One unsung hero

Fourteen thousand people faced their ultimate test on September 11, 1993.

That number, according to Google, is approximately how many air traffic controllers are employed in the United States. 

One of them -- a high school ex-boyfriend -- worked in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  He may or may not have been on duty that morning; If he wasn't, he was probably called in.

September 11, 1993, was the day the skies were cleared of all air traffic except for Air Force One and any military aircraft. 

History.com wrote about the air traffic controllers on 9/11.  The article focuses mostly on the activities of the controllers in the Northeast and the Washington, D.C.; the area where four planes crashed. 

At 8:46 a.m., the first plane, American Airlines 11, hit Tower 1 of the World Trade Center.  Like most people, the controllers thought it was a small plane, like a Cessna. 

But already, they'd heard Mohammed Atta's accidental broadcast:  "We have some planes. Just stay quiet and we'll be OK. We are returning to the airport. Don't try to make any stupid moves."

They knew there was trouble but hadn't yet connected Mohammed Atta's order with the crash of the plane into Tower 1. 

By 9:03, when United Flight 175 hit Tower 2 of the World Trade Center -- in front of millions of viewers who had on Good Morning America, or the Today Show, or CNN, or CBS's Morning Show, or Fox News -- they knew all of this was no accident. Both planes had been hijacked, and there might be more. 

What to do? How many hijackers were there? Would there be more planes crashing? 

Down in Herndon, Virginia, at the Federal Aviation Administration, Ben Sliney realized that his first day on the job would be a baptism by fire. 

One minute after United 175 hit Tower 2, Sliney ordered a "ground stop".  "Ground stop" meant, no plane in the United States of America could take off. 

It was 9:04 Eastern Time; 7:04 Albuquerque time (Mountain time). If my ex-boyfriend wasn't already on his shift, I'm sure his phone rang telling him, "Get in here, now." 

At 9:05, the order "ATC Zero" came over the airwaves. "ATC Zero" translated into the complete shutdown of the airspace around New York City. Not only could planes not take off, planes couldn't land there, either. 

32 minutes later, at 9:37 a.m., a third plane, American Airlines Flight 77, hit the Pentagon.

Five minutes later, at 9:42 a.m. exactly one hour after the first plane hit the World Trade Center, the FAA gave the order to "clear the skies." 

I don't speak FAA lingo.  I'm sure the FAA said it in their own "language", but the order was clear: If you are a plane and you are in the air, pick an airport and land immediately. 

If my ex-boyfriend was on duty, it would have been 7:42 a.m. The sun was up, spreading light over the New Mexico landscape. 

Under normal circumstances, the job of an air traffic controller is tense and difficult. Lives are in your hands and one wrong order to a plane can cause a crash, or a near-crash (or, in more semi-humorous cases, a landing at the wrong airport.) Plus, you have to worry about being on time, or as near on time as possible; they have to keep an eye on the weather and an eye on air traffic.  (I would rather drive in Atlanta traffic than guide people through the air!)  You cannot afford to panic. You cannot afford to show anxiety. Even if your heart is racing at 120 beats per minutes or higher, you have to talk calmly to a plane, telling them what runway is open, what gate to go to, whether or not the pilot should circle . . . all of the things that we airplane passengers don't necessarily think about. 

But "land all planes"? All commercial planes? At the nearest airport? 

Whatever switches flip in an air traffic controller's brain to keep him/her calm and steady, they flipped, and I believe they flipped in my ex-boyfriend's brain. He, and his colleagues, spoke the FAA language that told what plane to go where, what runway to land on, whether to circle the airport before landing, whether to send them on to another airport because they didn't have room.

According to the National Archives, the skies were clear by 12:16 p.m.; 10:16 p.m. by Alburquerque time, two and a half hours after the order to "clear the skies". 

Two and a half hours for someone to sit with headphones on, to strain to listen to a pilot, to look at a radar and keep track of a plane's location, and all the while knowing that four planes had crashed, wondering if there were any more hijackers, would there be any more crashes?

But they did it. In two and a half hours. 

We remember the FDNY and the NYPD when we think of the heroes of 9/11, as well we should. We remember them going up while everyone else is going down. 

But the people manning the microphones, the headphones, the radar, guiding the planes to safe landings when they were not prepared to handle the sudden load of air traffic  . . . they were heroes, too.

