9/11, 25 Years Later: The Flight I Was Supposed to Be On
6:59 a.m. PT, Tuesday, September 11, 2001. I was asleep in the downstairs guest bedroom at my friend’s house in the Hollywood Hills when he woke me, saying, “Grad, Grad, we’re under attack. We’re under attack.” I had arrived at 1 a.m. after taking the last flight out of Toronto, and I was completely exhausted. I followed him upstairs to his bedroom, where the television was on, and as I entered the room the South Tower began to collapse. I remember crumbling to my knees, still trying to wake up and understand what I was seeing. I hadn’t seen either plane hit.
The Palo Alto Creamery
Earlier that summer, Suzy and I had moved our family from Toronto to Palo Alto, where I was building OpenCola. I loved California, and Palo Alto in particular, with all these people around me who believed technology was going to change the world. We’d left a gorgeous home in Toronto, brand new when we’d moved into it just a few years earlier, for an okay but not particularly great house in Palo Alto’s Community Center neighborhood. As houses went, it was a major step down. But it was in Palo Alto, and I’d wanted to live there for years.
Myrna, our oldest daughter, had been thriving at Havergal, a private girls’ school in Toronto. At her new public school in Palo Alto, she was struggling to find her place, and I could see that she was losing confidence. I wanted to believe that she needed more time. We’d changed her country, her school and her friends, and it seemed reasonable that the first few months would be difficult. I’m sure I said some version of “give it time,” and I probably believed I was being reassuring. It’s easier to believe that when you’re the person enjoying the move.
It’s easier to believe that when you’re the person enjoying the move.
About a week and a half before September 11, Myrna and I went for a milkshake at the Palo Alto Creamery, at Emerson and Hamilton. I still know exactly which two stools we sat on. She really opened up to me that day, and I began to understand how much more was going on than I’d allowed myself to see. I’d been hoping she would make some friends and begin to enjoy the new school, but as she talked I could hear how badly the experience was affecting the way she felt about herself. We had taken her away from a school where she was doing well because I wanted to live in California, and I was asking her to keep trying to make that work. I couldn’t keep reassuring myself that she just needed time.
After I took Myrna home, Suzy and I went for a walk to talk about what she’d told me. Over the next couple of days, we decided to reverse the move we’d spent months arranging. Our Toronto house was still ours, but we had rented it to good friends who needed somewhere to live until they could move into their own home. We couldn’t just ask them to leave because we’d changed our minds about California. We would have to find somewhere else to live, and we didn’t yet know whether Havergal could take the girls. We’d given up their places, the school year was about to begin, and the classes had already been organized.
Nancy Richards, who led Havergal’s Junior School at the time, agreed to take them back. Myrna could return, and Trinity could begin kindergarten, even though taking Trinity meant adding another child to the class and, quite literally, another hook to the coat rack. With the girls able to go to Havergal, we could begin reconstructing the life in Toronto we’d so recently taken apart. There was still an enormous amount of work ahead, but we could go home.
Back to Toronto
On Friday, September 7, we took a very early morning flight from San Jose to Toronto. For some reason we hadn’t been able to get a flight out of SFO, so there we were at the San Jose airport with both girls still half asleep and two luggage carts piled with 10 suitcases that we needed to check. Getting everyone through the airport was crazy, and the flight wasn’t much better. In Toronto, we checked into a Holiday Inn, where I think we had two adjoining rooms. That was how we made it manageable, although it was still tight, with all those suitcases and a perfectly good house in the same city that we couldn’t move back into.
We didn’t even have a car in Canada anymore. We’d sold our Toyota Camry and Nissan Maxima, both perfectly good cars, before moving to California. The Mercedes E-Class we’d bought in the United States was still in Palo Alto, so transportation was another thing we had to arrange while we were trying to find somewhere to live and get the girls back into school.
The girls were excited about going back to Havergal, and I think they were happy to be back in Canada too. We tried to encourage that excitement while we looked for a rental house and finished the school arrangements, but there was no making the upheaval itself feel normal. Our furniture and almost everything else we owned were in Palo Alto, along with what felt like all our money. Suzy was terrified, trying to get the girls settled while knowing that I still had to return to California for OpenCola and couldn’t tell her when I’d be back. I understood why she was frightened; I didn’t have answers to the things she was frightened about. It was a fucking mess.
