Guest Column: A searing memory of Sept. 11
On Sept. 10, 2001, just hours before the attacks on the Twin Towers, Pentagon and the crash of United 93, I took off from JFK in New York, headed for the West Coast.
By the time I had landed in Portland, Ore. at 7 a.m. Pacific time (after a short layover in Seattle), all the national airspace had been shut down and all civilian aircraft were grounded. I deplaned, went inside PDX airport and witnessed thousands of passengers being ushered outside.
Because I was a commercial airline pilot with proper identification and had been a pilot with a local carrier for many years, I was allowed to stay inside. An agent escorted me to two TVs set side-by-side on two different channels in the passenger lobby. In horror and disbelief I watched replay after replay of the aircraft intentionally being flown by terrorists into the World Trade Center in NYC, where I had been only hours before.
I will never forget the nightmare of watching innocent people jumping to their deaths, because they were slowly being incinerated by the fiery grave within. I will never forget the pilots who gave their lives to try to protect their respective cockpit from the invasive terrorists, many being hacked to death by box cutters and choked till they took their last breaths. Why mention the details? Because it happened, on our soil, by Third World delusional thugs. Angels of Satan; demons of death.
I will never, ever forget my brothers and all of those brave firemen, policemen, service workers and citizens who gave their lives that day and years later from the insidious after-effects of the destruction of those grand buildings in their search and rescue efforts.
Several days later, I once again took off from JFK one evening for the West Coast. As we turned westward just north of New York City, I saw smoke rising, lit by the search lights, from where the World Trade Center Twin Towers had been proudly standing just days before. We pilots were quiet, reflective and I said a prayer for the families who had lost loved ones. I wept. It is the only time I’ve wept as a pilot, in almost 50 years of flying, with more than 20,000 hours of flight time.
I will never, ever forget!
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SCOTT WARTENBERG is a graduate of La Cañada High School, Class of 1970. He soloed in a Cessna C-150 while in 10th grade and became a private pilot as a high school senior, four days after turning 18. Now a resident of the Pacific Northwest, he will be retiring in January as a senior captain with JetBlue Airways. He posted the above essay on his Facebook page on Sept. 10, in commemoration of the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, and agreed to allow us to share it with Valley Sun readers. He can be reached at LightChaser1@yahoo.com.