Remembering 9/11: Doing Our Job
Friday, September 9, 2011
(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)by Daniel Duncan
After escaping
downtown DC following the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, my wife and I headed
straight to Fairfax Hospital to donate blood, but so many others had the same
idea that the hospital had run out of parking spaces and was asking folks to
return the next day. The line to give blood was 8 hours long. People wanted to
help and this was one way they could.
When we got home, we heard from others how they got home. One union member was
on a bus from Prince William County and witnessed the jet hit the Pentagon
during the morning rush hour backup. Passengers told the driver to turn the bus
around and head back down Shirley Highway. Another union friend’s daughter was
in a motorized wheelchair downtown. The battery held and she rode it out of town
beside pedestrians crossing the 14th Street Bridge into Arlington.
We heard of the bravery of our local
first responders, of those in New York, of the passengers flying over
Pennsylvania and of the countless others who raced to the Twin Towers in
construction equipment to help rescue those trapped while others aboard ferries
and tugs sailed to take those fleeing to safe shores across the
rivers.
The very next day, September 12,
we were determined to come back to DC to work. We were stuck with thousands of
others on 395 and saw the huge American flag on the Pentagon. We also could see
the damage. But like everyone else, we refused to let those acts of terrorism
keep us from doing our jobs.
- Duncan, President of the
Northern Virginia Labor Council, works in the Maritime Trades Department of the
AFL-CIO.