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To my daughter, Eliza, and to all the children affected by 9/11. I hope this book helps you understand the world in which you live.
Author’s Note
Nearly every American above a certain age remembers precisely where they were on September 11, 2001. What began as an ordinary day became the deadliest terrorist attack in world history and the deadliest attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor, shocking and terrifying the global community, exposing us to unimaginable tragedy and evil, while also reminding us of the strength, bravery, and power of the human spirit. Heroes quite literally emerged from the ashes, and the hours and decisions that followed defined not just a generation but our modern era.
All told, 2,606 people died at the World Trade Center in New York City and another 125 at the Pentagon; 206 people died when their planes—American Airlines Flight 77, United Airlines Flight 175, American Airlines Flight 11, flight numbers now permanently retired and part of history—were hijacked and crashed into the centers of America’s financial and military power; another 40 died in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, as brave passengers and crew wrestled control of United Flight 93 back from the hijackers. The 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York City honors a precise tally of 2,983 casualties, including six killed in 1993, when the World Trade Center was attacked for the first time by the forerunners of the terror group that would ultimately bring these buildings down in just 102 minutes eight years later. The 9/11 victims represented not merely Americans but citizens of more than 90 nations.
The toll obviously stretched beyond the dead alone; more than 3,000 children lost a parent on 9/11, including some 100 children who were born in the subsequent months and would never meet their fathers. Upwards of 6,000 people were injured, and many more would face injuries—some physical, some psychological, some eventually fatal—stemming from the recovery work. Far beyond the official numbers, however, the attacks affected nearly every American alive that day—and hundreds of millions, if not billions, beyond our shores, as news of the attacks was broadcast the world over.
I’ve spent three years collecting the stories of those who lived through and experienced 9/11—where they were, what they remember, and how their lives changed. The book that follows is based on more than 500 oral histories, conducted by me as well as dozens of other historians and journalists over the last seventeen years. I’m deeply grateful for their work and their understanding that history would want—and need—these stories recorded.
Collectively, these narratives help make sense of a day that we, as a country and as a people, are still trying to process. In her oral history of the day, Eve Butler-Gee, who on 9/11 was a clerk in the U.S. House of Representatives, remarked on how fascinated Americans are by their own memories of that day: “I’ve noticed we don’t listen to each other’s stories. We need to tell our story. Someone will start saying, ‘Well, I was such-and-such,’ and the other person will interrupt and talk over and say, ‘Well, I was so-and-so.’ The shock, in many ways, is still embedded in our memories that this thing happened on our shores, in the places where we felt the safest.” Her observation rang true to me throughout this project, as every mention of 9/11 to friends or acquaintances immediately prompted people to pour out their own stories, often with heart-wrenching intimacy. This book is an attempt to listen, to hear others’ stories, to know what it was like to experience the day firsthand, to wrestle with the confusion and the terror.
The Only Plane in the Sky is not meant to be a precise account of how and why September 11 occurred; groups like the 9/11 Commission devoted years of work and millions of dollars to provide those answers. Instead this book intends to capture how Americans lived that day, how the attacks in New York City, at the Pentagon, and in the skies over Somerset County, Pennsylvania, rippled across lives from coast to coast, from the Twin Towers to an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida, and how government and military officials on Capitol Hill, at the White House, in mountain bunkers, at air traffic control centers, and in the cockpit of fighter planes responded in an unprecedented moment to unimaginable horrors.
To construct this book, I worked for two years with Jenny Pachucki, an oral historian who has dedicated her career to stories of September 11 and who located for me about 5,000 relevant oral histories collected and archived around the country. We closely read or listened to about 2,000 of those stories to identify the voices and memories featured here. As part of that, I’ve drawn upon interviews and exhaustive work from the National September 11 Memorial & Museum and the 9/11 Tribute Museum (New York City), the Flight 93 National Memorial (near Shanksville, Pennsylvania), the September 11th Education Trust, the U.S. House of Representatives Historian’s Office, C-SPAN, the Arlington County (Virginia) Public Library, the Fire Department of the City of New York, the Historical Office of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Coast Guard, the 9/11 Commission, the Museum of Chinese in America (New York City), Columbia University, Stony Brook University, and other repositories, as well as a host of snippets and transcripts culled from news articles, magazine profiles, pamphlets, videos, documentaries, collections ranging from the trial exhibits of 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui to a compilation published by America Online of its users’ thoughts, posts, and memories of 9/11, and countless other books, including three that deserve specific mention for their usefulness: Mitchell Fink and Lois Mathias’s terrific 2002 collection of oral histories, Never Forget, as well as two works focused on the 9/11 New York maritime boatlift, Mike Magee’s All Available Boats and Jessica DuLong’s Dust to Deliverance. To supplement those existing archival primary sources, I’ve also collected several hundred interviews, personal reflections, and stories myself, about 75 of which are featured here. I’m grateful to all who shared their stories.