My 20th high school reunion came six weeks before 9/11. My ex-boyfriend and I didn't part on the world's best terms. He did get in touch with me much later through e-mail and he apologized for his behavior. At our reunion, the last words I said to him were, "I wish you well." 

And then, six weeks later, 9/11 happened. 

Not only was I horrified at the events as they unfolded, I was concerned about the ex-boyfriend. I knew it had to be stressful and trying. So I popped off an email asking, are you okay?

He responded, "Yes. Thanks for thinking about us."

I have not heard from him since then, and since he has a life, I don't expect to. 

But he belongs to that group of unsung heroes that cleared the skies on a horrible day. 

To him, and to every other unsung hero, I say, "thank you".

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

The Olympics' darkest day

I don't speak Hebrew. But I'm sure that, had I heard wrestling referee Yossef Gutfreund's scream at around 4:30 a.m. Munich time on September 5, 1972, I would have known that something horrible had happened or was happening. 

He'd been asleep after enjoying an evening out with other Israelis. What wakened him was a scratching noise at the door of his apartment. He went to investigate and found the door beginning to open and masked men with guns on the other side.

He screamed in Hebrew, "Danger, boys! Terrorists!" then threw his 300-pound body against the door, hoping it would stop the men from forcing their way in. His scream gave his roommate, weightlifting coach Tuvia Sokolovsky, time to smash a window and escape.

A wrestling coach, Moshe Weinberg, joined in the fight. The terrorists' response was to shoot him through the cheek and then force him to find more hostages.

Weinberg lied as they passed the door of Apartment Two, saying, there were no Israelis there. He led them to Apartment Three instead. Apartment Three housed six wrestlers and weightlifters. Perhaps Weinberg thought they would be strong enough to fight off the terrorists. But they were all asleep, and men with guns usually have an advantage over someone who's been suddenly awakened.

On the way back to the coaches' apartment, the wounded Weinberg again attacked the terrorists. Gad Tsobari, one of the wrestlers, seized the opportunity and escaped through the underground parking garage. Weinberg was able to knock one terrorist unconscious and slash at another with a fruit knife. 

He was no match for the gunmen. They shot him to death. 

A weightlifter, Yossef Romano -- who'd fought in Israel's Six-Day War -- also attacked the intruders and wounded one before he, too, was shot and killed. 

These men were not going to go down without a fight. 

With the nine hostages that were left, the gunmen went back to Apartment One. In addition to Yossef Gutfreund, they were: 
Kehat Shorr, shooting coach
Amitzur Shapira, track and field coach
Andre Spitzer, fencing master.
Yakov Springer, weightlifting judge
Eliezer Halfin, wrestler
Mark Slavin, wrestler
David Berger, weightlifter (who held dual citizenship with the US and Israel)
Ze'ev Friedman, weightlifter. 

Who were these terrorists, and why had they picked the Olympics for their heinous acts?

They were eight members from a Palestinian group, Black September.  Their demands? The release of 234 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, and two founders of the German left-wing group Red Army Faction. 

They allegedly got into the Munich Olympic Village by scaling a six-and-a-half foot chain link fence with the help of athletes who, themselves, were sneaking back into the Olympic Village. Since the eight terrorists were dressed in track suits, the athletes had no way of knowing who they were helping into the village. I guess they thought, "Oh, you're trying to get past security just like we are. We scratch your back, you'll scratch ours." I wonder how horrified they were when they found out exactly who they had helped over the fence. 

In Apartment Two, Shaul Ladany, an Israeli racewalker who'd also survived the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, heard the screams from next door, leapt from his second-story balcony, and ran to the American dormitory.  The other seven people (four Israeli athletes, two team doctors, and their team manager) hid in the building and eventually escaped.

Tense negotiations began and continued for the next several hours. The Black September terrorists, to show that they meant business, threw Moshe Weinberg's bloodied body out the door of the dormitory. 
American marathon runner Frank Shorter (who would later win the gold medal in the event) told Sports Illustrated, "Imagine those poor guys . . . Every five minutes a psycho with a machine gun says, 'Let's kill 'em now," and someone else says, 'No, let's wait five minutes.' How long could you stand that?" 

