Voices from 9/11

- What I remember about the day was the beautiful, blue sky,
the big, white, puffy clouds.
And there was just this little crispness in the air
because you could tell that fall was starting to come.
- I'll never forget being ordered to go home
and all of us refusing
because we thought that our servicemen
and women were still in there and needed to be brought out.
- It was an absolute faith-affirming time.
And I remember being with Arlington County Rescue and NTSB
and going through the corridor
and it was helping with that.
And it was...
- It changed our lives a lot.
(somber music)
(somber music continues)
- I wanna thank you all for coming this morning.
When I reached out to the Veterans Council
with the thought in mind of maybe somebody
from Mitre was either at the Pentagon
or at Ground Zero that day, I thought,
"Okay, there might be somebody that responds."
And I got five people, the five of you, that responded
and said that you were all at the Pentagon that day.
And I'm just so grateful that you've willing to come
and share your story.
So thank you.
And you have, you know, that shared experience
of all being in the same place at the same time.
We talked about,
when we had a few conversations before this,
we talked about there's this whole generation
that doesn't know anything about 9/11 except
what they learn in their history lessons.
My daughter is one of them.
I was on duty in uniform at Fort Meade at the time.
I've shared, I think with a couple of you,
I'm pregnant with her.
And so, you know, she has no memory of this.
I don't know
how many days they learn about this in school,
but not a lot of time spent on this, right?
So that you all have that shared experience
and then you all have your unique experiences as well.
So if we could kind of walk through the, you know,
the morning of that Tuesday.
It was any other workday.
You wake up, you maybe you go for your cup of coffee
like I do first thing.
Maybe you're thinking about meetings
that you might have on the agenda that day.
If we could kind of walk through what that morning was like.
Yeah.
- Like you said, it was a normal morning.
It was a beautiful, beautiful day
and it was the beginning of the school year,
so I think a lot of families were talking about getting
their kids to school and everything else.
And I think shortly after we got to work,
things changed pretty quickly
because most of us had TVs on in our offices.
And I think when the first plane hit,
it was kind of like disbelief.
How could that happen?
It's a gorgeous day.
There must have been a mechanical failure,
something wrong with the plane.
And I know for me, when I saw the second plane hit,
it was like, wow.
I ran over.
I was working for
the Director of Defense Intelligence Agency,
but my office was on the other side of the Pentagon.
His was closer to the crash site.
So I ran.
I remember running over there and saying,
"What are we gonna do?"
Then he said, "We've gotta wait
'cause my counterpart's coming in
and we're gonna keep the meeting to 20 minutes.
Keep it very brief."
And then kaboom.
- For where I was at,
we was actually assigned
to Andrews Air Force base at the time.
And on that day we had decided-
We were supporting a mission going on in the E-ring
on the Air Force side.
And we decided the week before we were going in early
to beat the traffic, which will always be bad.
So, but that week we were at a point where it says, ah,
let the traffic go and we'll follow later.
We weren't listening to the radio.
We were just had music and talking and just stuff on.
And we actually had pulled into the south lot
and we were unloading the van and Pelican cases and dollies
and all when the plane hit.
So we were there.
And so yeah, it was like, I remember a beautiful day,
the drive up Suitland Parkway.
It was nice.
No traffic, relatively speaking, for DC
So that's when it became very real
and we heard about everything at that point.
- Yeah.
And you and John were actually,
didn't know until 20 years later, right,
that you were there in the same parking lot
that day, basically.
I mean, you didn't find that out until later.
- Yeah. - We spent about three months
out there together and just,
there were alternating teams
doing the criminal investigation.
It was a gigantic crime scene, of course.
We were trying to figure out who had done this
and also the recovery of human remains
and eventually we could no longer continue
to penetrate inside the crash site.
And they took bulldozers and pulled all of the material
and everything and put it in a gigantic, in a parking lot,
in a gigantic pile.
And it made it a lot easier to go through everything.
And we were able to wrap that up quickly.
But yeah, we were on scene for months.
Just must have rotated at different times.
- It was NCIS and OSI, our command tents.
We shared one GP medium tent
and detailed out wherever the assignment was.
We were like, "Okay, you're working the morgue today.
You're working the rubble pile.
You're working this."
And I, in my heart, I know John and I sat there
and worked many shifts together.
But it was Tyvek, masked up.
We didn't know who we were.
- And I remember walking past it all the time going to work.
And I think to this day,
one of my memories that's really hard for me
is remembering the dogs looking for the body parts.
And I was working in the Army Operations Center
right after that.
I got reassigned
and I remember the hard discussions we had
about putting people back together.
- Yeah, yeah.
Very difficult to do.
- Yes.
- Especially as time went on.
- And smell of the jet fuel.
To this day when I smell jet fuel sometimes-
- Same.
- It sends the hair up on the back of my neck up.
- Yep.
- And German shepherds.
- Yeah, absolutely.
I'll never forget the booties they got for those dogs
because the rubble was cutting their paws.
And we were all so upset about it
and just started making a lot of,
a lot of noise about you gotta get something for the dogs.
It's hard on them.
And they got little Kevlar booties in the end
that they could put on their paws
to do the cadaver searches.
Yeah.
- I think it's important to highlight
that this was 24 years ago.
So the assumptions, the technology that we have today,
recall rosters that exist today weren't there.
And I had a little bit
of a unique experience in the Pentagon.
I was a Junior Air Force officer at the time
in an internship and we had two cohorts of 50 of us running
around the Pentagon assigned to different organizations.
And so aside from the whole story of where was I,
but in the aftermath of,
where are the other 99 cohort members?
Because we didn't have a recall roster.
There was no Facebook, you know, marked safe from Pentagon.
None of that existed at that time.
And so to be able to figure out
where is everyone, are they okay?
We were actually out going to Pentagon City, door to door,
knocking on, you know, and I started a list.
Who have you seen?
Who have you seen?
Just to try and figure out on our own
and oh by the way, right,
did anybody try to get a call out that morning?
- Yeah. - Oh yeah.
- All the cell phones weren't working.
- Nothing worked.
- Well, and that was one of the things when,
right afterwards I was in the parking lot trying to,
or help organize chaos.
And, you know, people were running everywhere
and the fire trucks were coming.
So I was trying to help direct traffic.
And then they came
and said we had to move out the parking lot
because another plane was coming towards us.
And I went across the street
and there was a woman in on the ground in convulsions
and I was trying, we're trying to help her.
