The longest day

Vernon and Phyllis Grose woke up at 6:10 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, and left their penthouse apartment in Arlington for their daily three-mile walk. It was a perfect 65 degrees and the view of the Pentagon and the Mall was perfect. After a quick breakfast, Vernon walked to his office a block away, where he ran a risk management company after years investigating commercial airline accidents with the National Transportation Safety Board.

Shortly after he arrived Katie Conover of FOX News called. "Are you watching TV, Vernon?" she asked. "No… I'm working," Vernon responded, perplexed.

"A small commuter aircraft just collided with the World Trade Center about five minutes ago… do you think this was an accident or a deliberate attack?" she asked.

"I don't think there's any particular reason to suspect a deliberate hit, right off the bat. There could be any number of reasons for this kind of collision," Vernon said, thinking aloud. She asked if he would do an immediate live telephone interview on FOX in New York.

She patched the call through to Jon Scott, the anchor covering the collision. "How could a pilot make such a catastrophic mistake?" Scott asked.

"It's possible," Vernon said. "Pilots distracted by workload, or blinded by the sun, have made terrible mistakes before…"

As Vernon talked on Scott interrupted in a panic, "Another aircraft just hit the other tower!" This abruptly ended the phone interview. There was no longer any doubt. Both collisions had been deliberate attacks. Vernon set the phone down, and looked at his watch. It was 9:03.

Just then Conover called back to ask him to come to the Fox News studio in Washington. Phyllis, when he told her, said, "What can you tell anyone?" He was wondering about that himself. He had studied and analyzed countless plane accidents and hijackings in the past decades, but these were unlike anything in history.

Vernon discarded his navy NTSB hat and polo shirt, threw on a jacket and tie and rushed downstairs to catch a limo Fox sent for the 10-minute ride to the studio. When the elevator doors opened on the fifth floor newsroom, he walked into pandemonium. Everyone was running around or staring at one of the twelve overhead monitors. Most showed the World Trade Center towers in smoke, but only one had the attention of the office: the screen showing billowing smoke and flame rising from the Pentagon.

"This is impossible. It can't be happening," Vernon thought to himself. He had just driven past the Pentagon five minutes earlier. The whole bombing business was all in New York. It couldn't be here in D.C… but it was. The world was flipped on its head, but there was Brit Hume standing in shirt-sleeves among a host of people watching it too. This was reality.

While many simply stood in shocked silence, watching the screen, the room buzzed with tense conversations, echoing the thought that was on Vernon's mind: "This is war."

Roll back the clock to ten minutes earlier. Phyllis was sitting on a beige sofa in the study of their high-rise apartment, which faced out over the Pentagon and Washington Memorial, watching FOX news as it looped the video from New York.

Suddenly she heard the roar of an extremely low-flying jet blast past the apartment, shaking the whole building. She rushed to the window, then to the balcony, arriving just in time to see a massive ball of flame billow up from the Pentagon.

Phyllis screamed and began to sob. For a minute she couldn't move or think, then she began to wonder, "That jet… had it skip-bombed the Pentagon? Was the jet onto another target… the White House maybe?" She hadn't realized, at that point, that American Airlines flight 77 was the bomb.

She turned and ran back through the apartment and into the hallway where she found two workmen who had been laying carpet next door. "The Pentagon's been bombed!" she sobbed.

How could this be? All these attacks, this terrorism, it was all in New York. How did they get here? Whatever was going to happen next, two things seemed clear: D.C. was under attack, and a war had now begun.

Moments later a neighbor rushed down the hallway in a panic, "Phyllis, we've got to get out of here. My friend called me on the phone, we could be next," she said, as the workmen left the building looking terrified.

"I've got to stay here. My kids might call; I need to let them know we're okay." Phyllis said. She wanted to talk to Vernon, too. He hadn't brought a cell phone.

She went back to the study, feeling dizzy, pulled open the blinds, then sat with the TV next to the window where she could see the Pentagon below. She tried to call her oldest son in California to tell him the news and hear his voice, but he didn't pick up. "He must've gone to work," she thought. She left a panicked message on his phone, "The Pentagon's been bombed… we must be at war now."

Then she sat there and waited for the phone to ring. She watched the smoke rise, and scanned the skies for another plane, occasionally glanced at the TV screen, waiting for the next attack while the news played on. Vernon called, and then Phyllis took pictures of the burning building while the wail of sirens from an army of fire trucks below echoed on.

She returned to the television. "Reports are coming in… the Washington Monument's been bombed," the newscaster said. She looked out at the mall. No… the monument stood tall and undisturbed. Next they said that the Capitol and Grand Central Station had been hit… but she could see that there was nothing out of the ordinary with them either.

Meanwhile Vernon sat alone on the darkened FOX set, wondering when they would start the interview, and trying to make sense of the world gone mad. "An aircraft is approaching Washington from the south, due in 10-20 minutes possibly to hit the Capitol." At this moment, sirens began to wail around the studio, but he couldn't see outside from the set.

More reports came in, the Capitol was being evacuated; next, Union Station, just a block north of the studio, was being bombed. A FOX crew rushed onto Vernon's darkened set and pulled back the blinds on the windows so that they could film Union Station. Vernon saw that the flag poles at Union Station had been lowered to half-staff, but the building was still very much intact.

Many hours later, after multiple interviews, discussions with newscasters, ex-FBI agents, Newt Gingrich, others, two trips to the studio and back home, the day was finally over. Vernon left FOX, and took the elevator down to the lobby, checking his watch, 1:40 AM.

He walked outside into absolute silence of the D.C. night where his driver was waiting with the limo. The city was a ghost-town. No planes flew overhead, the ban on all flights in the US had silenced the sky, and the presence of few police was the only sign of life on the ground.

They drove back through the deserted city into Arlington without saying a word, lost in thought and exhaustion. Vernon said goodnight to the driver, and took the elevator back to the apartment. It was now 20 hours since he and Phyllis had woken up that morning. Phyllis was still up; she had been watching his interview on TV, waiting for him to come home.

Vernon took off his suit and tie, looking out the window at the motionless D.C. skyline, usually dotted with lights from planes coming in the nearby Reagan Airport for the night. He climbed into bed, and they both fell into restless sleep.

At 2:23 a.m. he and Phyllis jolted awake at the sound of a jet engine. Phyllis walked over to the window overlooking the city while Vernon dialed FOX. He reported the plane and asked if they knew what was happening.

Then they watched as a large jet took off from Reagan, following it until it disappeared from view. FOX didn't know why the plane was flying despite the ban, so Vernon hung up, and they went back to bed. It would be a long time before either would be able to sleep again.

(Wesley Grose is a graduate of Patrick Henry College and the grandson of Phyllis and Vernon.)

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