‘this is huge’

‍ ‍Here, and in our weekly newsletter, we asked “where were you when 9/11 happened?” For a previous response, see here. Below is another one.

      I always will remember, with the poignancy of recalled yet irretrievable childhood, how beautiful the day dawned.

      Barely a week or so back from Maine, where the nights had begun to chill, we enjoyed the bright September morning in Washington even if Judy had to be downtown for dental work and I had to be indoors at a museum to review a photography show.

      After dropping Judy off and, having a half hour to spare, I went to a Starbucks near the White House before heading to the press preview at the Corcoran Gallery. Casually sipping a latte, I heard the first sirens. I dismissed them as the familiar harbingers of the president or a diplomat moving importantly in the federal city. Their persistence, however, pricked something in my reporter's subconscious and I went from envisioning high security motor movement to remembering planned protests against the World Bank and IMF that were soon to take place.

      As I emerged from the coffee shop, the sight of police cars careening down the street as I headed toward the museum made me uneasy. Uneasier still when a Corcoran guard told me the building was being evacuated and closed.

      "Bomb scare," she said.

      "World Bank protestors," I thought wishfully, "making mischief."

      It was not until I ran into a video crew from New York, there to cover the same exhibition as I, and forced to leave the museum, that I learned what was happening. The videographer had a portable radio to his ear.

      One of the World Trade Center towers had just collapsed, he told me. It had been hit by an airplane. That the second tower also had been hit by a plane told us it was no accident.

      "This is huge," the videographer said.

***

      Thankfully, Judy and I were able to make it home from downtown DC that day—but separately—where we then did what so many of the fortunate living did that day: try to connect with family and loved ones, who were fine, even if cell phone service was overwhelmed and service sporadic.

      I recall crowding into a car downtown with colleagues and a PR person from the Corcoran, trying to make my way to the Metro and ultimately to our car. Judy was in the dental chair undergoing oral surgery when someone raced in with news of the tragedy. Our dentist Russ figured he had no choice but to finish the lengthy procedure, but not before he told all his staff to go home. With the dental work finally done, Judy walked from K street all the way up to the National Zoo, avoiding DC’s subway out of caution. Ultimately, she relented and took the Metro to Friendship Heights at the DC/Maryland line and walked the final few blocks to our home in Chevy Chase, DC.

      Just four days later we shot a wedding at Fort McNair in southwest Washington. There had been some question whether the wedding would happen at all: whether security at this high-profile Army base in the nation's capital would be so tight that social events would be scrubbed or postponed. 

      But life has a way, thank heaven, of clawing its way back to normal. The event came off, but not without changes.

      The main entrance to the base was sealed off. All traffic was detoured to a side entrance in which roadblocks formed a serpentine maze for any vehicle, arriving or departing. Every incoming car or truck was searched thoroughly by armed soldiers: bags and parcels, the undersides of vehicles for weapons or bombs. Every ID checked. The departing sun turned the sky golden as polite young men with machine guns bade Judy and me a good evening and waved us through.

      We had packed the car carefully. I had removed our tripods from their carrying cases, lest they look like shoulder-borne weapons. In some 600 weddings we have shot over nearly two decades, this was the first in which I wore my congressional press credential throughout.

      After something like this, you celebrate little victories: watching two young people get married just four days after unimaginable tragedy. On the point at Fort McNair, as a Coast Guard patrol boat was prominent a few hundred yards in the distance and as helicopters flew overhead, guests squinted in the lowering sunlight as Sasha and Scott pledged their love to each other, and as Judy and I recorded it all, one in color, one in black and white.

      Frank Van Riper is a Washington-based commercial and documentary photographer, journalist and author. He can be reached through his website, www.GVRphoto.shop