Somebody came out from the Marriott
and said, "Would you like to use our lobby?"
And we said, "Yes."
There were a group of us there.
We didn't really know each other at all.
We just said yes.
And so I said the two, I asked the two of them just
to start directing people over to the lobby
that were the walking wounded.
'Cause people were coming out covered in smoke
and soot, carry classified documents.
And they were great.
They set up a room with landlines.
We set up the lobby area to bring in the walking wounded
and do triage
and then sending the ambulances over.
People walking with classified documents.
And so they gave us envelopes so we could double wrap them,
you know, all kinds of things.
- Well, it was not a normal day for me.
It didn't start as a normal day for me
because I had just moved outta my house
and I had packed up everything the weekend
or the week before.
And it was right after Labor Day.
You probably remember it was right after Labor Day.
So it was the Tuesday after.
And I had moved into with a friend of mine
who was graciously allowing me to stay with her
for a few weeks
before I transferred over to Naples, Italy,
which is where I was heading as my next duty assignment.
And so I was already a little bit out of my element
and I went to work that day
and I wasn't on duty that day,
so I didn't have to go in super early.
But I wasn't early enough.
I was working at the Chief of Navy Information,
so 4B463, which was actually ended up being right
in the path of the plane and we didn't know it at the time
that we were that close, but, you know,
I think it was about a day or so later we found out
that we'd been 20 feet away from it and we all walked away.
But it was a very uncommon day.
A very uncommon start.
But what I remember about the day
was the beautiful, blue sky,
the big, white, puffy clouds.
And there was just this little crispness in the air,
because you could tell that fall was starting to come.
I remember very clearly what this was like.
And then I think from my memory,
there's that juxtaposition of remembering
what that day felt like
and how it smelled and how crisp it was.
And then seeing from the courtyard
after we evacuated our offices
and went to the courtyard trying
to do the initial accounting and the roster
and you know, making sure that we have everybody
that we need to.
And I just was watching this big cloud
of smoke and soot
and just growing, you know, up and out.
And I remember just standing there looking at it
in disbelief going, "Wow."
Because I actually already had an inkling
that we had gotten hit
because I had a coworker who was talking on the phone
to her husband looking out the window
and she saw the plane coming.
And didn't, couldn't do anything.
There's nothing you could do.
You just see a plane coming right for you.
So I walked out of the Pentagon knowing that much,
but then when there was this mass chaos in the middle
of the courtyard where a lot of people were evacuated to,
and there was, people were trying
to figure out, account for people,
account for office mates, things along those lines.
And somebody came through saying,
"Hey, if you've got any sort of medical training,
if you've got CPR qual, anything, come with us.
We need volunteers."
And I had had the presence of mind to grab my purse,
grab my stuff, grab my jacket,
and I was standing in the courtyard with all this,
and when they asked for volunteers, I literally,
two months beforehand, I had redone my CPR qualification
and I just took my stuff
and I shoved it in a coworker's hands
and I just went and went to work.
- I remember when I left the building,
'cause we were in the E-ring
and we were right by the,
one corner over from the crash site.
But I remember leaving the building and looking over
and seeing just all the black smoke and nothing.
And I thought maybe it was a missile
'cause we heard something going right past us.
It sounded like a freight train going past
the director's window and everything was shaking
before everything went boom
and felt like the whole building shook.
But when you went out, you didn't see,
there was nothing left there.
You couldn't, the whole plane had penetrated.
I think by the grace of God
that section was almost empty
because they were refurbishing that section.
My old office was supposed to be moving into that section,
but they were delayed by about a month
because they hadn't finished wiring
all the computer systems.
And, you know, that part of the building
had been somewhat reinforced.
And so, you know, you look at anywhere else
that plane could have hit,
the casualty count would've been much higher.
I often believe that, you know,
we can't control what's in people's hearts,
but I think the heavens and the Almighty was with us
because if the plane had to land anywhere,
that's the place it landed, did the least amount of damage
and caused the least amount of carnage.
- Right.
- Yeah. I remember that.
We had just moved into that section
of the Pentagon two months,
or excuse me, six months beforehand.
So six months before we moved in there.
And I, by the grace of God, you know,
if we had not been in the section of the Pentagon
that had the reinforced rebar and concrete,
the blast proof windows,
I wouldn't be sitting here today.
None of my colleagues would've been sitting here today.
- It is.
It's amazing because that morning,
part of my internship was to go out and network.
And so I'd gone down to the concourse
and we're very fortunate to have that Starbucks down there.
And I had gotten my Starbucks, my morning Starbucks,
and I said, "Hmm, do I turn left
and go back to my office,"
which was one in a wedge over from the crash site,
"or do I go schmooze and say good morning to Ms. Gladys,"
who was the secretary for SAF/AQ,
the senior acquisition official for the Air Force
and the Pentagon.
I'm like, "I would go say hi to Miss Gladys,"
and they had the television and we were there talking,
and after the second tower we had this philosophical,
"Wow, if this is a real attack, you know,
why didn't they go after the Pentagon?"
You know, boy did they choose, you know,
the wrong locations.
And then not too long after that, my experience,
what I thought, because I didn't process
that this was an attack right away,
but it sounded like if you've ever been
in one of those old New York buildings
with the rickety rackety service door elevators
that are wood, and if somebody just took those
and just went, bam.
I said, "Wow, somebody really shook the Pentagon service
elevator doors really hard."
And then the, you know, brain starts going, wait a minute,
I'm in the E-ring in the VIP area.
There are no service elevator doors.
And then the commotion started and stepped outside
and Miss Gladys just started packing up everything,
locking it down because her boss was out in St. Louis,
couldn't get back, had to get a rental car
and you know, led foot get back to DC.
But from there, stepped out and evacuated.
I saw General Jumper was the senior,
the Chief of Staff of the Air Force at the time.
He must have been briefing somebody, a VIP,
because he was in his full service dress and he's tall
and he was telling everyone, "Remain calm," you know,
"go out this exit right here."
So here you've got the four star, you know,
directing traffic, keeping everybody, you know,
grounded and just focused on getting outta the building.
And so that was the go out safe,
start looking for people door to door.
And then a couple of us decided to turn back
and go to the crash site.
I'm an acquisition officer,
I've got a mechanical engineering degree,
but this is the military training that kicks in.
What do you need?
Shovel?
What can I do to help?
And I ended up going over to the crash site
that morning just to see what I can do.