I was due in Boston on Monday, September 10, for an OpenCola board meeting, and I’d booked a seat on American Airlines’ morning flight from Logan to Los Angeles the following day. That was my usual flight from Boston to L.A. Keeping that itinerary would have meant leaving Suzy to manage the girls’ first day of school and everything else we were trying to do in Toronto. I attended the board meeting remotely instead. That was considerably less routine in 2001 than it would be today, but it meant I could stay through the day as Myrna returned to Havergal and Trinity began kindergarten.
The girls had their Havergal uniforms and everything else they needed for that first morning. We could easily have thrown the uniforms out when we moved, but we hadn’t, and Suzy got them ready so that they showed up for school looking as though nothing had happened. I was proud of how quickly we’d made the decision and managed to get them back to Toronto, and Suzy did an amazing job of having them dressed and ready for day one. That evening, I took the last flight to Los Angeles to get back to work on OpenCola. At the time, it felt like failure. I was deflated in a way that I had never been before, although I’ve been able to enjoy that same feeling a few times since then.
It felt like failure.
Tuesday, September 11, 2001
On Tuesday morning, after my friend woke me and I watched the South Tower collapse on his bedroom television, I wanted to find out whether the people I knew in New York were safe. I was particularly worried about George Scriban, who was downtown. Telephone and cellular service was badly disrupted, but I reached George very quickly on IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, and was so relieved to hear that he was okay.
George led security at OpenCola, and we’d worked very closely together. He’s an amazing security expert, and he probably introduced me to IRC in the first place. It was where a lot of us who lived on the early internet spent time together, long before Slack, Teams and social media. I eventually managed to bring George to Seattle and hire him into Microsoft, where we worked together for a number of years in Microsoft Research. He’s gone on to have a great career, and I’m glad we got to spend those years working together.
As I followed the news that morning, the reports began to describe the routes the hijacked planes had been flying, and I realized that American Airlines Flight 11 was the morning flight from Boston to Los Angeles that I’d booked for that Tuesday. I remember thinking, “Oh my God, that was my flight just a few days ago.” When I went back to the original reservation, I found that my assigned seat had been 9A, beside Danny Lewin in 9B.
“Oh my God, that was my flight just a few days ago.”
Danny Lewin and the crew of Flight 11
Danny was the co-founder of Akamai, and Akamai and OpenCola were both backed by Battery Ventures. We were founders in the same relatively small technology world, and if I’d followed my original itinerary, I would have taken my seat beside him that morning, expecting the usual flight to Los Angeles. He was 31, a husband and the father of two young boys, and he’d already helped build a substantial part of the infrastructure on which the internet depended. It’s an extraordinary amount to have done by that age.
Danny had also served for four years as an officer in the Israeli military. The 9/11 Commission’s account says he “may have made an attempt” to stop the hijackers in front of him, without realizing that another was seated directly behind him. I understand why the Commission has to say “may.” Given his background and training, I’ve never believed there was much “may” about it, although I can’t know what happened in that cabin. I believe he tried to stop them. He was stabbed, probably by the hijacker behind him, and is widely believed to have been the first person killed in the attacks. When Flight 11 hit the North Tower at 8:46:40 a.m. Eastern time, it was 5:46 a.m. in Los Angeles, and I was still asleep in the downstairs guest bedroom at my friend’s house in the Hollywood Hills, unaware of what was happening 3,000 miles away.
I had flown that route often enough to know some of the crew by name and others by face. Frequent travelers will understand that kind of familiarity: you may know very little about someone’s life, but you recognize them when you board, know how they work and are glad to see them again. Captain John Ogonowski and First Officer Thomas McGuinness were flying that morning, with flight attendants Karen Martin, Barbara Arestegui, Jeffrey Collman, Sara Low, Kathleen Nicosia, Betty Ong, Jean Roger, Dianne Snyder and Madeline “Amy” Sweeney.
I had flown that route often enough to know some of the crew by name and others by face.
Two of those flight attendants, Betty Ong and Amy Sweeney, managed to get calls through to American Airlines as the hijacking was taking place. Betty reached American at about 8:19 a.m. and stayed on the airphone for roughly 25 minutes, reporting that the cockpit wasn’t answering, that a passenger and two flight attendants had been stabbed, and that people were having trouble breathing. She thought the plane was being hijacked. Amy continued describing what was happening as the aircraft descended toward New York. Reading the account of their calls, I’m struck by how much useful information they managed to give the people on the ground while they were still trying to understand what was happening themselves.
