went to school on the second Tuesday in September, just like any other day. My mom was at home, doing committee work and all the other things she does everyday. I wasn't sure where my dad was, but that wasn't unusual. He holds about four different jobs, all of them for the Navy, and his daily schedule varies wildly.

At the beginning of second period, we started hearing the reports that two planes had hit the World Trade Center. My school only has forty students and news travels fast among them. We were all frightened that someone would do such a thing intentionally. My friend and I looked at each other, and said, "Wow, I wonder if the Pentagon will be next." Both of our dads worked there, in the US government's biggest office building.

A minute later someone came into the classroom where we were sitting, and said that a plane had hit the Pentagon, only three miles from our school. We could no longer try to be calm. No one could. We all knew people whose lives might depend on whether or not they had gone to work that day.

We started hearing reports of car bombs in DC, fires at federal buildings; it sounded like the end of the world. Most of these reports turned out to be false, but we couldn't know that then. Jan, the school secretary, started calling parents. There were three of us whose parents worked in the Pentagon. When Jan reached my mom, she said she'd come right over, but Jan hadn't asked if she knew where my dad was. I was still left not knowing.

It took my mom forty-five minutes to get to school, normally only a ten minute drive. When she arrived, I asked, "Where's Daddy?" And she looked at me and said, "I don't know." I think that was one of the worst moments of my life. "I don't know. I was trying to remember when he left. He said he was just going to stop in the Pentagon for a minute, but I can't remember when he left."

The drive home was awful. I-395 was closed completely and the back roads were clogged with people. We could see the smoke rising in clouds, from the building where my dad worked, just a mile away from our house.

There was a message from him when we got home. He was okay. He was in DC trying to get out. He would be home as soon as he could. He loved us. He turned up an hour and a half later. We watched the news reports, pictures of the Pentagon which made my dad curse. He knew which side of the Pentagon was burning, that both the offices he worked in were likely to be gone by the next day. The fire burned late into the night, and he worried about any papers he might have left sitting out, but mostly about any of the people who might have been in those offices.

I heard the word "revenge" a lot of times over the next few days, but never from my dad. He was busy calling all the people in his Naval Reserve Unit, making sure they were okay. I have seen this kind of thing all my life, naval officers taking care of each other. It is one of the reasons I cannot believe that the military is either heartless or rash. The people my dad called over the next two days were for the most part waiting to see what would happen, the same way he was. They were much too smart to think immediately of retaliation, even though many of them, like my dad, had lost friends in the Pentagon.

My dad has told me all my life that he works in naval strategy and intelligence to prevent wars, not to start them. I have always believed this, and I believe it now more than ever, having seen his behavior in the wake of September 11th. Previously, though, I did not know how to stand up in Friends' circles and say, "My father works for the Navy and isn't an unfeeling war monger. He dreams of a military full of thoughtful people who know better than to rush into unnecessary conflict. He made a name for himself by writing an article about overkill in US nuclear armament. He is a good person and does not deserve the stereotypes some Friends would place upon him as a military officer."

These things have always been true, but I have not had the courage to say them. I am finding it now. I am led to say that we should not consider the military a great evil to be fought, but a community of individuals we can talk to about peace. I myself cannot condone war, but neither can I vilify those who do. I refuse to grieve any less for military personnel who have died than for civilians. A life lost, no matter whose, is still a life, and equally full of inner Light.

FGConnections Winter 2002 Home