The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11
As someone who was old enough to remember teachers playing live news coverage on September 11, 2001, but young enough to not fully understand the meaning behind the attacks, my memories of that day are clear. We watched the second plane hit the south tower on a rolling TV cart that was brought into the room. The screen was small and the picture quality was terrible compared to what is available today. None of that detracted from the terror, disbelief, and confusion I felt watching the plane hit that tower.
The world on September 11, 2001 was different than the world we lived in on September 10. As a terrorism researcher, a former airline employee, and an American, it feels like life was torn in two that day. Before and after. The attack led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Airport security completely changed. And if the ISIS-inspired attack in New Orleans on the 1st of this year suggests anything, it’s that the foreign terrorist threat is still very real. They haven’t forgotten us, they’ve just found new ways to cause harm.
Garrett M. Graff’s book The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 humanizes 9/11 powerfully and unapologetically. Among a tome of books, documentaries, and reports about 9/11, Graff’s book stands out by not focusing on the numbers—how many died, how many were injured, how many law enforcement responded. These are important questions, and as a quantitative researcher, the numbers matter. In fact, in any analysis looking at the impact of characteristics of terrorists and the outcome of attacks, I exclude 9/11 due to the sheer magnitude of victims and devastation.
But the true impact of 9/11 was never about the numbers. It was an attack on safety, security, and normalcy. Graff’s book weaves stories from those who lived that day, reported in their own words. The stories are important. The day of, the sheer terror inflicted across America watching the attacks unfold dominated the news. The interviewees in Graff’s book paint a bigger picture. Some of the accounts are expected—survivors who worked in one of the towers that day, New York first responders who were at ground zero, staffers at the White House, and air traffic controllers who received the first transmissions about the hijacking (hauntingly, the first transmission from a hijacker on American 11 was the casual statement, “We have some planes.”).
The oral history goes much broader, though. We hear from journalists who were struggling to unravel the facts so they could report to the public as quickly as possible. Social media wasn’t really a thing back then. Neither were smart phones. Americans relied on the news to get the facts, and the journalists were tasked with providing verified information under immense time pressure. The stories are personal and narrow, specific to the individual’s lived experience. But collectively, the stories are grand in scale, powerfully documenting the terror of that day, but also the small moments of bravery. The people who helped another human in need, but never made the news cycle.
Every year on the anniversary, I piece together the stories from my own life that have impacted me. Not only my memories of the day it happened, but also the memories of the following years, coding other terrorist attacks and thinking about the enduring, global problem of terrorism. Hearing stories from my co-workers at United Airlines who lived through it. Even this year, the anniversary is also marked by an assassination on a political figure just yesterday. We are in the midst of the confusion that follows any terrorist attack. It’s easy now that we have answers to 9/11 to see it clearly, but today I’m reminded of the persistent confusion and fear in the aftermath of these events, big or small.
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