story9191.xml

story9191.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2003-04-17

I was working at that time as an executive assistant for a tempermental regional planner. We, our PR rep, graphic designers, and project managers were sitting in our creepy conference room (filled with African masks) eating bagels with salmon cream cheese and drinking coffee. I was busily taking minutes as our boss was complaining that no one cared about the company but him when our intern came in and said a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I don't think it registered with any of us, at first beyond thinking that that was sad or sort of unusual because, as our boss commented, the flight paths were no where near the World Trade Center. We continued getting chewed out about how lazy we were. A few minutes later, the intern came back in and said another one had hit the Center. We all became nervous and apprehensive, wondering what was going on. Terrorism, I don't think, had really entered any of our minds yet. We sat silent, waiting. He returned with the information about the Pentagon. A few of us began to cry. We wondered how much longer it was going to go on. We went out to our office and listened to the BBC over the Internet. No one could concentrate. All we thought about was what was going on in New York, hurting for those people, and thinking how life would never be the same again and where would this event take us.