn, it turns out the FBI and state police had been bringing fresh bottled water to Woodie in addition to Barry's bag of cat food that arrived early in the investigation. Surrounded by death and heartbreaking work, they took time to make sure Barry's beloved cat was OK.

Although man and cat are now reunited, the Hoovers still have plenty to worry about. They are meeting with insurance agents and trying to repair the cottages and struggling like everyone else in their community and around the country with the horror of the terrorist attacks.

But when Linda Hoover called me Tuesday morning with the good news about Woodie, I couldn't help feeling happy -- for one of the few times since the morning of Sept. 11. It doesn't make the loss of so many thousands of lives any less horrific, or the acts of terrorism any less calamitous. I still grieve for the families waiting to reunite with their lost loved ones.

But these days, when stories of hope are hard to come by, I savor Woodie's tale. It speaks of the kindness of strangers and of a life, even a feline life, not lost.

It is a small -- and badly needed -- victory.

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