- You mentioned, but actually both of you mentioned
the faith aspect of it.
It was an absolute faith-affirming time.
Personally, I told you guys, I had just PCS to Andrews,
just a couple months before transferring from California.
And that weekend before I had just taken my kids back
to their mother and went back to work.
So I remember being with Arlington County Rescue
and NTSP and going through the corridor
and it was helping with that.
And it was...
- It changed our lives a lot.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- It was really hard for me.
I was a public affairs officer
and the military training,
it's funny because you don't think about,
when you're going through firefighting school
or damage control or, you know,
for the Navy we learned how to, you know, patch floods
and stuff like that.
- We never used it.
- And you don't think about using it
and in that moment it just kicked in.
I didn't even think about it.
- I mean that's when they came out
and they said, "Hey, do you wanna use our lobby?"
I said, "Yes, we need a triage center."
And you know, that's why, like you said,
our military training kicks in
and I think that's sort of one of the things that
you're somewhat prepared to deal
with difficult situations,
but nothing really prepared you for everything that day.
- February, maybe March of that year, still in California,
Travis had hosted a mass casualty exercise
and it was the coordination state, local, federal
and everything all, but there's no analogs there.
It was just a big coordination.
And some, Travis was also the West Coast Port mortuary
at the time.
So there was a lot of mortuary stuff
that we participated in.
So it was the training, you said, when it hits,
it's like, "Okay, what's first?"
And we set up radios and set up comms.
The cell phones were jammed.
The only thing, if you remember,
we didn't have 'em at the time,
but Nextels were the hottest things.
It was hear that chirp chirp, chirp chirp.
Nextels were the only things that could get through.
And we were like, can we borrow you Nextel?
And the bureau showed up
and they were like, "Here's extras."
So that was great.
That's how we were communicating with the teams.
- I found it interesting, at least when the,
'cause I worked at two different triage sites.
The first triage site was in the courtyard
until they told us to evacuate.
And then we picked up everybody
and ran as fast as we could to get to the other triage site,
which was, for us, it was at the river entrance.
It was across the road from the river entrance.
And one of the things that I remember
is that it did not matter what you had on your collar
or what uniform you were wearing that day,
or even if you were in a uniform.
If it was a triage site,
the doctors and the nurses were in charge.
We just did whatever.
There was no rank.
No, no, you know.
There were no pretenses about
who was in charge that day.
It was the people who have first responder experience
are the ones that we're following the direction for.
And wherever I was throughout that day,
that's what it was like.
There was really just a big team.
- I was on the other side where the plane actually went in.
And first, from a public affairs perspective,
I have to apologize because, we can keep rolling,
but when I'd gone through Pentagon City
and we were knocking on doors and everything,
one of my friends had, and again,
remember this is 24 years ago,
we didn't have flip phones, you know,
a lot of photos that you would have today.
She had a disposable camera.
And it went through my mind, I should take this with me
as we were going over to the crash site to,
you know, document.
And I didn't, and I, to this day, regret that
because the closest I have is like my little, you know,
when they rescued the flag out of the building,
folded it up and marched it and presented it
to the on-scene commander,
I don't think there's any documentation of that.
It's only here for those of us who are on site.
And it was so powerful that, again, through all of this,
when there was nothing you could do while we
were all in shock just, you know,
allowing the first responders to get in.
But the fact that the Marines took the time
to pull that flag out, rescue it and save it along
with what they could do for the people.
I just, I apologize to the, to the PA ecosystem
that I didn't grab the camera and take those pictures.
- Well, I think that there was a lot going on that day.
I mean, I was a public affairs officer.
I didn't have a camera, you know.
I had absolutely nothing with me.
Not one thing, not even a Kleenex. (laughs)
But the thing that struck me about that day,
the other thing that really struck me about that day
was that even though I had no money on me,
I had no anything.
I didn't have cab fair to get home.
None of that.
But I still, someone insisted that I ate
and took me to a cafeteria.
Someone insisted that I get some water in me.
Someone insisted that I needed to eventually go
to my friend's house, you know?
'Cause at the end of the day, you still have to,
'cause I worked at the hospital.
I helped triage at the triage site,
and then we evacuated a woman to the hospital.
The closest hospital, I think was Arlington.
That's where we took her.
Arlington Hospital.
And I ended up staying there for the rest of the day
because the hospital asked me to stay
because I was the only uniformed person there.
And they wanted a-
- A representative.
- A liaison in case there were a,
'cause they were expecting a lot of casualties.
They actually didn't get very many casualties.
And so I stayed at the hospital for the rest of that day,
waiting for, in case there was something else needed.
But people just helped me.
A reporter standing outside the entrance to the hospital
gave me 35 cents.
Actually didn't even give me 35 cents.
He just pulled a bunch of change out of his pocket
because I asked for some change to call my family
and tell them I was okay
because the cell phones weren't working.
And so he didn't ask any questions.
He just gave me a pocket full change
and I took what I needed and I went
and called my friend's cell phone or her voicemail
and left her a voicemail to let her know that I was okay
and to please call my family.
- That's a good point.
I'll never forget that first day.
It was a little bit of a controversy
on who was in charge amongst the federal agencies.
- Remember that.
- It's clearly an act of terrorism so it's FBI,
but it's on a military facility so it's DOD
and potentially us.
And I was a young special agent at the time, of course.
And we spent that first day focused external
to the Pentagon, mostly picking up pieces of the aircraft
and documenting where it was.
But as night came on,
we started doing limited penetrations
into the actual impact site.
And I'll never forget being ordered to go home
after 18 hours or so and all of us refusing
to be willing to go home
because we thought that our servicemen and women
were still in there and needed to be brought out
and finally had to go home,
slept for an hour or two,
and then we're right back out there.
But, you know, we didn't get in trouble for that.
And it was that pattern over and over and over.
We just wanted to get it done and get the people out.

- I remember looking, going up and getting ready
to express my condolences,
and then looking at her face.
The darkness in her eyes, and the depth of sadness
was just overwhelming to me.
- I had just recovered a woman that had died in there,
and I was on a break, and there was a gentleman out there,
holding onto the fence, and just looking in,
and he said, "Excuse me, is anybody else
"coming out of there?"
"Who are you looking for?"
And he goes, "My wife."
And he described the woman that I had just recovered.
- And it wasn't until then that I really sat down
and started going back and, (sighs)
going back deeply into my memories,
and pulling out, really, the most painful parts.
