Disclaimer: The following is not to say what a good boy am I. Contrary, it's to illustrate that even minor folks away from Ground Zero got blasted as well. Please don't let this post take away from those at Ground Zero and the other targets and their families. Their sacrifice is far greater than mine ever will be.
Day One was a 28-hour day max security, can't leave, can't enter, coffee, and vending machine meals. Trying to calm down my son and his friends away at college.
Feeding, advising, and supporting young service members (Enl/Ofr), senior leaders, and civilian employees who never worked any type of a disaster in their lives and now are responsible for taking care of a major military installation (30,000 pop. and a civilian community of over 250,000); Unifying 3 major commands and their leadership into one response force?!
Talking to numerous military installations disaster response folks in CONUS/OCONUS trying to get a grip on what just happened and get copies of response plans to help their COs out. Glad I didn't have to pay that phone bill?! LOL!
Finding out in the early morning stupor I loss friends and partners in the Pentagon; NYFD and NYPD brothers at Ground Zero who were at the various academies with me, who came and taught my responders here in SC and GA.
Two days later I celebrated my birthday - 2 slices of cold pizza and a bottle of Italian wine. To this day I ask my wife if I enjoyed it?! She tells me I did, but it was after my birthday that I had the pizza?! LOL!! Go figure!
I WILL NEVER FOREGET! God Bless the responders and their support teams. Many of my brothers and sister died that day for this country.
Thank You Braves and Mets for the baseball game 10 days later (21 Sept) to bring us together. Thank you, Mike Piazza, for that homerun that will always be with us!! God Bless the USA!
Sorry for the long-winded post after being a troll for the past week or so folks! Just a tough week with the loss of a fellow chef and friend and now this memory on this end.
John