Surreal September

How helpless she felt, with most of a continent between her and New York City, where two great buildings had collapsed, where so many people had died and so many more were suffering.

“As soon as I found out, I felt like I should be there, helping people, protecting,” Whitney said on Thursday, Sept. 9, two days shy of the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

“It drove me nuts.”

Whitney, now 49, was at home in Baker City that sunny, late summer morning with her husband, Shannon, and their two young children.

They didn’t have a television.

She first learned of the tragedy when her brother-in-law, Chris Black, telephoned.

“Check the news,” he told her.

Whitney recalled watching on TV as the second airliner struck one of the Twin Towers. She said she thinks she was at her parents’ home in Baker City.

She’s not sure about that.

But she absolutely recalled her reaction to seeing that improbable collision, the fire and the smoke, the tiny dots on the screen that were people, leaping to their deaths.

“Surreal,” she said.

“We were all so afraid, just trying to sort it out,” Whitney said. “We got to see it in real time. Your heart aches.”

Later in the day, when the scale of the catastrophe became clear, she said she felt compelled to act. She started by calling Baker City churches. She phoned other people she knew.

Her goal was to gather supplies that people in New York City might need, or that might offer them some meager comfort in a terrible time.

“It was a channel for my frustration,” Whitney said. “I think a lot of people responded that way.”

Within a day, Whitney was watching about 30 volunteers sort through donated items at the Baker City Church of the Nazarene, stacking them into piles on tables.

There were gloves and clothes and toys to brighten a frightened child’s day.

She said she talked with a man in New York City who was coordinating the donations that arrived from across America. She recalled how gratified she was at the sheer volume of donations Baker City and Baker County residents collected and how shocked her New York City contact was when she told him what the population here is.

She had to repeat the figure twice.

“It was amazing,” Whitney said. “We came together. We were all just devastated. How can you have any petty squabbles with anyone when you see something like that? So many people wanted to volunteer.”

Two decades later, it’s that community spirit that helps Whitney balance the sadness of her memories of what she, along with so many millions of Americans, saw that day.

She wasn’t born when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963.

And although she remembers Jan. 28, 1986, the day the space shuttle Challenger exploded, Whitney said 9/11 will always be the day that stands out.

She was an adult that day, and a parent.

“I remember being fully aware that these were parents and moms and dads and aunts and uncles,” she said.

“When you’re a parent you understand better the devastation that’s happening before your eyes.”

Bill Mitchell, retired teacher

Sept. 11, 2001, was a Tuesday, and every Tuesday Bill Mitchell played basketball at 6 a.m. before heading to his classroom at Baker Middle School, where he taught social studies.

As the time for school approached, he headed to get his mail at the school office.

“It’s just as clear as if it was yesterday,” he said.

Dana Blankenship, who taught science at BMS, met Mitchell at the stairs.

“He said ‘It’s Pearl Harbor all over again. Turn your TV on.’ ”

Mitchell did, and watched the chaos in New York City, a place he’d visited several years before with a group of middle school students.

And on that day, a Tuesday ingrained in so many American memories, he would stand before multiple classes.

“I remember thinking the lesson plan for today has changed drastically. It became a question-and-answer day,” he said.

Mitchell remembers two reactions from his students. First, they were picking up — and absorbing — the anxiety of the adults around them.

Second, they wanted answers.

“Their need to want definitive answers of what’s happening and what were the consequences. And there were no answers,” Mitchell said.

He did have one truth to offer.

“I told them things are going to change,” he said.

He has not yet returned to New York City.Kassien, who grew up in New York, was about three hours from Manhattan, at a friend’s house and watching NBC’s “Today” morning show, when he saw video of the first tower in flames.

Initially, he said, the presumption was that this was an accident, not a terrorist attack.

But Kassien continued to watch. And he remembers how somber Matt Lauer, the “Today” show host, looked as he interrupted the program, his hand to his earpiece, to tell viewers that a second plane had slammed into the other tower.

“Instantly my stomach dropped,” Kassien said.

He had two friends who worked in the North Tower.

One worked on the 82nd floor, about 10 stories below where the plane struck.

Kassien later learned that that friend had missed work that day because he had attended a party the night before and had a hangover.

His other friend, whose office was near the bottom of the North Tower, also was supposed to be at work that morning but his cab was caught in traffic.

Kassien said he started trying to call many of his friends and relatives who were supposed to be in Manhattan that day. Cell service was sketchy, and in many cases he wasn’t able to reach his loved ones.

He continued to watch TV coverage.

He watched the South Tower collapse, followed, 29 minutes later, by the North Tower.

“I was sitting in the kitchen of my friend’s house in complete and utter disbelief,” Kassien said.