Among these hundreds of memories collected as early as September 2001 and as recently as the spring of 2019, the chronologies and stories don’t always line up neatly; perspectives differ, and images blur with time. Traumatic memories especially are fallible. I’ve done my best to line things up according to the facts and timelines available. All interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity. Throughout the book, all titles, occupations, locations, and ranks are accurate to that moment. Additionally, for ease of reading and historical accuracy, I’ve edited some quotations to make verb tenses consistent and made minor factual corrections—for instance, where a speaker misremembered a name or title, such as calling the speaker pro tem the “president pro tem,” or misstating what floor the sky lobbies in the Trade Center were on—and standardized some place names, code words, and other references that would otherwise be more confusing than illuminating.
While The Only Plane in the Sky is comprehensive, it is not complete. These stories capture only a single moment in time, and part of what makes 9/11 so poignant is learning how people fared in the days, weeks, months, and years thereafter. (Two key players on that day—Bernard Kerik, commissioner of the New York Police Department, and Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert—would both end up in prison, for instance.) As the nation united in solidarity after the attacks, it also descended into two wars that continue to this day and reshaped multiple corners of the world; thus 9/11 remains a daily presence in our national politics a
nd our international geopolitics, and it fundamentally changed the way we live, travel, and interact with one another. As Rosemary Dillard, an American Airlines manager in D.C. whose husband, Eddie, was aboard one of the hijacked flights, said, “I still think that we all walk on eggshells. I don’t think that the young people who will be [reading] this will know the same freedom I knew growing up.”
Today, that new generation Dillard mentions barely remembers the day itself; 2018 marked the first year military recruits born after 9/11 were deployed to war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the fall of 2019 will mark the entrance of the first college class born after the attacks. That passage of time makes remembering 9/11 all the more important. Indeed, to understand all that came after, we must first understand what it was like to live through the drama and tragedy that began under the crisp, clear blue skies of Tuesday, September 11, 2001.
Aboard the International Space Station
On August 12, 2001, NASA astronaut Frank Culbertson arrived at the International Space Station aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. He would live and work aboard the Space Station for 125 days. On September 11, 2001, he was the only American off the planet.
Commander Frank Culbertson, astronaut, NASA: On September the 11th, 2001, I called the ground, and my flight surgeon Steve Hart came on. I said, “Hey Steve, how’s it going?” He said, “Well, Frank, we’re not having a very good day down here on Earth.” He began to describe to me what was happening in New York—the airplanes flown into the World Trade Center, another airplane flown into the Pentagon. He said, “We just lost another airplane somewhere in Pennsylvania. We don’t know where or what’s happening.”
I looked at the laptop that has our world map on it, and I saw that we were coming across southern Canada. In a minute we were going to be over New England. I raced around, found a video camera and a window facing in the right direction.
About 400 miles away from New York City, I could clearly see the city. It was a perfect weather day all over the United States, and the only activity I could see was this big black column of smoke coming out of New York City, out over Long Island, and over the Atlantic. As I zoomed in with a video camera, I saw this big gray blob basically enveloping the southern part of Manhattan. I was seeing the second tower come down. I assumed tens of thousands of people were being hurt or killed. It was horrible to see my country under attack.
We had 90 minutes to set up for the next pass across the United States. We set up every camera we could. I said, “Guys, we’re gonna take pictures of everything we can see as we come across the U.S.” An hour and a half later, we crossed Chicago. I was looking all around for any evidence of further attacks. I could see all the way to Houston. In a few minutes, we crossed Washington, D.C., directly over the Pentagon. I could look straight down and see the gash on the side of it. I could see the lights of the rescue vehicles, the smoke of the fires. Looking north, I could clearly see New York City and the column of smoke.
Every orbit, we kept trying to see more of what was happening. One of the most startling effects was that within about two orbits, all the contrails normally crisscrossing the United States had disappeared because they had grounded all the airplanes and there was nobody else flying in U.S. airspace except for one airplane that was leaving a contrail from the central U.S. toward Washington. That was Air Force One heading back to D.C. with President Bush.
“Good days and bad days”
* * *
September 10th
Monday, September 10th, in New York City began with the rededication of a Bronx firehouse, home to Engine 73 and Ladder 42. Mayor Rudolph “Rudy” Giuliani, Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen, and Chief of Department Peter Ganci listened as Fire Department Chaplain Father Mychal Judge offered a homily for the renovated firehouse.
Father Mychal Judge, chaplain, FDNY: Good days. And bad days. Up days. Down days. Sad days. Happy days. But never a boring day on this job. You do what God has called you to do. You show up. You put one foot in front of another. You get on the rig and you go out and you do the job. Which is a mystery. And a surprise. You have no idea when you get on that rig. No matter how big the call. No matter how small. You have no idea what God is calling you to. But he needs you. He needs me. He needs all of us.
Across the country, Monday was a regular workday, the beginning of fall, the first full week after Labor Day, and for many communities the first day of school after the quiet summer doldrums of August. Reporters and news broadcasters filed back into their offices, as did government officials and business professionals, bringing cities back to life. Many anticipated a slow start to the season.
