Empty Sky

I woke up this morning
I could barely breathe
Just an empty impression
In the bed where you used to be
I want a kiss from your lips
I want an eye for an eye
I woke up this morning to an empty sky

Empty sky, empty sky
I woke up this morning to an empty sky
Empty sky, empty sky
I woke up this morning to an empty sky

Blood on the streets
Blood flowin' down
I hear the blood of my blood
Cryin' from the ground

Empty sky, empty sky
I woke up this morning to the empty sky
Empty sky, empty sky
I woke up this morning to the empty sky

On the plains of Jordan
I cut my bow from the wood
Of this tree of evil
Of this tree of good
I want a kiss from your lips
I want an eye for an eye
I woke up this morning to the empty sky

Empty sky, empty sky
I woke up this morning to an empty sky
Empty sky, empty sky
I woke up this morning to the empty sky
Empty sky, empty sky
I woke up this morning to an empty sky

Two years ago today, I was standing outside the clubhouse at Harborside Golf Course, a substitute golfer in the annual Exelon Charity Golf Outing, waiting to be told which foursome needed a golfer. Kathy Namors, the Building Manager for Exelon's Warrenville Office, and one of the organizers of the event, came out onto the portico where I was standing, just outside of the clubhouse doors. It was a conversation I'll never forget:

K: A plane just hit the World Trade Center
Me (Turning to face her): What?
K: A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center
Me (thinking Cessna-type plane, not 747): What, it wasn't big enough the idiot couldn't see it?

Looking back, that was stupid and insensitive to say. But I had no idea what the heck was going on. I went inside, where CNN was showing the burning tower. Corbin McNeal, then Chairman of the Board of Exelon, was desperately trying to turn the sound up on the only TV in the Pro Shop, to no avail. His son worked five blocks away, and no one was sure what was going on. At that time, registration for the outing was going on; people were milling about, talking, and ironically buying golf equipment, oblivious to what was going on behind them. Suddenly, without warning, plane number two hit the second tower.

The charity outing is one of two hosted every year by Exelon; the one out east raises funds for a favored PECO charity, the one in Chicago for the James J. O'Connor Scholarship fund. It's a very high-powered event; all the major executives show up, and many heads of ComEd and Exelon customers and affiliates do as well. There are six nuclear power plants in Illinois, and that day, the heads of all six, as well as several junior executives were all at Harborside. In fact, Corbin had just decided he wouldn't be golfing that day, and not more than five minutes before Kathy came out, I'd been asked to take his place in the foursome. Not being stupid (and not being a scratch golfer), I demurred. Instead, my boss' boss, Rob (who is a scratch golfer), took Corbin's place, and I later took Rob's place in his foursome.

I called my counterpart out east to tell her the news. That conversation went like this:

Me: Freddie, did you hear? A plane hit the World Trade Center
Frederica: No, no, it hit the Pentagon.
Me: No, Freddie. The World Trade Center. It's on CNN. See if you can get CNN on the TVs there (Exelon has a number of TVs scattered around their buildings. They mostly show company-related stuff, but they can pull in CNN and the Weather Channel, which the company monitors for weather issues which may affect service)
Ken (in background): They hit both!
Freddie (to Ken): What?!
Ken: Planes hit both the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And they think there's another that crashed.
Freddie: Oh my god....

It only got more surreal from there.

Harborside has two courses; Port (North) and Starboard (South). The Port side has probably 14 of the 18 holes that have views of downtown Chicago, and all day long, people kept looking downtown. The skies grew very quiet as well. Those with Motorola text pagers (the higher-ups who hadn't immediately left) kept the rest of us updated: The FAA had grounded all airplanes, 50,000 people worked in both towers, hundreds of emergency workers on the scene. Then, the worst news: the first tower had collapsed. Not having access to a TV, we could only imagine it (though most of us thought the top half had toppled over, not the pancake collapse that had actually happened). Around the 15th hole, we heard the distinct sound of a jet engine, but saw nothing. "Military," said a former Navy Captain, an Exelon employee, and member of the foursome ahead of us, "F18 probably. They're patrolling the sky now." It was a very somber moment. Someone cracked a joke to break the tension.

Eventually, we finished the round. Part of the outing is dinner and a charity auction, and before that part began, we had a prayer and a moment of silence. Because of its nuclear plants, Exelon hires heavily from the Navy, and if George Bush had asked for volunteers, eighty percent of the room would have up and left right then and there. I can't describe the mood, but there was anger, anguish, sadness, and helplessness all combined.

When my coworkers heard that I was going to the outing, I got razzed for "taking a day off" and "getting out of work early" and so on. Ironically, the company would send them all home at ten a.m. By noon, they'd be home, watching TV with the rest of the world. I didn't get home that day until after six-thirty. My roommate, who worked afternoon shift (2-10), came home at seven. He hadn't really done anything - everyone was watching TV at work. Testing clutches suddenly wasn't that important.

Let's hope none of us ever live to see anything so horrible again.