(soft emotional music)
- I also remember the next day,
'cause I had to be back at work the next morning,
and it was a long line getting in,
but I remember the silence in the building.
- Yeah.
- It was just eerily quiet.
And the smoke just hung in the air,
and just really was awful,
and the soot everywhere.
I still, as I said,
jet fuel still-
- And kerosene. - Kerosene still.
- Kerosene, jet fuel.
- Still triggers.
- Yeah.
- But we had to go back to work.
He had work to do, and I got reassigned
very quickly right after that
to the Army Operations Center,
where I spent many long days, and many long nights.
- Sure.
I waited five years, I think.
And then, for some reason, just sat down
on a computer and started typing it out,
and then I remember being really upset
with certain memories that I had.
The recovery of this person,
and then the recovery of these pieces of people.
And then deleting everything I had written,
because it was too graphic,
and I wanted my child to read it one day.
I found it cathartic.
I still haven't finished it.
I had that brief sprint five years after, probably,
and I go back to it every once in a while.
But someday, I'd like to finish it all,
and set that level of how much detail
you put in your own memories and everything.
Yup.
But I think it helped.
- I think a lot of us held stuff in afterwards,
because to keep it together, we had to.
And I remember I didn't cry for a while.
When I cried, it was at the memorial service.
I went to the memorial service,
because my office was actually one of the people
coordinating it, my former office,
but I was working in the Operations Center by then.
I remember leaving, finishing my shift,
and coming and finding my friends.
I said, "I wanna find the Lamana family."
Scott Lamana.
Who was one of my son's teacher's husband.
Or he went to school there,
you know, he was active duty, I was,
and there was one other parent,
and we were about to give word to the school
that I was alive, but she kept on going back
to the office, asking about her husband.
"Has anybody heard anything, has anybody heard anything?"
And then we found out he passed away.
He was one of the people that died.
But I remember looking, going up and getting ready
to express my condolences,
and then looking at her face,
and I burst into tears, because the look on her face,
the darkness in her eyes, and the depth of sadness,
it was just overwhelming to me,
and I, here I am trying to console her,
tell her how sorry I am, and I'm bawling my eyes out,
and we're just hugging each other, crying together.
And I remember Scott's father was there,
and his father could never look up.
His father was looking at the ground the whole time.
I think so many people were in disbelief.
And then I did ask her, "Is there anything I can do?"
She goes, "He had some personal items.
"I just wanna make sure I can get those back
"so I have something to hold onto."
- Yeah.
- And I think you had one of the worst jobs of all.
You really did.
- No, I think it was all equally distributed, unfortunately.
- And because we were counting
how many Humpty Dumptys we put back together
every day in the Army Operations Center,
and it was really, got to be too emotional.
After about a month or two.
- Yeah.
- And they started doing it
in an off, you know, a side report,
because it was affecting too many people.
- [John] Yeah.
- And I remember when we had to make the decisions
about burying the co-mingled remains.
- Right.
- That was another really tough decision,
because we couldn't put it in a place of honor,
because the terrorists' remains were mixed in.
- Right.
- And so I think the decision was made
to bury it at sea.
And that was a little bit of a tough decision
to go through, and manage that with everybody.
You know.
- John and I talked, and it was,
time actually has really no meaning.
It was a couple days into it.
Rescue turned to recovery.
And it was just part of the job,
that's what we did.
And the silence.
You mentioned going to work, and how silent it was.
- [Mary] It was so quiet.
- When we weren't doing what we were doing,
we were out trying to eat,
trying to hydrate. - Hydrate.
- Hydrate, 'cause it was a beautiful time.
But gosh it was hot. - It was still hot.
It was still summer. - And, it was.
- [John] Well, and it was still hot in the building
from the fire.
- [Rob] Fire was still burning.
- [Mary] The fire was still burning, yes.
- Our boots melted. - Yeah.
- 'Cause the top layer had cooled,
but as you go-
- But the bottom, as we were going.
- Your boots would start melting.
You'd see your gloves start to get soft and everything.
It took, what?
Probably a week for that under layer to cool down.
- We'd go in for a time period and come out,
and just leapfrog teams at a time.
And we had, part of our teams were daisy chaining
what we were finding, who we were finding,
whatever it was.
But that was the battle rhythm
of the next three months, is what we did.
- [John] I still wouldn't have wanted
to be anywhere else.
- Nope.
Right there. - Yeah.
The one recovery that really sticks with me,
I'll never forget.
I had just recovered a woman that had died in there,
a civilian, and I was on a break to rehydrate and eat,
and we had to go outside the little cornered off area
to use the restroom.
And there was a gentleman out there
holding onto the fence, and just looking in,
and he said, "Excuse me, is anybody else coming
"out of there?"
And I said, "I'm not sure, you know, we're still looking."
This was probably day two or three.
He says, "Are you finding anybody alive in there?"
I said, "Well you know, we're still looking.
"Who are you looking for?"
And he goes, "My wife."
And I said, "Well, what was she wearing?"
And he described the woman that I had just recovered.
But I couldn't tell him.
I couldn't share that I knew
that she was not coming out,
and I just said, "Sir, if you just give me
"your name and number, if I hear anything,
"I'll give you a call."
And it was an active investigation.
There was nothing I could do to help the guy.
But I'll never forget the look on his face.
It was that dark, I know the truth here.
I know the truth.
But he just hung onto that fence
and wouldn't let go, and just looked.
And he was there for days afterwards.
Just looking in.
- I had just moved out of my own house.
I was in transit getting ready
to do a transfer station over to Naples, Italy,
so it was a big move.
And I remember having to call my realtor,
and tell them that I was still alive,
and that I was still planning to sell my house.
I had to change all of my tickets,
all of the travel arrangements had to be changed
because I was supposed to fly out
of Reagan International, and of course that had been closed.
So everything changed.
And it was really hard, not just for me,
but for our whole office, because we didn't get to go back.
Our office was one of those.
It was so close that it was not habitable.
And so I was only able to go back into the Pentagon
three weeks later to get some personal effects,
and you know, you had to put on the protective suits,
and zip up, and you were told not to put anything down,
and it wasn't until then that I walked over
to the window and saw how close we had been,
and the fact that we had walked away.
So I was still processing all of that
when I transferred.
I left the country on October 1st,
and it was incredibly difficult to get on an airplane.
- I bet. - On October 1st,
but I had to, because this was my next duty station.
