TENNILLE P. 2003

Tennille and I are both from Pittsburgh, but we didn't meet until we were living across the hall from each other freshman year at George Mason. We were in the same Scholar Program. Tennille married one of our fellow Scholars, Jerod shortly before she wrote this piece on September 10, 2003. It seemed to us all that they were a perfect match and their union a long time coming.

This picture was taken days before our graduation in May of 1997 outside the president's office at GMU.

I can seemingly only remember September 11, so if you'd like to know about that, read on.

I was sitting at my desk when I worked at HUD and I remember someone(V.) yelling, "something's going on, people are leaving DC, my brother in Africa just called me and said I should go home." I'm a skeptic. I want the real deal and I wasn't inclined to leave. Then I hear the news...and get the news delivered. HUD advised us to leave the building 30 minutes later, by then, 90 percent of Federal employees had already started making their ways into the streets and cautiously approaching the metro. I remember immediately trying to call you at home, at work; trying to call my friend K. who worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, trying to call my cousin B. I reached K. and she was crying into the phone at her desk...the FRB employees were leaving, the building was a mess as it was less than three to four blocks away. It became real.

I called Jerod to no avail. I walked into the metro, quite confident that it was a safe route; but more practical that it was actually the only way I could go home and eventually get to Jerod. Others offered to take me to their homes, but home is wherever the people you love are.

The whole notion of the death toll hadn't quite hit me, largely because I had no access to the news. I tried calling Jerod but my cell phone, like all others, were tied up or powerless. The Metro stopped operating at some point and I had to take a metro bus. Metro basically dispatched all its bus drivers to major stations and told wary DC employees to get off at certain stations to continue their journeys home. My poor bus driver had no clue how to get around VA and we were re-routed three times. (Mind you it took me 40 minutes just to be able to get onto a bus). It took me 5 hours to get home to Alexandria (back then); the trip normally takes 45 minutes.

As we approached Alexandria, I finally reached Jerod...and my parents. I reached my sister, who lived in Norfolk, the major naval fleet city on the east coast. All I remember thinking was thank God we were okay, and taking a walk in the beautiful sun because for that evening I was alive and still free...and suddenly afraid when I heard planes roaring closely overhead.

And the day before...I think I went to bible study and got a ride from my mentee's father because it was too dark to travel back to Alexandria by myself.