Those were Todd Beamer’s last words to the outside world before he, Mark Bingham, Tom Burnett, Jeremy Glick, and other passengers successfully sacrificed Flight 93, on September 11 twenty years ago. There are a few flashbulb images that will never leave me from that day. The smoking World Trade Center tower is the one we all remember. It was around 6:30 am when I rolled into my room at the now Bridger Inn in downtown Vegas after scouting and playing all night. I still didn’t feel like sleeping, so I turned on the TV and watched events unfold live. The initial reports were that a small plane had hit the tower, and we mostly thought it wasn’t a big deal, other than the fire. And the 1993 bombing hadn’t moved the needle for most of the nation, or the world. When the second plane hit on live TV, and then the towers fell, we all collectively thought, “Whoa, who knew THAT could happen [architecturally speaking]!?!” When flights everywhere got grounded, I got stuck in Vegas. This was real, and had already affected all of us.
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Coronavirus II: The Congressman, the Scorer, and the Shooter
At 6:30 a.m. on September 11, 2001 (“9/11”), I was just walking into my room at the Main Street Inn (now the Bridger Inn) in downtown Las Vegas after an all-nighter playing and scouting. I turned on the TV and saw the fire at the World Trade Center, which had been hit by a small plane, they said. I grew up in sight of the towers (at least on a clear day from the cemetery on top of the hill), so it was surreal seeing them collapse. Then all domestic flights were grounded, and I found myself locked down in Vegas.
Today’s youth, and some of us old-timers, have forgotten who the luckiest person on earth was that day. Lost in the shuffle of 9/11 was one U.S. Representative Gary Condit. At the time, he was dominating the headlines after the May-2001 disappearance of Chandra Levy, an intern with whom he had had an affair. The public (read “I”) believed he had a role in her disappearance, or at a minimum was not sharing all of his information with investigators. Then 9/11 happened and the Condit Scandal evaporated, just like that. When Levy’s body was found in 2002, it was barely a story.
Continue reading Coronavirus II: The Congressman, the Scorer, and the Shooter