Betty and Amy’s calls gave American Airlines some of the first detailed information about the hijacking of Flight 11. Later that morning, the passengers and surviving crew of United Flight 93 learned through their own calls to family, friends and colleagues that other hijacked aircraft had been flown into the World Trade Center. That changed their understanding of what was happening on their plane, and they decided to fight back. The Commission concluded that their actions saved lives on the ground and may have saved either the Capitol or the White House. 9/11 Commission
I think about how much courage people had to find that morning, with so little time to understand what was happening to them. Betty and Amy kept reporting what they could, and the people on Flight 93 tried to take back their plane. I hadn’t been asked to find that kind of courage. I’d taken a different flight, for reasons that had nothing to do with knowing what was about to happen.
The drive back to Palo Alto
By Friday, September 14, I needed to get back to Palo Alto and begin dealing with the house we’d left behind. Our Mercedes was up there, so I needed a rental car to get back to it. I managed to find what seemed to be the last available one in Los Angeles and headed north on Interstate 5. In my memory, there was an American flag hanging from every overpass on the drive from Los Angeles to Palo Alto. I can’t tell you whether it was literally every one, but that’s how I remember the drive, flags hanging above the highway all the way there. The NFL had called off its games for the weekend, and the usual expectations of work and school and sports seemed to have stopped. People were standing on bridges hanging flags. By the time I reached our neighborhood that night, candles were glowing in the windows, and I put one in ours.
Being back in the house was weird. All our furniture was there, along with the clothes, books, dishes and toys we hadn’t brought to Toronto. We’d left only a week earlier, and the house was still set up for our California life. I walked around alone, surrounded by our belongings, with a candle in the window and Suzy and the girls on the other side of the continent. I’d dreamed about living in Palo Alto for years, and now I was back in the house with no idea what I was supposed to do there beyond arranging to empty it.
By a happy coincidence, the mover who had brought everything from Toronto earlier that summer was still on a large circular trip around the United States and hadn’t yet crossed back into Canada. I managed to reach him, and he came back to Palo Alto to collect the same furniture he’d delivered a few months before. He must have wondered what the hell we were doing, going to all that trouble and expense and then calling to ask him to put everything back on the truck. Whatever he thought, he packed it up and took it home. The furniture got back to Toronto long before I did.
The furniture got back to Toronto long before I did.
The Mercedes hobo
In the first days after the attacks, flights were grounded, and I had no idea when I’d be able to get back to Canada. Getting anything back across the border was difficult. The airspace began reopening on September 13, but my own return took much longer. I think my first trip home was a brief visit at least a couple of months after the attacks, and I remained based in the United States for another year.
Suzy had to find and establish a home, receive the furniture, settle the girls into school and make their lives feel stable again. We also had to replace the cars we’d sold. I bought her a Mercedes C320 station wagon, which turned out to be pretty much useless in a Toronto winter with its rear-wheel drive. We eventually bought our first ML320, a green one.
After emptying the house in Palo Alto, I went back to Los Angeles and eventually found a place in Laguna Beach. By that point I’d sold OpenCola and wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. My family was in Toronto while I was running around Southern California like a 20-year-old, trying to decide what came next. My friend Cory Doctorow (of enshittification fame), with whom I’d started OpenCola, started referring to me as “the Mercedes hobo.” At the time, my attitude was more or less that we just had to suck it up and keep going. Maybe it’s because I’m older now, or because I can finally see that period with some distance, but I can’t believe what I was asking my family to do. Suzy was so understanding and accommodating, and I still don’t know how she tolerated it.
Suzy was so understanding and accommodating, and I still don’t know how she tolerated it.
Moving to Seattle 2006/2007
We stayed married for another 19 years after the attacks. A great deal happened in those years, including good things. We raised two extraordinary daughters and had many more experiences together. But I’m not sure we ever fully recovered from that period, and for my part in it, I blame myself. I’d pushed for the move, and when we reversed it, I was the one who stayed behind while Suzy dealt with most of what reversing it actually required.
