Narrative Story: A Librarian's Experience at DC During the Pentagon Attack
by Cheryl Gritton
Law Librarian, U.S. Court House, Des Moines, IA

    {Note: Cheryl was at a meeting of the Online Resources Committee, a group of federal court librarians, who were meeting in DC on Sept. 11th and Sept. 12th.}

First off, I was not injured or harmed in any way.  I don’t want anyone to think I am trying to compare my experience with any others, mine is certainly trivial in that regard.  However, fear and awfulness are real for each person, no matter what the circumstance. 

    I went to DC for a 1 ½ day meeting at the AO, all day Tuesday, and until noon on Wednesday.  For once I decided to pack light and only took work clothes, no tennis shoes, no casual clothes, nothing extra.  On Tuesday morning I took the subway from the hotel to the AO, which is right across the street from Union Station and a subway stop.  I got there a little early and took some pictures and got some tea from the cafeteria.  Our meeting was on the 4^th floor.  With a court id I did not have to sign in at the guard desk.  There were 3 Circuit librarians and 3 branch librarians.  The Circuits were Maggie Evans from New York, Elaine Fenton from Atlanta, Nancy Padgett from DC, the branches were me, Candace Cooper from Raleigh, North Carolina, and Deborah Celle from San Francisco.  The two AO people were Ellen Strbak and Leslie Campbell.  We were in an interior conference room, with no windows.  Our meeting was about purchasing online resources, in addition to Westlaw and Lexis.    

    At 10:30 a.m. eastern time John Hehman came in and remarked that we did not’t appear to know what was happening in the news.  We all sort of looked at him like he was nuts for just walking into our meeting.  He then told us jet airplanes had flown into the World Trade Center in New York, there had been a bombing at the Pentagon, a car bomb had gone off at the State Department, there was a fire of unknown origin on the Mall, many more bomb threats throughout Washington DC.  We all just sat there and I said “Why are you saying these things to us?”  He said “Because they are true.” Then he told us they were not fighter jets, but passenger jets that had been hijacked.   

    My first reaction, like most everybody’s was that I was going to throw up.  Two or three of us went to the bathroom, the others went into other offices.  From then on it was chaos.  Everyone was walking all around, there was no control of anyone or where they went.  In about 15 more minutes a woman came over the loud speaker and said “In light of the circumstances you might want to move away from the windows.  And you can go home if you want to.”  This was more than an hour AFTER the plane had hit the Pentagon.  There was no evacuation of the building, no controlled moving to interior spaces.  People were watching out the windows and running around.  Ellen and Leslie wrote down for us their telephone numbers, and we gave them ours.  Candace and I had a copy of that before we left the building.  When it was announced on the news that another plane was still flying that had been hijacked, Candace and I left the building.  Deborah was to go with us back to the hotel but she had disappeared.  I never saw her again.  Candace and I took the stairs out, we had to convince some AO staffers that it was not safe to take the elevators, so they went down the stairs with us.  They did not leave the building however, they wanted to go see what was happening at the FJC, in another part of the building.

    The streets were just like in the movie “Independence Day”.  No cars could go because of all the congestion, there were people walking everywhere, sirens from police cars, ambulances, fire trucks constantly.  There was a bomb threat at Union Station, across the street from the AO.  We walked past that threat and on up the street.  There were 3 or 4 places where there was police tape across the streets and police swarming everywhere.  I asked what was there and was told it was a bomb.  We went around all those places.  I had a map of DC I happened to pick up that morning at Union Station.   

    At one point everyone stopped walking and looked up to the sky because we could hear an airplane flying overhead.  We did not’t know what kind it was or where it was planning on hitting.  It did not’t hit near us so we kept on walking.  The streets were packed with people all trying to get somewhere, just anywhere.  There were many apparently mentally disturbed people singing, chanting, and jumping about.  They grew even more agitated when we could hear the plane.  I asked one police officer if we could get through to DuPont Circle, where our hotel was.  He said we could so we kept on walking. 

    Candace and I decided we needed cash, if the computer systems went down we could not use our credit cards and we knew we would need a lot of money to get home.  We stopped at 2 ATMs and got as much money as we could.  We also stopped at a kiosk and bought water.  By our hotel there was a drug store still open, the only store of any sort we saw open.  We bought more water, and peanut butter crackers, the only nutritious type of food they had.  We also bought a 12 pack of Diet Pepsi, just to keep ourselves sane and normal.  (Even in times of crisis, one has to have Diet Pepsi!) 

