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Rafael D Martinez · **Remembering September 11, 2001 V**

Remembering September 11, 2001 V

Acts-dicted Posts: 7766 **9/11/23 8:39 am**

Remembering ..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOPxcK06BH0

September 11, 2001. It was early in the morning as I was hammering away on an assembly line. I was living in Cleveland, Tennessee. It was a beautiful, cloudless blue skied day at the Maytag factory. We were the best line in the plant and we had stuff to do.

Then one of the part supply workers said they heard on their walkie talkie that a plane hit the World Trade Center.

It chilled me to the bone and I zoned out and went on automatic, cold and machine like firing screws and wiring even as my heart and mind felt a black stirring of dread.

Up and down the line the word was passed and when one woman yelled that another plane had struck another tower, a cloud fell over everyone's face of sheer bewilderment. But I knew war had begun and times were indeed changing.

"This is no accident, people," I told my team as I banged another backguard down the tables. A corner was turning in my spirit and I sensed in the world .. it was a scream beyond pitch and volume that totally seized me.

Then the fear hit me as questions took voice in that silent inner wail. And nothing else mattered for me in that moment but answers to rhem
**What was going on in Chicago? Where were my family?**
I had one brother working in the Sears Tower, and another working as a fireman in Chicago only a few miles away. Where were they??

Without even seeing or hearing anything, a real horror made my knees wobbly as if I was standing on an edge of a cliff. I've never felt before or since that horrible sensation again as if my whole energy was just drained from me. I had to get to a phone. But Maytag kept that line pounding. We were behind and we were going to get ahead. The shareholders counted on us.

The greatest strength I have ever had to muster in all of my life, honest to God, was at that point .. to pull myself together , focus and keep emotionlessly slaving away even as the world as we knew it was changing. There's no way to describe what kind of whiteknuckled angst burnt in me that I was demanded of this. Nobody was stopping. The machine of industry had to keep going.

But I knew at 11 am. we had a mandatory 15 minute shut down for cleaning. I kept pounding waiting for it. When that andon light glowed and siren sounded, I shot like a rocket down the line and upstairs to the nearest pay phone - before I had a cell phone. It was a full gallop and screws poured out of my apron. I didn't care.

Having a cell phone wouldn't have made a difference. The national gridlock completely shut the long distance lines off. Innumerable messages telling us circuits were busy were the fruit of my frantic dialing of my mom's phone. I trembled as I punched the keys and hung up again as fast as I could only to dial again. I didn't have my brothers' phone numbers .. I couldn't find them. But I just knew mom would know. Mom would know.

Finally, at 11:13, somehow by the grace of God, I got my mother living in Lynwood and it was agonizing hearing her pained, sobbing voice immediately pouring out her fright and horror and weeping for the thousands who were now smeared human debris in DC, NYC and Pennsylvania. She knew the world had gotten uglier and mom was such a sensitive and tenderhearted woman and this was levelling her down to the basement of her soul.

I calmed her down and reminded her God's in charge and swallowed hard when I asked if she knew where Matt and John were at. She wailed as she reported she got word that Matthew was at the South Shore station waiting for the train out of the Loop. John was on standby at his firehouse and might end up flying to NYC. But they were alive.

They lived on a day when thousands lost their lives in an instant. My knees then buckled and I had to bite my lip hard to not wail myself as I slid down the concrete wall to the floor unseeing and the phone tore out of my hands. A shiver of animal terror bent me almost in two .. but I thanked the Lord they were alive.

I would later learn the Sears Tower was a target that day .. and just how unimaginably close we were to joining by bloodshed the fraternity of devastating loss 9/11 victims had brutally thrust upon them by monsters filled with a hatred for life.

Then the sweat began to pour and the anger came .. **and I had to get back to work.** At 11:15, with a fury I've never quite put away from that moment, I was on the line pounding again like a robot. But from that moment on, I have never been the same. And my story doesn't come close to that which others that day have had to live out who lost their lives to these monstrous fanatics who now burn in hell for their deeds, along with too many others.

God, help our country which was at one time so united and is now so horribly fractured .. the wake up call snooze button has been hit again by time, greed, the carnal and the culture.

If we only could be the people now that we were on September 12, 2001 ...
_________________
www.spiritwatch.org

Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth? Galatians 4:16

These are trying times. Everyone's trying something and getting caught. The Church Lady, 1987

Mat

On 911 I was a pastor in Alexandria, VA

Acts Enthusiast Posts: 1981 **9/12/23 3:37 pm**

On 9/11 I was a pastor in Alexandria, VA - our church was 2 miles south of the beltway on Telegraph Road, about 10 miles from the Pentagon. My dad and stepmother were in town to sightsee, and the day before we had been downtown passing the Pentagon going and coming. We were getting a late start to return downtown that Tuesday morning.

Cindy and I had been appointed to Alexandria just four months earlier due to the death of a pastor (panarctic cancer) who had only been there a short time. Not a large church, but most of the people were government employees, including some at the Pentagon, as well as intel, military and law enforcement. That day changed the life of that church, for years to come.

We also had a large daycare with mostly non-church families, some of whom also worked at the Pentagon. It was a long day, because as was said above, the phones (land lines and cells) were down, traffic was at a standstill and at the daycare we were not sure there would be parents to pick up all the children. The daycare went on lockdown, we moved the kids to an area where there were no windows, and tried to keep the news, and our dismay, out of sight.

As the day progressed, both church and daycare families began checking in and kids were being picked up. The side of the Pentagon which was hit was being remodeled, so most employees were working over in Crystal City. Thank the Lord the Pentagon is a reinforced concrete structure which is really five building, each inside the next. Even at high speed - and the jet (the terrorist who was piloting) was heard accelerating the engines as it came down by the Navy Annex, crossed the parking lot and hitting the outer wall - but the aluminum of the jet - even at speed - was really no match for the walls of the Pentagon. That's why the "entrance wound" was so limited. (I was down there the next day with my deacon).

Our church and daycare suffered no loss that day, but one of my members lost his cousin and wife, as they were fight attendants on the plane. Their names are Ken and Jennifer Lewis.

One of the deacons of my church was a state police captain stationed at the top of the hill where the Navy Annex is. One of his troopers, who was gassing his car at the time, saw the jet dodge a hotel at the top of the hill, heard it accelerate and saw the impact. He jumped into his car and raced to the impact area, running in following one of his fellow troopers who went in first. The second trooper had to drag the first out of the building, due to the heat and smoke - his vest melted on him.

I visited both these men in the hospital, and the first trooper to go in told me the inside of the building looked like a circular barbeque grill, where the coals are red hot. I'm sure the jet fuel had much to do with this. Most of the people who died at the Pentagon that day were on the jet, including a group of 11 and 12 year old student who had won a trip to CA for their achievement at school. There were from a poor part of DC called Anacostia, so this was most likely their first and last time on a airliner.

NEVER FORGET!