It was about 5:30 am and my flight to the East Coast would leave in about an hour and a half.  My roommate Kelly said she would drive me to Portland Airport, so I didn’t have to pay for a week of parking.   I love that woman!

Everything went smoothly, we boarded on time, the weather cooperated, which for Portland is a major plus.  September is usually decent, people still go to the beach, and the downpours of fall are far off. 

My former life as a teacher overseas for the government provided me with many opportunities for air travel, so I didn’t pay much attention to the flight.  I was headed to visit family in Massachusetts, and a week away with them sounded great.

My seat mate was a pleasant woman, a bit younger than I, and we discussed everything.   We were still talking after coffee was served, when the pilot came on the intercom.   

 “Ladies and Gentlemen, we have just received a communication from the FAA ordering us to land at the nearest airport which for us right now is Salt Lake.   Please stay seated but begin to collect your belongings, as we will deplane there.     Please stay together in the airport until we have information as to what happens next.   Again, we are not involved in this, but are taking precautions.”

So, we started to look for our purses, bags, shoes and readied ourselves for landing.    I have flown in third world countries, overseas, in many parts of the world, but have never had to stop mid - trip with no explanation.

Inside the very empty terminal we all gathered around an official who seemed prepared to explain what was happening.  

“Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for your cooperation in such a strange occurrence.  Once we have explained, and made arrangements for you, we will bus you to a hotel, the price of which will be covered by the airline.”   (I wondered how long that might be.)

“At this moment, all air traffic in the US has been grounded.  We do not know when it will go back to normal, but it will take some time.  All incoming flights to the US have been ordered to turn back if at all possible, or seek another country to land in.”  

Having worked for United AirLines when I first graduated from university, I thought of the chaos this was creating.  A man in the back of the crowd asked:   “is it possible to know what has occurred?  Are ALL US flights grounded?”

The Airline spokesman told us that an unknown aircraft had flown directly into Tower 1 at the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan.  Then he said a second aircraft had just crashed into Tower 2, and the building was crumbling to the ground.  I thought many of the westerners on our flight may not have even seen photos of those buildings.   I worked in recruiting for engineers in construction of buildings like that, so I certainly had a mental image in my thoughts.  I had never been there, but I have recruited engineers and construction managers for similar projects, and knew how many thousands of people are employees, managers, company presidents who do work there.

My phone rang, and it was my best customer, an Italian engineer who had worked on those buildings for years.   I could hear the tears in his voice.  He told me more than I had learned from the airline, but it was still a puzzle.

The passengers milled around the area, but it was too early for any more news, no open cafes to get a bite to eat.  We waited maybe a half an hour for buses to collect us and take us to a nice motel miles away from the airport, and the city center.  Three of us agreed to share a room to save money, because we didn’t know how long we would be there, and we had no idea when we could leave. 

I decided I could not handle a national emergency without some alcohol.  I knew Salt Lake pretty well, and found a store that sold wine and alcohol.  I bought two bottles of wine, and walked back to the hotel in the noon heat.

Neither of the other women were interested in the wine, nor did they want to go to lunch.  I went alone, joined some other passengers, and made a few phone calls, as I knew Roommate, Sister, Parents and other friends would want to know what was up.      

If only I had remembered that my friend, Craig Jessop, the Director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir lived there having retired from his Air Force Career. I sang with the US and German singers at Ramstein Air Force Base, which he directed.   We had several major concerts under his direction.  My forte was keeping the Baritones on key.  If I had his phone number, I could have called and he would have come to scoop me up and take me to his home and meet his wife, instead of sharing a room with strangers.   I only thought of it a few months later, when I saw the choir, Craig Jessop, and the Utah State Orchestra on TV presenting a concert in memory of the deaths on 9/11.  I cried again.  Ultimately, I sent him a letter telling him about my unplanned trip to Salt Lake City, and his response was if I ever came back, I was to contact him, and if it was a Thursday evening, I could rehearse with the choir! How cool that would have been. 

We stayed in the hotel 3 nights, and they provided a pizza dinner for us on the last night.    The next morning, a group of us got out early, went back to the airport on the strength of a rumor, but planes were still not flying.   We all agreed to split costs for a rental car and drive back to Portland.  It’s a13 hour drive, most of which I slept through.

Two or three of the travelers had colleagues that worked in the towers, and they were very concerned.  I had watched too many bodies falling from the 100th floor or higher, so I slept the entire trip.   Kelly picked me up and took me home.   I still remember people jumping out the windows to avoid being crushed by the building as it fell, an image that is still with me.     I was rather shocked that my colleagues at the recruiting agency weren’t as devastated by the attack and destruction as I was.

About four years later, the boss of the recruiting agency closed the business, and told us we were on our own.   It allowed me to work from home.  

This was at the beginning of the financial problems around 2008, and very little hiring was happening in construction and Civil Engineering.  I contacted my best clients and proposed a different way of working.   I would stay in Portland, working from home.   I would not be paid until I filled a job order they assigned me.     Then they would pay me a percentage of the first year’s salary.   I would be provided an email that showed I worked for their company. 

I arranged this business model with 4 or 5 major construction and engineering companies.  I survived the 2008 financial crash, but I ended up selling my house and moving.   Everyone was in terrible financial shape. 

A few months later, my boss at a world- wide construction company asked me if I knew any Construction Engineers who had New York experience that included buildings above 80 stories.   Another company HR person had asked me the same question.

