All was calm, until it wasn’t.
And all because people are taught to hate us. And then they act on that hate.
It was a beautiful mid-September morning when I boarded my flight to Washington Reagan Airport from Columbus. I was attending a quarterly meeting of the National Pro- Family Forum on Homosexuality, formed in the mid-1990s to fight same sex “marriage” and the rapidly growing “gay” activist movement. I was just in Washington for the day, booked on an evening flight to return to Columbus.
Or so I thought.
Leaving the airport, I took the Metro subway to the station closest to the headquarters of Concerned Women for America, not far from the White House. The meeting had been underway for about fifteen minutes as I tiptoed in. I subsequently learned what had happened not long after my ride on the Metro near the Pentagon station.
But that realization came later.
I quietly took my chair, sensing an unusual undercurrent of seriousness about the meeting. We were typically a very collegial group who had already weathered some challenging national and regional fights together on this issue. That morning, the mood was very sober.
Then Phil Burress, chair of the Forum and president of CCV, explained to the those of us just arriving that a situation was unfolding in New York, that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. We carried on with the meeting for about another half hour, until the executive director of CWA, George Tryfiates, left the room, returning to whisper to Phil who then addressed us all. “Folks, we are going to have to suspend the meeting and we're bringing in a television. It's on national TV now that a second plane hit the World Trade Center.”
As we listened to the devastating news coverage, we learned that a plane had flown into the Pentagon as well, at which point some of us jumped up and went to the window with a view of the Pentagon. And tragically, it was indeed smoking. Then the news coverage announced that there was a suspected 4th plane in the air heading toward Washington. That's when the meeting dissolved as we each began our plans to flee the nation's capital.
Cell phones were not working in the city and the land lines in the CWA office were being used for their own employees as well as to try to determine the level of danger. We suspected cell phone coverage was suspended to deter terrorist communications. No one knew what was happening except for that rogue plane out there and rumors of other planes heading to Washington.
I ended up in a station wagon heading toward Northern Virginia. Bob Knight, who was with CWA at that time, had driven into work that morning and offered to take some of us over the bridge where we could make travel plans. Scott Lively had parked his rental car at a Metro station in Northern Virginia, planning to drive after the meeting cross country to California with stops along the way. That was providential since car rentals became impossible after the FAA grounded all flights.
I asked Scott if he would drive me to Columbus where he could stay with us until he could get back on the road. Glen Lavy, then with the Alliance Defense Fund (now Alliance Defending Freedom) was also a passenger in the car, along with David Miller, then with the American Family Association, and Joe Glover with the Virginia Family Policy group. Glen needed to get back to Phoenix but planes were grounded. I suggested he ride in Scott’s car and they could both stay at our home in Columbus.
We were a scared but congenial group packed like sardines in that station wagon, creeping through clogged traffic. It took hours to get across the Potomac and to our Metro stop, a drive that would normally take 20 minutes. Meanwhile we listened to radio news coverage, watched the helicopters circling overhead and prayed. Reporters revealed that a flight over Pennsylvania had crashed and they were speculating if more attack flights were headed for DC. We would have been sitting ducks if that had occurred.
All of us continued to try our cell phones with no success. Like others, I worried about my husband and my children undoubtedly hearing the same coverage we were and not knowing if I was in danger.
Finally arriving in Virginia, our Columbus-bound group took a route straight west of the city, avoiding the Outerbelt, and then north through Maryland and then onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Traveling west on the turnpike somewhere near Somerset, PA, we were struck by the sight of a fleet of semi-trucks with emergency flashers racing in the opposite direction. I wondered later if they were heading to the downed Flight 93.
Somewhere in Pennsylvania, the cell phones started working and I was able to contact my husband and my daughter at college. We arrived in Columbus about 10:00 pm. Scott and Glen with us stayed several days.
And as we all now remember, suddenly America was unsafe. Airport screening lines, for instance, should be a perpetual reminder about the threat of radical Islam to America. They did this, and they cannot distance themselves, because too many of them cheered. Or have never apologized. And still issue threats, spout hatred for our country, and run for public office.
In less than two weeks, the leftist weenies at the Southern Poverty Law Center, through their “Teaching Tolerance” section, somehow were able to publish lesson plans about the dangers of hating Muslims. How coincidental was that? I wondered then and even more so now about the funding stream that enables such propaganda.
I don’t hate Muslims. I just hate the actions of people who have declared they want to destroy us, and if there is a common thread and symptoms to watch for, then we are suicidal if we don’t do this.
Just like the nation of Israel, we are allowed to defend ourselves. We were very comfortable before 9/11. Let’s be wiser going forward.