    It took us until 12:30 to reach our hotel.  It was a 2 mile walk before all the detours.  The hotel had some security in place.  Only guests could enter the hotel part, we had to show our room key before we could enter.  The restaurant stayed open, as did a few others on the street.  All afternoon people just sat on the patios and did nothing but talk. 

    I had been able to reach my family from a phone at the AO.  They were very upset, it had been an hour and they had not’t heard from me.  I found out later the schools were watching it live on TV.  My youngest son became extremely upset when Washington was attacked, knowing that I was there.  My parents went to the schools and got my children after I called.  They wanted them home for when I called again.  Candace did not’t try the land line phone at the AO, she was using her cell phone, which did not’t work for long distance calls. She also could not reach her family via e:mail, the AO does not have access to the internet sites she needed to get to her e:mail.  She was terribly distracted during our walk with trying to get through on the cell phone.  I just took her arm and said “we are going this way” and led her through the streets.  I apologized later for being bossy, but she said she was grateful for me leading the way as she was so intent on reaching her family. 

   The rest of Tuesday we spent watching the news, like everyone else in the nation.  Candace got a train early Wednesday morning and made it home by evening.  We knew vans were taking judges home, but we were not invited.  On Wednesday, I found a shoe store and bought some athletic shoes and some socks.   I had many blisters from walking in dress shoes and hose.  I also bought some shorts and casual shirts.  I was going to go back to the hotel, but there was nothing I could do there.  I had been on the phone all morning with National Travel and they were doing all they could to find me some transportation home.  I knew the earliest I would be able to leave by any means would be Thursday.  The store I was shopping at was 2 blocks from the White House so I walked over there. 

    There were people walking past the White House, but it was complete silence.  All those people and no one said a word.  I walked past the American Red Cross and saw the blood mobiles and lines of people waiting to give blood.  I walked to the Viet Nam War Memorial and the Korean War Memorial.  While I was by the memorials, a Cobra helicopter flew over.  The memorials are across the river from the Pentagon.  Then 2 more completely black helicopters flew over.  Then another one started circling where I was.  There were immediately many police officers present, on foot, on horseback, on motorcycles, cars and jeeps.  I asked a souvenir vendor what was going on, apparently a man had been walking around the Lincoln Memorial tape recording the structural elements of the monument, the width, breadth, number of columns, construction materials, etc.  He was detained.  

    On Thursday morning at 10:00 my travel arrangements were confirmed.  I checked out of the hotel, took the subway to Union Station and stood in line for an hour to get my AmTrak ticket.  I left Washington at 2:00, arrived in Philadelphia at 3:30.  I stayed by the convention center in Philadelphia so was familiar with the area.  I was on the 24^th floor of a wonderful hotel that decided that night to have a fire drill.  When the alarms went off I about jumped out of my skin.  I put on my shoes and socks, grabbed my purse and then grabbed my medications.  I knew I would need those in any emergency.  The alarms kept going off, with a voice saying “There has been an emergency reported in the building.   At this time do not enter the elevators, but also do not enter the fire escape stairways.  Be prepared to evacuate.”  The voice finally stopped, then there was nothing.  I went out in the hall and found an employee buffing the floor!  He told me it was just a drill, nothing to worry about.  Yeah, right.  About an hour later another voice came over the intercom system saying the fire department had been there and there was no emergency.  I slept very little that night. 

My next train left Philadelphia at 6:30 a.m. to go to Chicago.  The train was very nice except they ran out of pillows and blankets.   We had one stop in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania for about half an hour.  I went to the gift shop there and bought a purple cow “pillow baby” to use as a pillow and a large T-shirt to use as a blanket.  Everyone on the train was a “refugee” trying to get home.  There were people from Texas, California, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Ohio, all trying to get home.  One woman was there with just the clothes on her back.  She worked at the World Trade Center and lived somewhere near it.  She had nothing and was going home to Wisconsin.  

We arrived in Chicago at 11:30 p.m., an hour early!  I took a cab to my hotel where my parents and children picked me up the next day at noon.   When my mother called from the lobby I flew downstairs, without my shoes on, ran up to her in the lobby and stood there hugging her and crying.  Then I was hugging my kids and crying.  We ate lunch, then piled in the car and drove home to Des Moines.  I was very happy to be home.   

This page was last edited on 09/25/2002