I had taken some time the morning of 9/11 to meet with an agent about life insurance. As we were wrapping up his secretary came in and said that planes had been crashed into the World Trade Center. Thinking they were talking about a small plane (i.e.Cessna) and having no idea of the magnitude of the situation I said, “Well the truck bomb in 1993 didn’t work so, what’s his name—Osama Bin Laden—is trying planes now.” I was running late so I skirted the people in the lobby watching television and started driving to work. I wish someone had grabbed me so I had seen it then. I heard what happened on the radio and was still driving when I heard that the towers were falling and about Flight 93.
I worked in the Detroit landmark, the Renaissance Center on the 35 floor. For those of you not familiar, the Detroit river separates the U.S. and Windsor, Canada and the Detroit-Windsor border crossing is one of the busiest in the United States. The company I worked for had made an announcement that the building was open but attendance was not mandatory. All flights in the United States were grounded at that point but Canada is only a few hundred yards away from Detroit and there was speculation that the Renaissance Center would be an easy target if more attacks were on the way. After hearing about Flight 93 I was feeling defiant and decided to go to work anyway. When I finally made it downtown the building security had decided to close the building regardless of the announcement.
On September 12th the building was open for business again but things were understanbly quiet. Around lunchtime there was a stir as people started congregating at the South windows overlooking Windsor. I went over to see what was going on and stood there transfixed. On the Windsor side of the river there were thousands of Canadians waving hundreds of United States flags and banners that read “God Bless America”. Every now and then the crowd would start chanting “U.SA!, U.S.A!, U.S.A!” It was overwhelming. Many of my coworkers were openly crying.
As I’m writing this, nine years later I have tears in my eyes. I would have a hard time finding one Canadian flag on short notice but these people literally found hundreds of them in a day. You might have heard of the small towns that hosted stranded airline passengers but I’ve never heard anyone mention this. To any Canadians reading this out there—THANKS. It was a sight I will never forget.