Immediately, I called my friend the engineer and asked him to send me some contacts.   He knew everyone, and sent me some names.  Another major company called me for the same type of job.  Since the original attack on the World Trade Center created such horror and damage, it took years before they actually got started on the rebuilding of the Center.  But they needed to build from below ground up, after they removed the tons and tons of rubble.  The company team in charge of getting things done designed the new building.   I can’t recall how long it took to even get ready to start construction.  The “bathtub”  was the underground reinforced concrete area which held the building, as well as tunnels to connect the transportation routes across lower Manhattan, the East River, and wherever they went to the West.  I had the opportunity to listen to an explanation about how well the bathtub worked when the initial collapse occurred.  The Engineer giving the briefing  said that if the bathtub walls had collapsed, New York City up to 58th St. would have been flooded and thousands of people would have died, subway tunnels would have been flooded, and New York would have been much more of a disaster area than it was.

Recruiting is a very odd type of work.   I almost never met in person any of the people I put in positions, some weren’t even living in the US.   The people who made the decisions, I only met if I went to their offices.  Requirements for each job can differ, and it was my job to figure out if the person on the other end of the phone would work well in the crazy world of 80 stories up in New York. Once I thought I had a good candidate, I had to make sure I didn’t oversell the candidate to the hiring manager. I had to decide about candidates by listening to them on the phone.  I enjoyed the work, but it was hard. 

In 2014, I had several reasons to take another trip to the East Coast.   A convention of Studio Art Quilts Associates in Washington DC allowed me to visit friends I have known for years.  Two couples I knew in Turkey during the 70’s and 80’s.  And I visited the offices of other clients.

I attended the swearing in Ceremony for a new Ambassador who I have known since my early years in Turkey, Joseph Le Baron and his wife Ellie.  They introduced me to Colin Powell, Secretary of State, and it was evident they were good friends, not just coworkers. I got to visit clients in the construction engineering world, and family who live in the Northeast.  I met my boss in person on her last day of employment.  I also met her incoming replacement, a man who was from broadcasting.   Why the company thought he was a good fit for international construction and engineering, I will never understand.

I went into New York after visiting the company headquarters in New Jersey, taking the train into the city, and foolishly took a cab into lower Manhattan. It was bumper to bumper the whole way down to the site.

My colleagues were expecting me, and had my hard hat and construction vest ready for the tour of the building.   It was not quite done, but we rode the elevator up the side of the building to the top floor with the construction guys, which was fun.  They aren’t accustomed to women on their elevator.

I had my camera out all ready to take a great photo of the whole of Manhattan from the Observation Deck, only to find that all I could see was the clouds.   My guide handed me a marker and said, “Write your name over there on that wall.”  It is the core of the building, and my name will stay as long as this building stands.  It would be covered with paneling, but I know it is there,102nd floor, windows all around, but way too many clouds.

The museum of the artifacts that survived was only open for families of the victims, so we could not go into that.  We looked at the names around the two pools, the names of the people who were lost were carved into the surrounding edge.  Tree-planting was going on in the area, and one little tree that had survived the fire and the collapse of the buildings had its own place of honor.

My guide and I sloshed through the mud and standing water under a strange open roof of a half- finished structure.  It is some kind of transportation hub, to provide connections by road, subway, and train, I think.   The finished building now looks like a white bird about to take off.  It gets a lot of criticism for the cost, and the odd type of building.   

Then, we headed back to the office, where my guide explained that since I had gotten jobs for many of the young workers, they wanted to take me to dinner.   I was tired but pleased.   We walked back across the site to a nice restaurant on the 20^th floor of a building with windows looking directly at the Site.

“The kids,” as I called them, were lots of fun to talk with, and get to know them, as I really had gotten them their jobs.  They told me their stories, and I told them some of mine, about living abroad, travel and the way I do my job.  They had bought me a coffee mug as a Thank You and something to remember my trip to this amazing place.    Then we decided it was time to go home, and my guide walked me back to the office.  But clumsy me, I dropped the mug and broke it, right in front of the Starbucks store.  So, my guide took me in and begged them for a new mug, ‘She came all the way from Oregon to meet us and tour the new building.  Please will you replace this broken one?”    She did, so I use it frequently to remember my tour of the New World Trade Center. 

My trip back to the hotel was subway and train to the other side of the river in New Jersey. By the time I reached my room, everything I had on, shoes, suit, hat were all soaked.  I had to repair parts of my suit coat because the rain really damaged the tailoring.  The next day I was going to the DC office of my company.  I had to look professional in DC.

About 2 months later, I got the letter indicating the head of HR knew he would not convince me to move to the East Coast, so I was terminated, with a check for about $600.   I was ready to retire.  

Anne Daughtry was born in Washington DC 1944, then her family moved to southern California to help her great Grandmother who was in her 80s.  Anne did very well in school, went to California State College at Northridge, and worked at her family’s restaurant, IHOP.  She worked for her teachers’ credential, and worked one year in a Junior High School teaching English.

She moved to Southern Turkey to teach the junior high students English and Social Studies on a US Air Force Base.   She worked at several military bases for the next 20 years, and in 1989 returned to the US with her husband who worked for the Air Force in Communications, right at the beginning of computers.   She did not work in education because she had other ideas, and her California Credential was not accepted by other states.   

Anne moved to Oregon to be closer to her elderly parents.  She started working in a staffing company, and the field was construction, and she had assistance from a friend in the business.   All the work was by telephone, and pay was excellent when she made a placement. 

The subject of this story, The World Trade Center, is a result of her being a recruiter.  She knew several people that wanted to work there, or did work there, and at least one who walked down from the ninetieth  floor.

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