On the morning of September 11th, 2001, I was a young college student studying electrical engineering. I was also in the Air National Guard in California. That morning I was heading to the base to make up a drill weekend from the weekend prior. I forget the exact reason, but I think I had a Saturday morning class or something. I had asked my supervisor if I could skip Saturday, show up Sunday and then come in during the week on a day when I had no classes. And so it was that about 6am I was leaving my house in my military uniform.

March Air Force Base sits adjecent to the cities of Riverside and Moreno Valley. The commute for me was only a few miles as I lived in the area. When I got into my car for the quarter mile drive to the gas station my usual radio station was not playing music. Instead they were discussing an accident or tragedy for which they had no other information. I assumed it must have been a celebrity or musician who died in a crash.

But when I went into the station to get coffee and a soda for later in the day, I got my first clue that something was not right. This was the morning commute and so the line to check out was long, at least 6-10 people. Normal for that time of the day. Everyone there insisted I cut the line. Not knowing anything, I demurred. But they insisted with a sense of urgency that uneased me. As I was paying for my things the person who was next to me, leaned into me to ask:

Did you get called up?!

“I know what you know,” I replied, not fully knowing if that was sufficient. I was about to say that I was going in for a regular day just like everyone but nearly half the line wished me good luck and God Bless.

As I got into my car, I changed radio stations from music to news. It was then that I got the first details of what happened. A plane had flown into the Twin Towers. It might have been intentional, it might have been an accident. As I approached the base, security was already on higher alert. I knew the guard, but we did a more thorough inspection of my car: dog sniffers, opened the trunk, stuff like that.

I got to my shop less than a half an hour from when I left my house even with the stop for gas and extra security. The TV was on and I could see the tower on fire. I barely set my things down and walked over when the second plane struck the tower live.

Ten seconds later, maybe less, the announcement came over the base-wide PA system. THREATCON DELTA.

We went to full lock down. THREATCON levels range from Alpha to Delta, with Delta meaning an active attack on the military was under-way. President Bush would order all bases to Delta in a matter of minutes, and that order would take time to disseminate through the military. Our commander was not waiting for the order we all knew would come.

I spent the rest of the day getting all the planes in my unit Alert Ready. (All repairs complete, pre-flight checks complete, and setup so that pilots could rush to the plane and take-off within a minute or two.) We were an Air Refueling unit. And although that sounds mundane compared to fighter planes and bombers, we knew then that Tankers would be among the first to fly in order to prepare the skyways for the around the world missions that bombers and cargo planes make.

I remember spending time trying to get a hold of my mom. She had been in New York the week prior as I recall. Might have been only a few days. She was in Dallas. But the cell phone lines were jammed and I couldn’t get a hold of her. I cried when I finally talked to her. She told me later that it would be a week before she was home. Without any rental cars, her company authorized the local rep to lend her company car to my mom and other reps who lived between Dallas and Portland. They drove west, dropping off one rep at a time. The last two reps went north to San Francisco and Portland after my mom got home.

So much more could be said about the years since. But that day and those early weeks after seem more important today.

I remember going to my regular job, selling TVs at Best Buy that Friday. The sales manager at the time was Osama. He was Egyptian and a real nice guy. But as I walked into the store my friend grabbed me. He knew I was a part-time employee: “Hey man, I know you only work weekends. If you need him, page manager or just Sam.” He didn’t need to say anymore. When I saw “Sam” later that day, he already had a new name tag (probably FedEx’d overnight from wherever Best Buy made them at the time). He knew I was military and pulled me aside to talk.

I remember a lot of long conversations about Islam with a friend of mine at college. She and I really liked each other. We almost dated earlier that spring and summer but we knew we had different life paths. But we were still really close. A few weeks after 9/11 there were a bunch of students debating and yelling about Islam and I recall that she was close. I grabbed her and got her out of the crowd. It wasn’t violent but I didn’t want to risk it. We lost touch shortly after I got back from my deployment.

25 years. But that day feels like yesterday