By Victor C. Kirk
On the 20th anniversary of the attack of September 11, 2001, I reflected on two experiences; my visit to the site during the thanksgiving holidays of 2001, and a memo sent to me on September 4, 2003, by Sarah Crooks, at the time a reporter for the Alexandria daily paper the ‘Town Talk”. Sarah contacted me during the preparation of a story in which “everyone here at the paper had been asked to find 5 people in the community to answer the question “How has 9/11 changed your life? And if it hasn’t changed your life, Why?” At that time, I served as CEO of the Rapides Primary Health Care Center in Alexandria, Louisiana. In retrospect, the first question I had been asked about September 11, 2001, in 2001 was “what were you doing when you heard that two passenger jets had crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center? For most of the world the clock and your heart stopped twice, once at 8:48 am when American Airline Flight 11 struck 1 World Trade Center, then at 9:06 am when United Flight 175 slammed into 2 World Trade Center.
I know exactly what I was involved in at the moment the towers were struck. Rushing to meet a deadline to provide demographic data to a budding health center organization somewhere in northwest rural Louisiana. As the Program Manager for Community Development with the Louisiana Primary Care Association, I was the second contact person for budding community-based organizations seeking guidance in the development of a health center grant to provide primary care services in a community where health and medical care was scare. My boss at the time, Mary Catherine Scott of Shreveport, called me into her office. Her voice is generally as calm and muted as you would expect from an exceptionally competent and accomplished Licensed Clinical Social Worker. But on that day, a slight elevation of her voice sent me rushing into her office, something must be up! I could not grasp what was going on but the smoke and flames and mad rush of people down a New York Street normally occupied by cars was the first hint that something BIG and awful had happened. No flat screen TV at that time so a smaller screen was all available to peer into an event of monumental proportions. Some crazy country had attacked the United States, assuring us that we were not invincible. I was stunned but for some reason knew the mastermind was not local. This would not be classified as “Domestic Terrorism” – the scale was too large. Two buildings at the center of international commerce housing more than 5000 people! All hell was going to break out and it sure did. But first we had to grieve.
As the days flashed by more and more news reports began to revisit just how much pain had been inflicted on the American consciousness. The trauma was broadcast live, and every moment of suffering was on display for 24 hours seven days a week. I like most of the world was transfixed upon the television set and ears leaned closer and closer to the radio as if poised to not miss one word that was uttered. I watched with horror and dismay as large specks on the screen mixed with paper airlifted and floated about the sky. But the specks were not broken desks, they were people who flung themselves out of an opened window, a conscious choice between burning alive or at that moment choosing to cheat death by deciding their own honorable method of ending life. “God will forgive me”, I am sure were the words that filled their heart and soul.
