Another 9/11 story

At just before 9am my father was sitting in the cockpit of a small jet, awaiting clearance from the tower to take off. From the tarmac my dad had a view of lower Manhattan. When he noticed that there was smoke coming from 1WTC, he radioed the tower asking if they knew what was going on. The tower responded that a plane had hit the tower. My dad sat in the cockpit in disbelief. How could anyone miss the Twin Towers on such a clear day?

Right around 9am he received clearance to take off. Shortly after take off, my father looked over at the WTC, which from his vantage point, looked like one tower. At that moment, he saw the fireball that was the plane hitting 2WTC. He wondered how a small plane (as he and the tower crew believed it was a small plane that caused the fire) could cause such a huge fire. Shortly thereafter, his flight was grounded at an airport just north of NYC. By the time he was on the ground, the towers were gone.

He and the rest of his crew were able to rent a car and drove back to the airport in NJ and then he returned home.

Years later I was sitting in the family room with my parents watching A&E's "Flight 93". My father got pissed when they showed the terrorists storming the cockpit, and he left the room.

I cannot imagine what went through my father's mind on September 11th and the days that followed, after learning what had happened. In the mid-80's my father left his job working on the 70th floor of 2WTC (the south tower) to follow his dream of flying. He became a pilot full time, not just flying for the military. If he hadn't become a pilot full time, would he still have been working at the WTC? What if he had gotten a pilot job with another company? These are sobering thoughts for me.