Budget analyst shares 9/11 story

  • Published
  • By Shannon Carabajal
  • AFCEC Public Affairs
JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas --  Twelve years ago, on Sept. 11, 2001, Cynthia Fleming was having a fairly routine Tuesday morning in the Washington D.C. area.

Her husband had dropped her off at the Anacostia Metro Station at 6 a.m. so she could beat the traffic and make the commute from her Bolling Air Force Base, D.C., home to the Pentagon fairly quickly. After an uneventful metro ride, she was settling in for another day of work at the headquarters building of the Department of Defense.

But that day would be anything but routine as at 9:37 a.m., she experienced the deadliest terrorist attack in America's history as she watched American Airlines Flight 77 fly into the west side of the Pentagon.

"We looked (out the window) and we saw the plane hit the outside wall. I think if it had gone up and over, it would have hit us directly. But it hit the outer ring and as soon as it hit, we were trying to get out of that building," Fleming said.

The Dallas, Texas, native had been living and working in the Washington D.C. area since 2008. Her husband was stationed at Bolling and Fleming was working as a finance customer service specialist for the 11th Wing and working on the fifth floor's inner ring with a window to the tragedy.

She said phone calls from her husband about the attacks on the World Trade Center shortly before the attack may have saved her life.

"I was planning to take burn bags down to an incinerator near where the plane crashed into the building. I set them up the night before and was getting ready to take them when my husband called saying a plane had hit the World Trade Center. We were thinking it was a small plane or something. Then he called back and I said, 'look, I'm busy here, I'm trying to get these bags down to the incinerator,' but he said another plane hit," Fleming explained.

She stopped what she was doing to find a news source to get information about what was happening in New York. While talking with her coworkers about the Pentagon being a sitting target, she saw the plane hit.

Fleming and her colleagues were able to make it out safely, but 184 people died in the attack, including a personal acquaintance of hers.

"There was one lady I would talk to every time I went down there because she was one of my customers. I would stop by her office to sit and chit chat with her. That day, when (my husband) stopped me, he saved my life, but unfortunately she was killed that day. Her name was Sandra Murray," Fleming recalled.

Outside the Pentagon, people were unsure of what to do. The metro system was shut down and cell phones weren't working so people couldn't get home or contact their families to let them know they were OK.

"Every time we heard something, we were wondering what was happening. Was something going off, was somebody bombing something, we didn't know," she said.

Amidst the chaos, Fleming gathered with a group of people to hold hands and pray before setting out on foot to Alexandria to find a ride home. She eventually reached her family by phone to let them know she was OK and found a ride back to Bolling AFB.

Fleming, now a Defense Travel System budget analyst with the Air Force Civil Engineer Center here, said thinking and talking about that day gets easier with time. She has shared her story at events throughout the years and still gets a little emotional thinking about those who lost their lives and their families, especially around the anniversary of the events.

The events of that day forever changed her perspective on security and what's important in life.

"It makes me appreciate my family that much more and just appreciate life in general because when you leave for work every day, you never know, you might not be coming back."