And I was still processing, and I was traumatized.
I was very traumatized by it.
And I reported to my new command,
and nobody had put together,
or had just come from,
or nobody knew what I had just gone through,
and I felt completely alone.
Completely alone.
And I think it was 10 years later
there was a project that the National Endowment
for the Arts was sponsoring,
and it was about the War on Terror,
and so they were asking service members
to submit their stories, and so I did,
and they liked the story,
but they wanted more detail, more detail, more detail.
And it wasn't until then
that I really sat down and started going back,
and (sighs) going back deeply into my memories
and pulling out, really, the most painful parts.
- [John] Right.
- And trying to describe them in a way
that was not so graphic. - Mm-hmm.
- But describe them in a way that people
would understand what it was like
to be in that moment.
And so that story stayed on the National Endowment
for the Arts website for the next 10 years,
10, 11 years. - That's great.
- And so a lot of people, every year,
they would say, "Hey, Susan.
"Send me a link to your story, please.
"I wanna share it on Facebook, or whatever."
And I would do that, and then two years ago,
I was asked, and I went to look for the link,
and it was gone. - Oh.
- And I felt like my voice had been taken away.
And so I sat down,
and I wrote the story the way I wanted to, two years ago.
What, 21 years later?
I wrote the story that I wanted to write it.
And I put it out on a WordPress blog site,
because I needed to have my voice heard,
because my story isn't just about
what happened to me that day.
It was about the help that I saw other people give
that day. - It was amazing.
- D.C. came together in a way I never saw before.
- [John] Sure did.
- And quite frankly, haven't seen since then.
And because I moved away just a few weeks
after all of that happened,
it wasn't until I moved back here
a couple years ago to take a job at MIDER
that I really ended up having to face this
very, very fresh for the first time,
because I didn't stay and do the hard jobs,
like dig through the rubble piles,
or some of the things that you did.
I've kind of carried it on my own this whole time.
And this is the first time
since I left the Pentagon,
I have sat down and talked with other people
who were there, and who did things,
and didn't just evacuate,
but who were there, and fulfilled a role,
because it was the thing that we were called to do that day.
- And that's a thread I'm hearing
as I listen to each of you
is even though you had that experience,
and that trauma, you all just kicked into
your sense of duty, of service,
and almost on autopilot,
but you were still having to struggle
with those experiences that you had.
- It doesn't leave.
And people talk about PTS.
You know, I think when you have PTS,
it doesn't go away, you learn to manage.
And I know, for me, all those things you kinda resurrect,
especially around the time I was retiring,
because I lost my son right before I retired.
And I know, I went and immediately got help,
and I said Pandora's box opened.
I said the straw that really popped it up
was losing my son, but I had to go back
and really look at all these other things.
And looking at all the connections,
and how these events impact who you are,
and what you do in your whole life.
I know if 9/11 hadn't occurred,
I'd have a very different life.
- Yeah, sure.
- You know, I was getting ready to apply
as a desk officer working full-time for the DIA,
and then continue in the reserves.
It would be in a very different position
than I am now.
You know, and I think again, I go back to my faith.
There's a plan.
I'm here for a reason, here to talk about things,
and do things, and there's a lot more
for me to accomplish,
and you take those things,
and they talk about PTS and PTSG,
post traumatic growth, and I think we've all
taken those experiences, and we've grown with them.
We've used those to continue to do good things
and make a difference in the world.
And we know that we're here for purpose,
and we've taken, and we've continued
living purpose-driven lives.
I think that's one of the things
that I think about often.
- It's great to know you still have work to do here.
- I know, I know. - That's why.
- Yup, I still do.
- That's why we're still here.
- Yes.
- I often think about, around September 11th,
I often think about the colleagues
that I did lose that day,
because there was some people from the Navy
who perished that day that I knew,
and I have certain things that remind me of them
that come up from time to time.
Like, I don't know if anybody remembers
the man Jim with the white beard
who used to walk around the Pentagon
and give candy out. - Mm-hmm.
- The candy man?
- Yes, I remember you talked about him, yes.
Yes. - Yeah, yeah.
When I moved, I was unpacking stuff,
and in one of my jacket pockets,
I found those candies that he had given me.
And I just lost it. - It's hard.
- Yeah.
But it makes me think
of the lives lost that day,
and then it gives me gratitude
that I and my colleagues
were able to go forward from that,
and learn and grow, and live a life,
and that was something that they didn't get
a chance to do. - Yup.
- I remember the other thing when I was leaving
the building, there was a big plane that went over
the Pentagon. - Yup, mm-hmm.
- Remember that? - I do.
We actually have photos that were from that plane.
- I was not sure, I didn't realize that plane
was a good guy, because when I left,
I saw that big hole, and I saw that plane,
and said, "Oh my gosh.
"There's another plane coming."
And there's people trying to come in the building,
I know I'm trying to turn around.
Don't come in the building.
And the scariest thing for me that day
was not knowing who was good and who was bad initially.
- Right?
- I wasn't ready-
- Or how big the attack, right.
How big is the attack?
- They called- - Yes, how big is the attack?
And who's good, and who's bad?
- [John] That's exactly right.
- When we were leaving,
I didn't know if I was gonna be walking,
and having people shoot at me.
- [John] No.
- Yeah- - We, oh sorry.
Go ahead.
- Oh, I was gonna say that
I was scared a few times that day.
I wasn't scared until we got to the courtyard,
and they told us to evacuate the courtyard
because there was another plane coming in,
and they didn't know its intentions.
And that is the most scared I have ever been
in my life up into that point,
and then when we set up on the banks
out by the river entrance
for the second triage site,
they told us to stay underneath the cover of trees,
because we didn't know what to expect,
and I truly felt like I was in a war zone
in that moment. - Yup.
- And then fighting to get the woman
that we were trying to save to the hospital.
That was, it was like a war zone in and of itself,
because people didn't know what was going on.
- No.
- People didn't know what was happening,
and traffic was just completely stopped,
and when you're in a beaten up old Subaru,
you look like everybody else.
- Right.
- And so the only way to get through the traffic
was to run car to car, banging on doors,
telling people to get out of the way
so that we could get this woman to the hospital.
And I, several times past,
I have wondered if I made the right decisions that day.
If I had gone a different way down a different corridor,
would I have made a different decision?
Would I have impacted a different life?
I did, I found out a year later
that the woman that we had helped
to get to the hospital, she did survive.
- Great.
