Graff - The only plane in the sky: an oral history of 9/11

ALSO BY GARRETT M. GRAFF

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Copyright 2019 by Garrett M. Graff

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ISBN 978-1-5011-8220-4

ISBN 978-1-5011-8222-8 (ebook)

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.

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 planesAmerican Airlines Flight 77, United Airlines Flight 175, American Airlines Flight 11, flight numbers now permanently retired and part of historywere hijacked and crashed into the centers of Americas 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 injuriessome physical, some psychological, some eventually fatalstemming from the recovery work. Far beyond the official numbers, however, the attacks affected nearly every American alive that dayand hundreds of millions, if not billions, beyond our shores, as news of the attacks was broadcast the world over.

Ive spent three years collecting the stories of those who lived through and experienced 9/11where 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. Im deeply grateful for their work and their understanding that history would wantand needthese 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: Ive noticed we dont listen to each others 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, Ive 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 Historians 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 Mathiass terrific 2002 collection of oral histories, Never Forget , as well as two works focused on the 9/11 New York maritime boatlift, Mike Magees All Available Boats and Jessica DuLongs Dust to Deliverance . To supplement those existing archival primary sources, Ive also collected several hundred interviews, personal reflections, and stories myself, about 75 of which are featured here. Im grateful to all who shared their stories.