Tales From The Travels

My son was living with me and was in second grade. We lived too close to the school for the bus to pick him up, which meant I drove him to school ever day. One morning early in the school year I was driving him to school and turned on the radio to see what the time was. The news was on and they were speculating about the identity of the hijacker. That was more than I wanted to know, another plane hijacking, and turned it off.

It was September 11, 2001 and I didn’t realize that the world had just changed.

And my life with it.

I realized right away that it was Osama bin Laden behind the attack. People were talking about it being an accident, but I took one look at the clear blue skies and knew immediately that that was impossible. With modern instruments and training and that much visibility, the only way to fly a plane into a building was on purpose. When I said that, people said, ‘Who’s that?’ Not anymore. I even made a comment about how I would be getting out of the second tower if I were there.

Then, the second one hit and everyone else realized that it wasn’t an accident. Even then, though, many people didn’t get it. There was the announcer who kept saying over and over that this wasn’t an attack on the U.S.! What an idiot! A lot of people still don’t get it. They lead such sheltered lives that they think all we have to do is leave them alone and they’ll leave us alone. If you believe that, you are really living in a fantasy world and not even bothering to listen to what they are saying, not to mention taking a look at their actions. They keep saying that they’ll follow us home, and I believe them. We have stopped many attacks right here. How many more attacks do they have to make before people realize they are trying to destroy our way of life and that is what this is all about? There is no such thing as ‘leaving them alone.’

I sat that evening with with my son and we talked about it while watching it on TV. I wanted him to understand what was going on because I knew this was going to affect his life in enormous ways that were still unforeseen. I wanted him to understand how bad these people were and I had to put it in terms that he could understand. I explained how these people wanted to take away recess, because they didn’t like it. I told him how they wanted to take away cartoons and they thought Pokemon was bad. And, I talked about some of the girls he knew at school and told him how if these people were in charge they wouldn’t let the girls go to school because they didn’t think girls should be allowed to go to school. He asked about women that had already gone to school and I told him how they would kill them, just because they could read and write. He listened very quietly and we watched on TV as the Twin Towers fell, over and over.

They grounded all planes for a couple of days after that. Vermillion was just to the north of a busy flight path and you could normally see planes, day and night, heading east and west. I stood outside one of those mornings, looking at the empty, quiet sky and speculated about how long it was going to be before I was mobilized. The terror was just sinking in and I kept thinking about the people standing on the tops of the Twin Towers, feeling the roof falling out from under their feet. There was only one response – war. That meant my time to go was coming.

It took a couple of days, but Keller finally asked me what this all meant for me in regards to being mobilized. I told her she should make contingency plans. But, then nothing happened. Finally, we got to the October drill weekend without any news. But, I saw the active duty people and they were working themselves ragged. They had been working shifts practically non-stop since the attack and were just about drained out by the time we were there in October. If I ever had any doubts about what was coming, seeing them working targeting data like they were would have dispelled it.

My drill unit belonged to Strategic Command, and that meant only STRATCOM could mobilize us. Anyone else had to get STRATCOM’s permission. At the Saturday morning meeting we were told a number of people were on the list to be mobilized. These people were told to move to the side of the room as their names were called out and my name wasn’t called. I was fully prepared to go, but I really didn’t want to go in the middle of the semester. Some wit made the comment about how the people standing were INCONUS and the people still sitting were OUTCONUS, meaning those of us that didn’t go to STRATCOM would end up in the Persian Gulf somewhere.

Then, nothing happened. No word on mobilizations. It turned out the paperwork got sidetracked. So, by the time we got to the drill weekend in early November we had to go through all of this again. This time, the people were to be mobilized within a couple of weeks or days. Again, I wasn’t on the list. In fact, I was one of the senior most guys still left. So many people were being mobilized we had a meeting to decide how the unit tasking was to be distributed among the remaining people. We started out by naming people for the various jobs, but every time we mentioned someone’s name, they were on the mobilization list. Finally, it was suggested we just go through the list and mark off anyone that was being mobilized. My name was the first one read! I said they were reading from the wrong list, I was told I was stand-by. She checked the list again and said, no, this was the list of people being mobilized. And, that’s how I learned I was being mobilized. I lost interest in the meeting after that. That evening, I called Keller to let her know and then I sat down and polished off a nice bottle of wine.

I worked at making arrangements at school for all of my classes. I was able to turn my astronomy and intro physics lectures over to other faculty members. Then, I told my astronomy lab students that if they finished all of the assigned labs before I left they would get an ‘A’ for the semester, no questions asked. All but one accomplished this. The last one was this horrible woman that made every lab period a living hell. She showed up every lab period unprepared and belligerent, disrupting the entire period for me and the other students. Even with my offer, she still took the whole semester to finish the labs. I had to give her exercises she could do at home because I couldn’t be there to help her in the classroom. When I finally got them they were so bad I had to fail her. She whined and complained so much I finally gave her a ‘D’, just to shut her up. I couldn’t stand it anymore! Then, she told me a ‘D’ wasn’t’ good enough and she would have to take the class again the next year. I thought, ‘Oh, no you aren’t! Not with me!’ It was enough that I gave her a ‘C’, just to get rid of her. She was that bad!

The last class I had to take care of was thermodynamics. There was no one else that could teach this class at USD. Keller asked the other schools if they could teach it as a distance education class and they refused. A real nice little bit of team playing during a national crisis. So, I kept it. I would talk to the students via email during the week and give them homework and reading assignments. I was able to arrange my schedule so that I was working Saturday through Thursday and could drive up from Omaha once a week on Friday to meet with them. Somehow, we got through the semester. What a story they all had. I can just picture them some day telling other people, ‘You think you had it bad? Well, we had to teach ourselves thermodynamics!’

In case you weren’t counting, I was teaching introduction to physics, elementary astronomy, three astronomy labs, and elementary thermodynamics. It was a load!

The worst part of being mobilized was letting go of my son. He was living with me at the time and I had to turn him over to his mother. The day that she came to pick him up was horrible. I wanted to hang on to him and never let go. If I could just hold on to him then the world would pass us by and we would be ok. Reality had other ideas, though. His mother came that evening and took him. It was November 16, 2001, his eighth birthday