On Sept. 11, 2001, we left on an early morning flight from Burlington, responding to an emergency call from our daughter-in-law in Florida. Our one-year-old grandson was in the hospital with what doctors thought was spinal meningitis. Our son, who is a pilot, was flying out of Pittsburgh that same morning and couldn’t get home, so we got the earliest flight. The flight was smooth and uneventful, until we were heading over Florida. The pilot came on the intercom and said we were being diverted. When we landed, the airport was chaos - there were planes every which way on the tarmac. The captain came out of the cockpit and asked to borrow a passenger's cell phone. He looked completely distraught and his voice was shaking as he told us it was an emergency, but didn’t give any details. Only then did we learn that we were in Jacksonville - a five-hour drive to our destination. We started making the long drive, only to hear on the sporadic and confused radio reports that two planes had hit the WTC and another had hit the Pentagon. The fourth plane, coming from Pittsburgh, had crashed in Pennsylvania. We were concerned that our son might have been flying that plane.   We didn’t really learn what had happened until we reached our son's home and watched the whole tragedy unfolding on TV. We were stunned, terrified, worried about our son and so many other things.  Our son came home safe and sound. He had never left Pittsburgh because his flight had been recalled. Two weeks later we visited friends who lived in downtown Brooklyn. We walked with them across the Brooklyn Bridge into downtown New York City. A few blocks west of City Hall we came upon the site of the horrible disaster. The remains of the WTC were still smoking. The distorted skeleton of one of the buildings was visible through the dust and smoke. The toxic dust from the collapse covered everything: buildings, cars, windows, etc in a six-inch-thick layer of dust. People had posted messages and photos of their loved ones on every wall and fence in the area. Workers were all over the "pile," as they called it, looking for bodies and other remains. It was heartbreaking. After 20 years I can look back and still feel the pain of all we lost that day, but I am also so grateful that our loved ones are alive and our grandson celebrated his 21st birthday this August.

Judith Versweyveld