There are very few moments that stay with you forever, no matter how much time passes. Like many people, I remember the morning of September 11, 2001, vividly, not because I saw it on the news or read about it after—but because I survived it. I was just a few weeks shy of my third birthday, yet the events of that day are permanently etched in my memory.
My younger sister, Heather, and I grew up in a military family, and unlike most, we went to daycare inside the Pentagon Child Development Center. It was our very own community and we loved it there. When we got dropped off that Tuesday morning, it seemed like any other day.
After Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower at 8:46 a.m., the South Tower was hit at 9:03 a.m. Knowing there was another hijacked plane, there was a nervous energy around the Pentagon. The building that would go on to define so much of mine and my family’s lives was hit at 9:37 a.m., as American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon while I was inside.
Of course, being so young at the time, I had no idea what was happening. I remember the chaotic scenes as selfless service members working on site helped evacuate us. In the days that followed, my dad asked one of the workers how they managed to get so many children to safety.
They said that almost as soon as Flight 77 hit the building, countless service members showed up at the daycare offering to help. Infants like my sister, who was just 4 months old, were loaded into cribs and carried about half a mile to a spot set up near Boundary Channel. For toddlers like me, they held our hands or carried us to the same spot.
The cribs were set up in a circle and the daycare workers sat inside that perimeter with us toddlers, comforting us until our parents arrived. My memories from that day are defined by an overwhelming sense of confusion and sensory overload as I struggled to process everything. My mom was working at Bolling Air Force Base at the time, and her unit was tasked with many immediate responsibilities.
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