September 11, 2001

I was a government employee in 2001, working as a legal secretary for the Postal Service.  We handled labor and employment cases:  sexual harassment, discrimination, wrongful termination, those kinds of things.  Our office was on the 7th floor of a building on Main St. in San Francisco.  The building itself has an interesting history:  during World War II, it was used as a waystation for the bodies of soldiers killed overseas.  One stop on their journey home to their next of kin.   During the Korean War, tanks were built in this building.  (The freight elevators were unusually large, I always wondered why.)  My custodian friend, Lance, showed me the bricked-up tunnel in the basement that ran (still runs) under Main Street to the building across the way, which, last I heard, houses a software company.  I was once told that this building is one of the most solidly-constructed buildings in the city; it would literally take a week to collapse in the event of an earthquake.  It also served as the dead letter station for all mail west of the Mississippi.  If you were ever told your letter got lost in the mail, it probably ended up here.

Besides the Postal Service, there were other government agencies there:  the Postal Inspectors' office was two floors down, the Postal Police, the IRS and the DEA all had offices on Main St. Given that all these agencies were in the building, security was pretty lax.  People could just walk in off the street. We kept saying we needed tighter security, key cards and gates at least, but kept being told there wasn't enough money.  It wasn't a priority.

In 2001, I lived in the Sunset District of San Francisco.  In those days, free street parking was plentiful if you knew where to look, so I drove to work every morning.  My shift started at 7:30, so I never had a problem.  The morning of September 11 started out pretty normal.  I got up early, got in my car and drove downtown.  I never watch TV in the mornings, because I am a TV addict and if I ever turned it on, I would never leave the house.  So, I didn't see any news reports. Driving in my car, I had a cassette tape in the tape deck, so I didn't hear any news reports.  (It was my 1997 Saturn coupe, the car I just got rid of last year.) 

I found a parking space and proceed to walk up Main St. to the entrance.  Now, in all the time I had worked in this building, I had never once been stopped or made to show ID.  That lax security, remember?  No sooner did my foot cross the line between public sidewalk and private lot, than I was surrounded by people carrying guns and demanding to know who I was.   There were uniforms and black jackets with white-lettered anagrams on the back; pistols and automatic rifles.  It looked like someone had just told anyone with a gun to get downstairs ASAP.  I had no idea what was going on.  While I was digging through my bag looking for my ID, my friend from the Postal Inspectors' office saw me and waved me through.

I ran inside and got into the elevator.  I rode up to the 7th floor with two men I didn't know.  They were talking about something they'd seen on TV.  They had watched the World Trade Center fall down. I thought they were talking about a movie or a TV show.  The World Trade Center can't fall down.  Not really. 

I reached my floor and got out.  Normally at this time of the morning, the office was quiet as a tomb.  It was one reason I liked coming in that early:  I could get work done before people started bothering me.  Not this morning.  Phones were ringing, people were running from office to office.  Now I knew something had definitely happened.  I walked into the nearest attorney's office, a guy named Andy.  I asked him what was going on.  He told me that someone had flown a plane into the World Trade Center.  Then I asked possibly the stupidest question anyone ever asked:  "With people on it?"  Yes, he answered, with people on it. 

I walked slowly to my desk.  I turned on my computer and immediately tried to get to my favorite news sites, CNN and MSNBC.  I couldn't get through. (Of course not.)  Finally, I remembered my dad listened to talk radio all day in his office while he worked.  He must know what's going on.  I called him up and asked him, "Dad, am I the only one in the world who doesn't know what's going on?"  He said, "Probably."  And then he proceeded to tell me.

I don't really remember my immediate reaction.   Probably disbelief like everyone else.  I do remember being frustrated that I couldn't get any other information.  We had just moved into that office space and the TV in the conference room hadn't been hooked up to cable yet.  You could only get grainy local channels.  For the next half hour, all we got was piecemeal information from questionable sources:  there was another plane heading towards San Francisco, then towards LA.  The Golden Gate Bridge was a target, the Transamerica Pyramid was a target, Disneyland was a target.   We got word that Willie Brown had closed all city government offices and was sending everybody home as a precaution.  We wondered if we were going to go home.  We were the feds, we could be a target too, right?  (Although, in all honesty, I don't think anyone who blew up an office full of government lawyers would be called a terrorist.  They'd probably get a parade.) 

Then, around eight o'clock, the Postmaster General issued an order that all non-essential personnel were to leave immediately and go home.  Non-essential, that was me!  I wasn't going to get any work done, anyway.  I was home by 8:30.  I walked through the door, turned on the TV and literally sat on the floor in my work clothes.  I spent the rest of the day there, eating my cold lunch and watching the endlessly repeated loops of the Trade Center falling down and the Pentagon burning.  I killed two phone batteries talking to my family.  My mom wanted to know if I thought I should be where I was, given that I lived near SF State.  I told her I didn't think they would bomb a state university.  I felt they had made their point.  Mom told me she couldn't reach my brother. He was still a Marine then, and living in North Carolina.  I figured he was busy. 

I remember feeling angry, sad and horrified all at the same time.  I remember thinking we needed to hunt whoever did this down and kill them all.  I was that angry.  This was a first for me.  Nothing like this had ever happened to me.  I felt this was going to be as big for me as the Kennedy assassination was for my parents.  (I recently spoke to my parents about that day, and they both spent it doing exactly what I was doing: glued to first to the radio and then the TV. They watched Oswald's murder live.)  

When I returned to work, I noticed some changes.  We suddenly had a security gate and key card access. I guess somebody found the money or decided that security was a priority.  We also got something else we hadn't asked for:  a bright, shiny, new flag pole with an American flag right in front of the building.  I guess that was suddenly a priority, too.

Life slowly got back to normal.  I eventually left the Postal Service and moved on to other things.  But I still see that building from time to time. The Law Department is still there, although I don't think I would know anyone now. The parking lot has since been partly consumed by a public lot, but there are still plenty of mail trucks parked there.  Some of those other government agencies are probably still there, too. I don't know.  But the flag pole is still there.  I walk by and remember exactly when someone decided it needed to be  there:

September 12, 2001