The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11

by Garrett M. Graff

I thought, So is this how it ends? Is this what life is—going to work, getting there like 7:00 in the morning, leaving at 5:00, taking an hour and a half each way to commute, and not having much of a life? Is this what it’s all about?

One of the firemen from Rescue 1 looked up and said, “We may not live through today.” We looked at him, and we looked at each other, and we said, “You’re right.” We took the time to shake each other’s hands and wish each other good luck and “Hope I’ll see you later,” which is especially poignant for me because we all had that acknowledgment that this might be our last day on earth and we went to work anyway.

Mike Morell, presidential briefer, Central Intelligence Agency: I was really worried that someone was going to fly a plane into that school. This event had been on the schedule for weeks, anyone could have known about it. Eddie Marinzel, the lead Secret Service agent, wanted to get the hell out of there as fast as possible.

Welles Crowther, and he had been a volunteer fireman

You had a row of firemen going up the stairs, and you had a row of civilians coming down the stairs.

While I was walking down, they were going up to their deaths. And I was walking down to live. I will never forget this.

That will stay with me forever. They were going where we were running from.

When I first got out there to the site, I was actually a little nervous. I wondered what the importance of the field was and what possibly the government had hidden under the ground there that they wanted. I couldn’t figure out why the plane had come down here.

One of the things I’ve always done with my girls—Allison and Bianca—was I would make the sign-language sign for “I love you.” I made the “I love you” sign—and I crossed them over my chest. I figured if I was going to die and they found me, they would at least tell my wife that I was crossed like that, so she would know I was thinking of her.

It was completely amazing, the feeling of support, of unity.

we got a phone call from Bellevue Hospital, saying [my fiancé] Kevin was admitted there. His dad got there before we did, and he found out it wasn’t the right Kevin Williams. It was somebody else. We had been on this whole high, screaming. I searched the city for three days.

Vaughn Allex, ticket agent, Washington Dulles International Airport, Virginia: I didn’t know what I had done. I came to work and people wouldn’t look at me in the eye. They handed me the manifest for the flight. I stared at it for a second, then I looked up, and said, “I did it.”

The most emotionally searing time was the days following, with all the signs and the Xeroxed pictures affixed to the chain-link fences. There was so much desperation to find people.