Tom Brokaw, anchor, NBC News: I’d been off most of the summer. A friend called up to ask how it was to be back. I said, “I’m doing fine, but there’s no news. It’s hard to get cranked back up.” It looked like it was not going to be a terribly stimulating autumn. Social Security reform was the hot topic. The economy was winding down.
Mary Matalin, aide to Vice President Dick Cheney: There was a sense of “Okay, now back to business.” We had economic issues at the time. We were on the front end of a recession.
Matthew Waxman, staff member, National Security Council, White House: This was an administration that was interested in Great Power politics. A great deal of effort was focused on U.S.-Russian arms control and the strategic relationship questions about how to manage a rising China. These were the central questions. Two possible regional crises that week we were worried about were Burundi and Macedonia.
Monica O’Leary, Cantor Fitzgerald, North Tower, 105th floor: On September 10th, in the afternoon—my guess is around two o’clock—I was laid off. I don’t know the exact time, but I know I thought to myself, Oh, I can be home in time for General Hospital. When I got laid off, I was on the 105th floor. I was upset. I was crying. Eventually, when I calmed down, the woman for HR gave me the choice: “Do you want to go back to the desk and get your stuff, or do you want to go home?” I said, “Oh, no, no, no. I want to go say good-bye to everybody.” I went around and started kissing everybody good-bye. They were all great. This guy, Joe Sacerdote, stood up in the back row, and he yelled, “It’s their loss, Monica!”
Lyzbeth Glick, wife of United Flight 93 passenger Jeremy Glick: I was on maternity leave from a teaching job at Berkley, a business college in New York. On that Monday morning, September 10, Jeremy helped me pack up the car—he was going to California on business and was booked on a flight that night. We live in Hewitt, New Jersey, and I was going up to my parents’ house in the Catskill Mountains while he was away. He packed me up, and then he headed down to Newark for a meeting. He called me at around five o’clock and said there had been a fire in Newark, and he didn’t feel like arriving in California at two in the morning. He decided to go home, get a good night’s sleep, and catch the first flight out Tuesday morning.
From May to October 2001, Vanessa Lawrence and Monika Bravo were supposed to be two of a total of fifteen artists in residence on the 91st and 92nd floors of the World Trade Center’s North Tower, as part of the Studio Scape program run by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Both were inspired by the Towers and had begun to incorporate them into their art.
Vanessa Lawrence, artist, North Tower, 91st floor: Because I was living in a basement where I just saw people’s feet, I thought it would be amazing to paint from such a high view—seeing different weather patterns, changing skies, changing light.
Monika Bravo, artist, North Tower, 91st floor: The reason I applied was because I wanted to film. I had this image in my mind—the Twin Towers above and only clouds underneath. The thing I missed most from my native Colombia were the clouds and the mountains. We have a lot of clouds all the time, and for me, the cloud is like home.
Vanessa Lawrence: I loved that skyline. Every morning coming in, there was something special. Again at night, seeing them lit up, just the lights on them. It was a really special skyline.
Monika Bravo: I told everybody throughout the summer, “
If you see something coming—a storm—let me know. I’m always going to have a camera ready.” The afternoon of September 10th, around 2:55 p.m., the storms happened.
Vanessa Lawrence: I grabbed my watercolors because I could see this storm coming. It was amazing watching it way out, looking out across Brooklyn and out on the horizon. I remember watching this dark cloud going down to the ground, and all the colors in it and everything. There’s one of my favorite paintings I did.
Monika Bravo: I started filming. The storm was coming from New Jersey south, through the Verrazzano Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. You see these clouds moving very fast—and there’s a moment that is really, really incredible in the film. You see one drop hitting the window, then in a second all these water drops hitting the window. The storm is there. It’s with you.
Vanessa Lawrence: Watching it coming, coming, coming, coming, and then—nothing. We were in this thick cloud and the rain.
Monika Bravo: The video is the witness of the last people standing, the last night before these towers cease to exist and everything and everybody that was inside. You see people in the South Tower coming in, working. You see people alive. You can see boats going. You see the city of Brooklyn lighting up. You see the movement of the bridges. It’s alive. You see the life of the city from the last night you could see it from that perspective.
I filmed for many hours, until 9:00 or 9:30 p.m. probably. The storm was very long, the whole afternoon. I filmed in different places, in time lapse, in slow motion. It was beautiful. Then, at one point, my cell phone rang. I was married then, and this person called me: “Are you going to come home?” I said, “Oh no, beautiful thunderstorm.” I said to him, “Why don’t you come over and bring me some cigarettes.” He said, “No, I’m not going to bring you anything. You come home.” So I said, “All right, all right.” I actually took the tape out of the camera. I left my computer because it was raining a lot. I was looking for a place to put it—I found an old file cabinet made out of wood. I remember thinking, Is this going to be safe? And then, This is the World Trade Center. Nothing can happen to this building.
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