A day no one forgets

9/11. Twenty-five years ago this week.  I remember it well.  So does everyone else.

I had just arrived for work at my job at the Kiplinger Letter in Washington, D.C. Someone told me to come to the conference room and see the TV reruns of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center.

It must have been a terrible accident, we all concluded. Then another plane hit another tower. No accident. History changed at that moment.

We all gathered there, except for a top manager, who fled to the garage and drove home right away.

The Pentagon was hit next. Only two miles away. There were rumors on TV (later shown to be false) of bombs at the nearby Washington Mall and the White House.

Fortunately, I had ridden my bike to work and decided I would leave too. Things were getting too close. The subway shut own and the roads were jammed with traffic.

The scene riding home to Arlington was like a war movie. Smoke curled up to the skies from the Pentagon as everyone was trying to flee town. I think a Korean War film once had a scene just like that, but with carts and animals instead of cars.  Could this really be happening here?

I talked to Pickett, who was still at her preschool, and we both picked up daughter Sara at her school.

After I had left work, the staff put out a special edition of the Letter, just as they did after Pearl Harbor. I felt somewhat guilty about leaving my post as a newsman. But I was really editor of the Kiplinger California Letter, which was not involved in this. As a 25-year-old I would have wanted to dive in. At 59, I wanted no part of this story.

Should I have stayed? No! One of the planes crashed in Pennsylvania before it reached its target: either the Capitol or the White House. Since the White House was only two blocks from my office, I felt like I did the right thing.

Next came the anthrax attacks, a poisonous substance mailed to high-profile buildings such as government offices and newsrooms. Someone told me not to worry—few places were targeted. “Oh, I remember. You work in a news office. Well, that’s different," he said. They eventually traced the letters to a worker at a-government lab making anthrax, but he killed himself before he could go on trial.

The shock from these events continued for years. Security was beefed up not just at airports but at banks, shops, offices and homes. Two unsuccessful wars followed, and the U.S. was never the same.