Remembering 9/11

We lived in Hawaii for several years and were volunteers at The Outdoor Circle, Hawaii's oldest environmental education nonprofit. I sometimes did my computer work at night when it was cooler, and was finishing an article early in the morning of September 11, 2001, watching Conan O'Brien reruns. He was interviewing someone with a new movie, so when the screen changed to the image of the twin towers, one with smoke pouring out, it didn't immediately sink in that this was a live shot. The voice cut in and I was just realizing that this was real when the second plane hit. Along with millions of others, I concluded that second plane meant this was a planned attack, no accident. When the third plane hit the Pentagon, I got slightly histerical and woke my husband. We lived just minutes from Pearl Harbor. At that point, only the terrorists knew how many other planes were in the air, aimed at targets. We made coffee and alternated between the computer and the TV as the rest of the story unfolded. As we now know, there was only one more, Flight 93, apparently brought down by the passengers in a field in Pennsylvania.

The initial shock and horror was just beginning to abate, when the phone rang. We instantly knew that someone very close to us had been on one of the planes or perhaps on the ground in New York or Washington. The mere seconds it took for my husband to get the message and offer our help in any way seemed an eternity. Mary Steiner, the CEO of The Outdoor Circle, and Christine Snyder, the Project Manager, had been to a conference in Washington, DC the previous week and had spent the weekend in New York before returning home to Hawaii. On the morning of 9/11, Chris was able to get an earlier flight -- she was a newlywed and anxious to get home. It was Flight 93.

My tribute to Chris follows. Chris often passes through my thoughts, so I wasn't too surprised when she showed up in a dream last week. We were at some planting event and I said how good it was to see her because I was writing a tribute for her and she could tell me what to say. She just gave me that dazzling smile and said, "oh, KD, you know!"