- And she was an army lieutenant colonel,
and she was a mother.
And so I figured that if I didn't help
save anybody else that day,
there was one life with two more lives
attached to it that depended on her,
and, you know.
It doesn't make sense to second guess yourself that much
when you've got at least that to say yes.
That's something that went well.
- Sure did. - That day.
- It sure did.
- Never, up to that point in my career,
had I had to worry truly.
Acquisition effort, we don't deploy.
Or we didn't deploy up to that point, right?
Post 9/11, there's a whole new world,
especially on the Air Force side,
and I have deployed since,
and I have been game on ever since then.
But totally oblivious.
Everybody was a good guy, gal, to me,
and how are we taking care of the families?
So I'm thankful that y'all were on watch
so we didn't have to have that piece on our brains.
We could just stay focused, on the families,
and take care-
- Also the most critical part.
So thank you for doing that.
- Well, and the other thing is,
I think the jet sets scrambled that day.
One of the pilots was a female pilot.
- [John] She was.
- I think one of them, or both were.
But they didn't have any weapons in their plane,
and if that plane that crashed in Pennsylvania
got close enough to D.C., these people had already
made a decision to fly into it,
and make it crash. - And stop it.
- So it didn't hit the Capitol area.
And I actually have a, later on we can share a picture,
but I have a painting of it.
- One of the things you said, Rob,
was that we still have work to do today.
I heard you say that.
So it strikes me that an experience of this magnitude,
how formative that must be in every aspect
of your life, your personal relationships,
your professional work, your career decisions,
and it's decades later now,
but what are some of the things
that you think have been most formative out of that?
- I think the phrase, "Not on my watch."
I thought when I retired from the Air Force,
I was handing over, I don't want to say End of Watch,
because that's a trigger for a different day.
You know, but I thought I was done.
The, comes off your shoulders,
and now I can do this, post-retirement world.
And, no.
The watch, I think the watch will continue
all the way through my life.
And any kind of a crisis where I think I can jump in,
I'm in, and just let me know where you need me.
I may not be the health professional,
or the fighter pilot, but I got two of these,
one of these, and I'm just here to help.
- That's great. - Yeah.
- And no matter what you're able to do,
on that day and the days after,
everybody came together in a way
that I haven't seen since.
- Yes.
- But, and would not give up.
The sheer anger, and the knowledge that you had
to step up and handle this.
There was no other option.
It had to be done.
But I remain struck by that sensation
of looking around at my brothers and sisters
out there, and just thinking,
this is it to be American.
This is what it's about.
In our worst moment, this is what it looks like.
It's awesome.
- And it wasn't just America,
because it was, I mean, NATO came together.
- Yes. - Sure did.
- As a result of that, too.
- Sure did.
- I feel very similarly to what you just stated,
in that it really was about coming together.
There was no politics that day.
- Nope.
- There was no rank that day.
There was no anything other than
what can I do to help you?
- Mm-hmm.
- And the world came together
for a small period of time
with the United States.
So for me, one of the biggest takeaways
that I have from September 11th
is that that's possible.
That very differently-minded people
who come from completely different backgrounds,
completely different upbringings,
environments, can agree and work together
to get things done,
and so that aspect of teamwork
and working together, it's possible.
- It is.
- I think we get very mired
in our own personal views sometimes,
and understandably so,
and it takes some horrific earth-shattering experience
to remind us that at the end of the day,
we're all human, and we are all just living our lives.
We have families, loved ones,
we want to live.
We want to be healthy.
We want to breathe.
We wanna share good times.
We're all human.
And that is one of the things
that reminded me of that,
that I was reminded of on that day,
that we could come together as one
in that moment.
- You guys remember the first time
you heard the National Anthem-
- Oh yeah. - After 9/11.
Was that not- - Oh.
- Mine was the following weekend.
We had tickets, theater tickets,
and so sure enough, you know, they played
the anthem, and standing ovations, and tears,
and I think it was, again, one of those first times
where civilian Debbie in a civilian audience,
didn't matter who you were sitting next to,
we were all together, and we were so proud
to be Americans, and we were going to get
through this together.
- The day they had the flag draped over the Pentagon,
that famous picture.
We've all got pictures of it,
and all our teams were standing underneath the flag.
That was also the day the President came to visit,
to the Pentagon, that's the day he came.
And, yeah.
That hit.
- Not a dry eye in that crowd.
- That hit hard.
Everybody.
I mean, we got a bunch of type A personality
guys and gals out there,
and just, yeah, we all just crumbled.
- Well, at some point you have to.
Like I said, when I went to the memorial service,
I hadn't cried, and you look at somebody,
and it's that small trigger that just opens the floodgates.
- Sure.
- And my 10-year-old's, "But Daddy, you were there."
I said, "Yeah, I was there."
And that generation, where they're 10,
and they're now learning in class,
American history and that,
and I'm severely blessed to be able to take them
to these locations, not just there,
but all around D.C., but to the Pentagon,
and show them, and I remember,
telling him what it was like that day,
'cause they see the pictures that I have,
and they look at me, and he goes, "Yeah, where was that?"
And I'm like, "Well, that was right here."
That's my dealing with it.

- I want to ensure that our voices are collected
for those who come after us to say,
"It did happen and we came through it as Americans."
- We did the best we could that day,
and we were destined to live another day
and do what we're doing now,
'cause somebody had to be here to tell the story.
- As much as September 11th was the worst day of my life,
I was also so glad I was there.
I don't think I could have had more impact
than I did on that day.
- There was a job to do.
You did it, and you didn't do it for yourself.
It wasn't about us.
It was about recovering victims,
so families can have closure.
(somber music)
- You know, it took me a long time
to go to the memorial site that they built.
I finally went and it was a big emotional experience,
but it was almost like a sigh of relief because it was like,
you could not necessarily put closure on it,
but you could, you know,
I don't know what the right word is,
but you could just put things
that you knew people were not forgotten.
All their names were there.
You know that the site has been kept sacred,
and to me that was important,
and it took me a while to recognize my triggers,
and usually I'm pretty good about recognizing 'em.
I think it's when there's surprises,
if I know I'm going to be asked about things,
or I know I have to talk about things, I'm fine.
It's when the unexpected- - You're blindsided.
- Yeah, and I think I've done a good job
of understanding my triggers and know how to manage 'em now,
but it took a little while to do that, to manage those,
and it's just a part of managing your PTS.
These events change us forever.
