William E. Bucknam
Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001 was going to be an exciting day for me. It marked the 20th anniversary of my employment as the Vice President & General Counsel for MWI Corporation in Deerfield Beach and, because of my involvement in securing the passage of the African Growth & Opportunity Act in 2000, I was honored to receive an invitation to a meeting at the White House for a briefing on the Bush Administration’s African trade policy. That meeting was to take place in the Old Executive Office Building on the west side of the White House grounds in the early afternoon. As I often did, I departed West Palm Beach on the 7 a.m. US Airways flight bound for Reagan National Airport and I was scheduled to return on the evening flight on the same day.
As I walked off the aircraft at Reagan National at 9:03 a.m., I was about to learn that the whole world had just changed. Merle called me to tell me that two planes had just hit the World Trade Center in New York. I quickly walked outside to wait for a cab to go into town. For some reason, that line was much longer than any I had ever encountered at Reagan National. The US Airways terminal is the northernmost terminal at Reagan National and, as I waited in line, facing north, I watched a huge cloud of thick black smoke pass by.
When I finally got into the cab and was headed across the 14th Street bridge into D.C., I turned around and I could see that the Pentagon was on fire. The thickest blackest smoke I had ever seen was rising up from the far side of the Pentagon. That fact had not yet been reported since all eyes were still on New York. I called many of my friends from the cab to report the fire at the Pentagon. Once across the bridge, there was utter and complete chaos. In my entire life, I had never seen Washington like this. Traffic finally came to a grinding halt, and I gave up and decided to just get out and walk to my friend Warren Glick’s office. Cell communication suddenly stopped so it was impossible to get updates on the events of the day. As I walked to Warren’s office, I could hear many people on the street talking about another plane that was supposedly headed to D.C.
There was no television in Warren’s office, so we just sat and talked without really knowing exactly what was happening. We finally decided to look for a place to have lunch, and we learned that most of the restaurants were closing. We finally headed over to the Palm Restaurant, which was nearby and which remained open, and it was there that we had lunch. When we finally exited the restaurant, Washington looked like a veritable ghost town. There was virtually no traffic on Connecticut Avenue. The meeting at the White House had obviously been cancelled and, since all air traffic had been grounded, there was no way that I would be flying back to West Palm Beach that evening. I finally found a cab to take me to the home of my brother Bob in North Arlington.
It was only when I saw the television at Bob’s home that the magnitude of what had happened earlier in the day finally began to sink in. I learned, for the first time, that both twin towers of the World Trade Center had actually collapsed and fallen to the ground, that the Pentagon had been hit by a jumbo jet, and that another jumbo jet had crashed somewhere in Pennsylvania under mysterious circumstances. I sat there dumbfounded and I have often wondered ever since if my fate might have been different if US Airways had flown a jumbo jet from south Florida, where the hijackers had been based, to Reagan National instead of the much smaller Boeing 737.
The next day, Bob drove me to the Pentagon to assess the damage, and we got as close as we could get. It was shocking to see a large section of the Pentagon totally destroyed, and the pungent smell of burning human flesh that still lingered in the air remains with me to this day.
Since all air traffic was still grounded nationwide, I decided to look for a rental car to begin the journey back to Florida. I was lucky to find a car at Hertz, and, for $100, I could head home. I picked the car up on Thursday afternoon, Sept. 13, and I drove as far as South Carolina before I checked into a motel to collapse. I got up very early on the morning of Friday, Sept. 14 to continue my journey to West Palm Beach. While I drove, I listened to the remarks of President Bush at the prayer service at Washington’s National Cathedral, and I was really moved. I think the entire nation was moved by what I felt was his best speech ever.
I finally made it back to West Palm Beach around 4 p.m. on Friday afternoon and Merle picked me up at Hertz and told me that I looked shell-shocked. In retrospect, I guess I was still in the state of shock, and I know that these are four days that I shall never forget. The irony of having been invited to a meeting at the White House on Sept. 11, 2001 is truly amazing.
