My memory of 9/11

By Dannielle Petrick: I was in Madera, Calif., getting ready to do a phone system upgrade. On that Tuesday morning, I was downstairs at the motel to get some breakfast, knowing I was to have a long day ahead. The TV set was on with the news. Since I was in California, we were about three hours behind what was going on in N.Y. So even though it was 9 a.m. in N.Y., it was only 6 a.m. in California.

I sat down just minutes before the first tower fell. I could not believe what I was seeing, and having not heard all the rest of the news about the plane going into the Pentagon also that morning, I was a bit confused as to what was going on. I could not eat. I could only think about what was going on and my family back in Dubuque and how much I wanted to be home instead of in California.

I went into work and prepared to start getting ready for our upgrade. However, all the people who were working for the vendors, their phones all went off at the same time and they found out they were being called off all major jobs and told to go home, as they were closing down all their facilites. That meant we would not be going to work all night and would not know when the upgrade could be rescheduled.

It suddenly got very quiet and quite sullen. No one seemed to know what to do. Should we go home, or back to the motel? I remember that the only thing I really wanted to do was to call my husband and son just to hear their voices. This feeling only got worse as the rest of the week continued, becuase I did not know when I was going to be able to fly home, as the airlines were shut down.

We did end up doing the upgrade on Thursday night, and I was able to fly home on Sunday morning. I was never so glad to be back in Iowa as on that day.