They're not gonna go away.
They're a part of who we are,
and we just learned to manage them really well,
put things in buckets.
- I have found that my triggers have,
I had different triggers in the beginning.
I have ended up having more triggers
since I moved back to DC because I'm back where it happened,
and when I come to work every morning,
I drive right there by where a lot of this stuff happened,
and so, it's just weird
because I'm not expecting them at all.
Last year, a fire alarm,
a kitchen smoke detector triggered me.
The year before, it was, I was coming,
I was working on the Navy Yard at the time,
and I was coming out of the building
at the end of the day.
It was probably around six o'clock,
and I heard the roar of jet engines
and I immediately panicked, and just flattened myself
against the brick of the wall I was standing by,
and my heart was in my throat
because I was in that moment again completely,
and the only thing that I could think of,
is because it was the Navy Yard,
it was probably just a very innocent fly-by.
- Sure, right by Reagan.
- Yeah, well by the stadium.
Yeah, for a Nationals game,
and I didn't see that coming,
so it is definitely the long-term management
of the things that you know are going to trigger you,
but for me, it's also been more recent things
because it's coming back fresh to me in a way
that it had not before for the previous 20 years.
- Well, I, if you remember, I think it was 20,
was it 2012, 2011, 2012, or '13,
we had the big earthquake here.
I was in Arlington, and when that earthquake hit,
(sighs)
it took me a minute or two.
Okay, pull myself together a bit.
Every, that was like a big trigger.
- For me, if nothing else comes out of this, it's the fact
that you all have connected.
I know that you two, you and John knew each other,
but for me, if nothing else came out of this, it's the fact
that you all have gotten to connect.
- Yeah, it's great.
- And so, yeah-
- It's the peer support.
I think the hard thing is not having somebody
who has the same experiences,
and you know, one of the big things, you know,
people are talking about now about things like moral injury.
You know, "Could we have done more?
Could I have done something differently?
Could I have gone down different halls?
Should I have done this?
Should I have done that?"
But having peer support really helps you manage some of that
and understand we did the best we could that day.
We made the best decisions we could
and we were destined to live another day
and do what we're doing now,
'cause somebody had to be here to tell the story,
and that's going to be us,
but now, I'm grateful that I have a set of peers now,
so when 9/11 gets closer, if I'm having one
of those days, I can just text, email, say,
"Hey, can you chat for a minute?
I'm having a moment."
- You bet.
- Absolutely, anytime.
- I think that's important.
I think that's important.
- And I know I'm up in Boston, but right,
I'm only a chat away or-
- Or a field trip. - Field trip.
- Road trip.
- Next time up there.
(laughs)
- Yeah, you mentioned that you share selectively
and we're over two decades out now,
and you all answered my email and wanted to come here
and talk about it.
Why is it important to you to keep talking about this?
- It's an important moment in history
and I think our next generation has to understand duty,
honor, and courage,
and I think that gets lost in a lot of the rhetoric now,
and I don't want our next generation to forget about that.
You know, God, family and country are important
and duty and honor, and courage are right there with it.
- There are times throughout American history
where we've come together as a nation, as a people,
as a community, as a state, as selective areas,
and this is one of those times,
and we've said multiple times here on different occasions,
how I joined the military in '89,
so right before Desert Shield and Desert Storm,
and there was a huge positive military right after that,
and then it was fading.
And then being in the job that we were in didn't have a lot
of positive experiences
with other military members, just,
it was the nature of the job.
Nobody likes the agents, whatever.
It was the time in history where it didn't matter
what you did in the military or what military,
or the rank, whether you're an officer, enlisted,
so it did not matter what side of the aisle you're on,
in today's political arena, it just didn't matter.
There was a job to do.
You did it, and you did it,
and you didn't do it for yourself.
The team that we went in as we were making our way through,
it wasn't about us.
It was about recovering victims
so families can have closure,
so the work we were doing was,
it was for other people, and it is possible to have that.
And if we could get back to some type of,
I don't want, you know, another horrific event
to trigger that, to let, I said, I let my kids know,
"You can do this.
You can work with anybody for the greater good."
- It's empathy.
Yep, have a little empathy.
- I know, and-
- We forget that sometimes, don't we?
- Some people have, and that's a shame.
- [Mary] Yeah, it is.
- Our citizenship matters and it means something,
and doing something to help out the country that day.
I mean as much as September 11th was the worst day
of my life, I was also so glad I was there.
- Same.
- I am glad that I had the experiences that I had.
I'm glad I was there in that moment
to be able to help people,
and as I look over my entire 26 year career,
I don't think I could have had more impact
than I did on that day,
and it's one of the big reasons why I joined MITRE was
because I feel like I still have that mission
of helping others and doing something for a greater good.
- That's great.
- You did ask, you know,
why do I wanna tell the story?
"I wonder why should we tell the story?"
And as I was telling off camera, you know,
I was raised Jewish
and the Holocaust is a very challenging conversation for us
because that was 1940s, you know.
For the most part, the survivors have aged out,
and thank goodness Steven Spielberg
and others have done the documentation so
that when people today say it didn't happen,
we actually have that story to say,
and I want to ensure that our voices are collected for those
who come after us to say, "It did happen,
and we came through it as Americans."
And you know, we always hear democracy is not easy.
There is today in our 2024 world,
there are bad entities out there trying
to undermine our amazing nation
and our beautiful junior workforce,
and your children and your grandchildren.
I don't have, but you know, I know the future,
there's this chance of being undermined
and destroying our country
and this is how we stop it, you know?
This is it.
We draw the line and we say, "We can do this.
We are better than that evil, and 9/11 itself,
yeah, they hit us, but we clapped back.
We came together, and we don't forget."
- I believe it's right outside the archives
in the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
It's in the stones,
and I see it every day when I drive down Constitution,
and that rings very, very true, yeah.
- I look at our collective impact
and I think we should count that
as a really wonderful thing.
When I look at each of our stories,
it's just amazing,
and I think it just embodies the American spirit,
and I think that is something I am very happy about sharing,
'cause I know that I'm not alone,
that I feel there's other people out there
that really care about our country,
about doing the right thing and making impact,
so that gives me hope, and hope is important.
- You bet.
- Sharing this here
for me has been very good.
Telling my story to, we just had a bunch of interns
that were here and I shared with them tidbits
because people had known and said,
"Oh yeah, you were there, okay",
but they don't get it.
- No, they don't.
