Terrorism
- It’s Personal
Terri
DelCampo
I work in a mutual
funds transfer agency, writing letters to shareholders about how to change the
registrations on their accounts, how to add wiring information, that sort of
thing. On September 11th my
desk was located in the call center of the company, where there are three
televisions suspended from the ceiling in various vantage points on the
floor. We tune to the financial station,
so when the World Trade Center was attacked, the explosion caught my peripheral
vision, and I stood up at my desk and said, “Oh my God, what the hell is going
on?” That turned everyone else’s
attention to the TVs, where approximately 90 pairs of eyes were riveted for the
entire rest of the day.
I also remember
saying, to no one in particular, “That’s war.
We’re going to be at war now.”
Shortly after
that, the Pentagon was hit, and I shivered and said, “Oh my God, they’re moving
down the coast.” I picked up the phone
and called my dear friend in Atlanta who is an office manager for US Secret
Service. I called her house and spoke
with her grandmother who lives with her, and Nan told me that Christine was
busy, but okay, and that they were evacuating her building of non-essential
personnel shortly.
That did little to
un-knot my stomach. Was she essential or
non?
More recently,
I’ve been watching as terrorists target our government and the press with
Anthrax laced mail, and wonder about the safety of my friend Lynnie, and her
husband who both work for a newspaper.
The other day a
member of our correspondence team was helping a shareholder remove her deceased
husband’s name from her mutual fund account.
She was returning the death certificate along with a letter of
instruction. The cause of death was
blunt trauma to the entire right side of the body. The deceased was an employee of Cantor
Fitzgerald, date of death, September
11, 2001. My co-worker
showed me the certificate, and stood for a moment, wondering how many others we
would see come across our desks. Not to
mention how many letters we would forward to alternate offices for mutual fund
brokers who had formerly been located at WTC.
For over a month
now I have been setting aside canned goods, bottled water, batteries, lamp oil,
and a few other odds and ends. I gently
encouraged my mother, 72, to do the same.
It’s not panic, it’s precaution.
Having a change of clothes in my car seems prudent, in case there’s an
emergency.
I’m glad I don’t
work in a mail room, (I used to, in a former job), because going to work every
day with the threat of a potentially killer disease showing up in the next
envelope you open, is not the way I want to work.
Of course, you
can’t hear what terrorists are saying about wiping out as many Americans as
possible, and not feel a little like you are marked with a giant red white and
blue bulls-eye.
Almost everyone
has a friend in the financial industry, the media or the government. My mother’s whole side of the family was in
the service, I work in the financial industry, and have friends both in the
media and government.
He’s like the
bully in a school-yard. He hit
unexpectedly, then delights, usually while hidden away with some thug buddies,
in the terror and dread he’s stricken in the hearts of his target. And just like
schoolyard bully he doesn’t have the courage to face his victims should
they stand back up and confront him.
And the tactics,
even though Americans still go about their lives, work. He’s made us feel vulnerable , like a kid
getting home from school and into his room and finding his teddy bear torn to shreds
on his pillow, and realizing that the bully has not only entered, but abused
his domain.
Every time I see
the news, or, at work, mail a letter to a forwarding address that used to be
the WTC, the dread lurches in my heart.
Along with thing I
want to say to Osama, like, congratulations.
He put fear into me that was not there before. However, he also put rage there. I never rooted for full-scale military action
before either. Yes, he’s change me on
many levers. And made what used to be
conflicts in lads far away, up close and personal.
10/27/2001
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