But elsewhere, the rest of the athletes carried on, and the events carried on, until 12 hours after Moshe Weinberg's murder, the Games were suspended. 

At 4:30 p.m., a squad of West German police -- regular Munich police officers, with no training in combat or in hostage rescue -- arrived at the Olympic Village with a plan to crawl down from the ventilation shafts at the dormitory and kill the terrorists. 

But, while the police were getting into position, members of the media -- in a stunning act of either ignorance or outright stupidity -- filmed the police getting into position and broadcast the images on live television, which the terrorists were watching. After the terrorists' spokesman threatened to kill two hostages, the police backed off. 

When confronted with the terrorists' demands, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir's response was swift and to the point: "No." Israel's policy was, no negotiations with terrorists, period, because any negotiations would leave Israel open to possible future attacks. Can anyone blame Israel, given the history of the Jews, especially the history of the concentration camps of only 30 years ago? 

So the West German authorities came up with another plan.

The terrorists, at 6 p.m., demanded to be taken to Cairo. Originally, the West Germans offered to transport terrorists and hostages to Cairo by plane. West German police, disguised as crew, would overpower the terrorists and free the hostages. 

Then the West German police backed out, saying the plan was too dangerous. 

But the authorities pretended the agreement was still in place. They sent two helicopters to take terrorists and hostages to a NATO airbase at Furstenfeldbruck. 

A third helicopter, containing West German authorities, preceded them to the airport. Their new plan:  an armed assault in which terrorists would be killed and hostages would be freed. Sixteen West German police, dressed as the flight crew, would be inside a Boeing 727 jet. Two of the terrorists were to be allowed to inspect the plane. Five sharpshooters were also positioned in strategic areas at the airport. 

And at the last minute, the sixteen West German police abandoned the plan, without telling the people in charge and leaving only the five sharpshooters to take out eight terrorists. 

When the helicopters landed and the two terrorists boarded the 727 and found it empty, they realized they'd walked into a trap. They ran back to the helicopters. 

In the shooting and chaos that followed, two terrorists and a West German policeman were shot and killed. Then a terrorist turned his assault rifle on one helicopter and murdered four hostages, then threw a grenade inside, incinerating the bodies. 

A second terrorist at the other helicopter took a machine gun and shot the remaining hostages; their bodies would show that they'd been shot at least four times each. 

While initial reports said that the hostages were alive and the terrorists were dead, the horrible truth slowly came out. 

ABC's Olympic coverage, anchored by Jim McKay, had gone on the air that afternoon with the reports of the hostage taking at the Olympic Village. All evening, and through the night, ABC Sports president Roone Arledge spoke into McKay's earpiece, giving him the events as they unfolded.  

At 3:24 a.m. Munich time, McKay, summoning all the professionalism he could, spoke:

"You know, when I was a kid, my father used to say, 'Our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized.' Our worst fears have been realized tonight. They've now said that there were eleven hostages. Two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport tonight. They're all gone."

What more could you say or do after hearing those chilling words?

First, Olympic competition was suspended for the first time in modern Olympic history. Then, on September 6th, the Olympic Stadium, which was supposed to be the scenes of joyous victories and celebrations, became the site of a memorial service for the slain athletes.  The President of the International Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage, spoke, praising the strength of the Olympic movement. But when he compared the attack on the Israelis with the arguments on professionalism creeping into the Games and the ban of Rhodesia (after protests by black African athletes), and barely mentioned the murdered athletes, many listeners were outraged. 

Later that day, the IOC decided, the Games would go on. The Israeli government and their team manager agreed. For the Israeli athletes, though, the Games were over. They withdrew and left Munich on September 6th, right after the memorial service. Jewish athletes were placed under guard, and Mark Spitz, who'd just won his seventh gold medal in swimming, left Munich during the crisis because of fear that, as a prominent Jew, he might become a target. While many athletes did remain, several chose to leave, their desire to compete destroyed. 

The 1972 Olympic Games had as their motto, Die Heiteren Spiele, "the cheerful Games". They desperately wanted to erase the image of the last games held on German soil: in Berlin, in 1936, under the reign of Adolf Hitler. 

Those "cheerful Games", unfortunately, turned tragic.

September 5th and 6th, 1972, 50 years ago, still remain the darkest days in Olympic history.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.