- And even, there's one of my best friends was
in that picture with me.
We still meet up about once a month and just,
or come to the house and we talk about things,
and unless you were there, you just,
how do you describe this to somebody?
- Our next generation, our youth,
other people just need to know about this.
- I like to also offer up
that we continue this and it not just September 11th,
or September 10th, or any other day,
but if there's any other time, let's do it,
if anybody needs anything.
- I will say that every September 11th,
since September 11th, I have not watched TV.
I don't listen to the radio,
I don't look at anything online.
I shut down.
I try, I've even taken the day off more than once
because I can't deal with all of the stuff.
I can't watch anything to do with September 11th movie wise.
I just, I am not in a place where I'm able
to process that.
- It took a me a while.
- Yeah, and it takes, it does take a long time,
but slowly but surely, it's things like this
that help to-
- We're here for you.
- Go in a positive direction.
- We're gonna be here for you.
- The People magazine actually was published on the 24th,
a few weeks later,
so the photos that came out on it, my mom picked this up
for me because, during this time, we were just 14 hour days
in the pit was what we did.
The one that stands out for me is this is the newspaper
for my hometown, Rockbridge County, Virginia.
And on the front cover is a photo that was taken of me
and my team at the Pentagon
and right above the fold also, this is a picture of my dad.
- [Mary] Oh, wow.
- And talking about the flags,
this is at a memorial service.
- Can I see it?
- We can take it and pass it around.
- Yeah, we can pass it.
- We lost my dad this year.
- Oh, I'm sorry.
- Thank you.
I said he's a 30 year Navy retiree, retired Air Force,
big military family.
There's a lot of people in the family have
that paper.
- Looks just like him.
- Yeah, it reminds me of,
after we watched the planes hit,
'cause I was working in a public affairs office
and we had a bank of TVs
that all had a different station on it,
and when we saw the second plane hit,
I remember walking back to my desk thinking,
"Oh, it's gonna be a slow news day for the Navy."
And on the way I picked up a copy
of "The Washington Post",
'cause you know, we were still reading newspapers back then,
(laughs)
and I put it down on my desk,
and a few minutes later, the plane hit
and everything happened.
And then when I went back three weeks later,
that newspaper was still sitting on my desk
(group gasps) from September 11th,
and it was like another time completely,
because the news on September 11th
for that day was stuff that had already happened,
and it was just so surreal, and I just left it there,
'cause it was covered in soot and stuff,
and we were not supposed to take those things.
- Yeah, well, we had a memorial service one month later
on October 11th,
and this lists the names of all the missing,
and then this is the pin,
but this is from the memorial service
and the songs that we sang, so
(Mary sighs)
so the scripture readings, it was quite the day.
- I bet.
- And then I have a piece of the Pentagon.
From working in the Army Operation Center,
after we did our rotation out, as a recognition
of our service, we got a piece of the Pentagon,
but we didn't get those until much later.
It was, it came a little bit after our service
because they were still putting everything back together,
and there was a whole process they had to go through
to take certain pieces that weren't too close to anything
where there were commingled remains
or would've been part of, that would've been sacred,
and then they numbered them, and then we got some of those.
And then the painting is of the jets that were scrambled
after the plane hit the Pentagon
- Where we were at, we were standing,
our teams were right underneath the flight.
- You were right underneath the flight.
- You were to pan down from that,
that's where we were.
It was beautiful
when it came over though.
It was, it was breathtaking.
- The big blue book here is my scrapbook,
so I'd mentioned, I was in the intern program.
I was there from summer 2000 to summer 2002,
and there is a before and after theme in there,
and I know we'll show the pages separately
and you guys have seen it,
but for the most part, the 9/11 story in there,
really the memorial service that your team put together,
I was there.
I have a photo, you know, from my angle.
I have my pin, you know, as well,
so thank you for this.
This this will go with me.
(laughs)
What I also have here is this is a Pentagon item
that was created before, right,
so I imagine that if I were to go
and get this again in, you know, 2024, it doesn't show any
of the memorial sides or anything,
so it's just a very clear picture.
And, you know, there's an overflight here
that means something I think a little different
when we see planes flying - Sure does.
- over the Pentagon now.
Let's see, and then, like, this was my journal.
Like I referenced, but I think the hardest thing for me
to talk about is just a copy of a clipping,
because I didn't save the paper.
You know, kudos to actually keeping the original ones,
but as I had mentioned,
I supported the Pentagon Family Assistance Center
and the three star Army commander got in at you know,
like the official team came in and set everything up,
and the first update to the families that, he did two
of them, he did like a 10:00 AM
and a 2:00 PM every day,
so the families could come in
and understand what was going on, check status.
And the very first event that he hosted, he kind
of went in cold with his staff
and just gave the update, all of the information,
and he was trying to explain the situation,
what had happened, and you know
where the attack occurred in the Pentagon,
and he said, "You know, it's in 'The Washington Post',
you know, there's a clipping of it if, you know,
you guys wanna take a look."
And so I'm on the wall
and again, this comes the whatever I can do to help,
and so as soon as he said that, I ran out of the room,
outta the ballroom, found the paper, made a ton
of copies of this piece, and I gave them to his exec,
and then they in turn were able to hand that out
to everyone in the room,
and so that artifact that it basically shows,
you know, the Pentagon and the impact point.
This was like the first piece of paper that they were given,
you know, officially from the DOD, and so very,
yeah, very hard to talk about,
and this is because I didn't keep the paper,
I believe this is the proper one,
so MITRE and sources will make sure that,
but just watching families look at this,
and have an opportunity to understand
where their missing loved one was on that day.
- Well, we were on scene,
and during one of our chow breaks, we were brought
these bags because I don't even know
what school it came from,
but they were giving it to all of us working,
and in it I think was some tissues, some candy, and stuff,
and there was coloring on the outside,
and these elementary school coloring all.
Remember those?
- I do.
I still have those bags.
- Oh my goodness.
- And that's the coming together.
They didn't know who was gonna get it.
They just knew it was going to somebody.
- And they were nothing but positive too.
- Oh my gosh, it was- - There were messages.
- They were, "Thank you.
We love you.
Thank you so much, USA"
And they were just, I still have those bags, so yeah.
Stupid brown little paper bag.
It's the most beautiful thing.
- It tells a story.
- It absolutely does.
- Well I'm really grateful that all of you have connected
and I'm really grateful that you have shared your stories
with us today, so thank you.