2024 Week 4 - Witness to History

         So much in my life span – 1962 Columbus Day Storm, Nisqually Earthquake, 9/11, and the Berlin Wall coming down just to name a few.  That does not include the wars – Vietnam, Gulf War, War on Terrorism, etc.  Of course, these also occurred during my parents lifetime  and my grandparents may have still been living during some of them.

The most recent event is the COVID-19 Pandemic.  I wrote about that in my blog.  That really changed the work environment.  I retired the end of April 2021.  We were still working remote, so my party was virtual.  Most workplaces required  you to be vaccinated and if you didn’t have an enclosed office, you had to wear a mask.  When you have sinus issues, masks made it difficult to breathe.  Now 4 years later, most businesses are back to normal – that is, those that actually survived financially.  Traveling has changed some too.

   Another major event was the 9/11 attacks in 2001.  We were driving to work when we heard it on the radio.  At that time, it was when the second plane hit.  After dropping my husband off, I headed to my class being held at a local church (actually, it was my church).  We had to decide if we were going to continue with the class or not.  We decided to continue but take more breaks to keep an eye out on what was happening.  We spent the lunch hour in the church sanctuary praying.  When my husband & I went on our vacation in 2016, we visited the
Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.  Wow, it was an eye opener and a tearjerker.  It was a misty day, but you could still see the field where the plane went down.  If you are ever in that area, I highly recommend visiting.  Allow at least 3 hours.   Then, this past summer, we visited the One World Observatory on September 11^th as part of our New England/Canada cruise.   We spent three days in New York City visiting some of the tourist sites.  The observatory was also very
interesting – it was over 200 floors high (our ears popped!). 

The memorial itself was closed due to the ceremonies.  We had caught the end of those ceremonies because we had spent the morning doing Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.  My feet were hurting and really didn’t want to do that much walking.  There wasn’t many areas where a person could sit.

The Nisqually Earthquake was a local event (Olympia, Washington) that occurred February 28, 2001.  I was working at the time just off the State Capitol grounds in a two-story building with an underground parking garage.  I remember that this was a Wednesday as I had driven separately from my husband.  My car was parked along the street.  I normally get off work at noon to volunteer at the school.  My husband also worked for the State in a 4-story building on the Capitol grounds.  The quake occurred at about 11 am.  Boy did things fall around.  I was hiding under my desk and all my binders fell around me and blocked my chair.  Was able to crawl out for us to evacuate the building.  My husband actually worked on the 3^rd floor of his building, but he was visiting the 2^nd floor and was on his way back to his desk when the quake hit.  He helped people evacuate then he went to find his boss.  He was so concerned about me that he kept telling him, “I have to find Marcy”.  So, he walked from his building to my building.  He found me and he was just shaking and he said “how are we going to get home?  I can’t get the car out of the garage.”  My response:  “Go get in the car”.  He forgot I had the car!  I was able to go back into the building to collect my purse then we went to our son’s elementary school to pick him up then we went home.  Our home sustained some chimney damage.  David couldn’t report back to work until after the weekend.  I was able to report that Friday.  We were able to get a FEMA small business loan to pay to have the chimney repaired as I operated a home-based business.  My parents lived through an earlier earthquake (1949) when they were in school.   I’ll have to ask them stories about that time.

I wish I could tell more stories but I don’t have memories of details of the other events.