My job and new career in aviation ended the next morning. No customers could get in or out. I was unemployed for two months.
I had been doing retail on Main Street in Middlebury for 25 years when I sold out to my partner in 1999 and started a new career in aviation at Middlebury State Airport. On 9/11 we were finishing up repairs and inspections for a customer. He got a call from his wife in Long Island who was hysterically speechless. The only thing he could understand was to turn on a television. We all went into the pilot lounge and turned it on and proceeded to watch the whole thing unfold in real time. The customer anticipating an airspace shutdown hopped in his plane and flew to his home in Weybridge. The man who had flown him up from Long Island headed back. We got the call from the FAA to stop any take offs about half an hour later. The man going back to Long Island got as far as Connecticut, I think, before he was forced to land. I went home to my wife and tried to comfort her. My job and new career in aviation ended the next morning. No customers could get in or out. I was unemployed for two months which was a very pleasant time for me in Vermont. Hunting season and doing fall chores were a joy with no job and unemployment compensation. Thanksgiving week, I started a new job at NRG Systems. That company was booming, the compensation was better than anything I’d had before and the team in my department were the best people I ever worked with. Unfortunately the work we did was very physical and after ten years I was force to retire a cripple. My world view and view of Vermont did not change much, I knew the country was in the cross hairs of religious extremists from without and with in. My wife’s half sister was in the the World Trade Center when it was bombed the first time, she thankfully had made a new life in Atlanta by 2001. I was very glad to be living in Vermont. I feel Vermont is the only relatively sane place on the planet and can and should be an example to the world.
Peter Oxford