In 2006, Microsoft offered me a job in Seattle, an extraordinary opportunity that I took. Once again, Suzy and the girls remained in Toronto while I went ahead. I lived in Seattle on my own for a year before they joined me in 2007. On the day of that move, Suzy was exhausted from everything involved in moving the family across the continent yet again. She tripped over a curb and broke her ankle. That injury was followed by further problems with her ankle, problems with her back and years of pain. Our life was never the same.
I know that a broken ankle doesn’t explain the end of a marriage, any more than a single difficult year does. I also can’t separate that day from my decision to move everyone again. My career kept determining where we would live and when we would have to change our lives, and I was very good at explaining why each opportunity mattered. They did matter. I expected the family to benefit, and in many ways we did, but I gave much less weight to what getting there required of Suzy and the girls. I was usually arriving at an exciting new job while Suzy was doing the work of making another home possible.
I was usually arriving at an exciting new job while Suzy was doing the work of making another home possible.
Our family, 25 years later
And to be fair, there was a lot that was good about living in the United States. Myrna became a music director on Broadway, which still amazes me, and I talk about her to pretty much anyone who will listen. Trinity earned her PhD and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Shedd Aquarium, working in coral genetics to help reefs survive changing ocean conditions. Her research has also looked at using the mutations that accumulate in coral DNA as a kind of clock to estimate the age of long-lived coral. This is the little girl for whom Havergal added a kindergarten coat hook. I’m enormously proud of both of them.
Suzy had opportunities to write and produce musical theatre in the United States, and my career took me to Microsoft and into work I could barely have imagined when we first moved to Palo Alto. I can make a very good case for the opportunities those moves gave us, and I don’t have to invent any of it. I don’t regret the work I got to do or the opportunities Suzy and the girls had. I do regret how often I assumed that those opportunities justified what I was asking of them.
I do regret how often I assumed that those opportunities justified what I was asking of them.
Suzy and I divorced in 2020, and Myrna and Trinity have chosen not to speak to me since. They blame me for the divorce, for not giving Suzy more of a chance, and for being selfish. They’re probably right. Most of the time, I understand their decision; I’m kind of on their side, and I think that if I were in their shoes, I might well do the same thing. I was a selfish asshole, but I still miss them.
I talk about both of them all the time, which is a strange thing to do when you don’t get to talk to either of them. I’m proud of them from a distance. The conversation at the Palo Alto Creamery now more than 25 years ago remains one of the most important conversations I ever had with Myrna. I can remember where we sat and what I came to understand there, but I can’t call her and ask whether she remembers it too.
An alternate universe
For 25 years, I’ve been able to imagine an alternate universe in which I tell Myrna we should give California more time. In that universe, Suzy and I decide to stay in Palo Alto, I go to Boston for the OpenCola board meeting, and on Tuesday morning I board American Airlines Flight 11 and take my seat in 9A beside Danny Lewin. It doesn’t take much for me to imagine making those decisions. I’d spent years wanting to live in California, and we’d spent months organizing the move; I could easily have persuaded myself that we needed to give it more of a chance. And in that alternate universe, I’ve been dead for 25 years.
There are days when I feel as though I shouldn’t be here. I don’t mean that I wish I weren’t; I mean that I have such a clear view of how easily I could have been there instead. I feel grateful, and relieved, and guilty, and sad, often without being able to separate any of it. Eighty-seven passengers and crew died aboard the flight I was supposed to be on. Knowing why I wasn’t there hasn’t changed how I feel about what that period did to my family, or about the choices I made afterward. It still feels like failure. I remember Suzy in the Holiday Inn, frightened about what we were going to do, and I remember leaving her to do far too much of it on her own.
And in that alternate universe, I’ve been dead for 25 years.
Every September 11, I think about Danny and the crew of Flight 11, the other passengers, the people in the towers, the first responders and the families who lost someone that morning. I think about Betty and Amy making those calls. I also remember the relief of connecting with George on IRC, my friend waking me in Los Angeles, and the drive back to Palo Alto under all those flags.
Nancy, Suzy and Myrna
I have a great deal to be grateful for in the life I’ve had since 2001, and I wish I’d taken better care of the people who made it possible.
Nancy, thank you for taking our girls back. You could have told us the classes were full, and instead you found room for Myrna and added a place for Trinity. Someone at Havergal had to put another hook on the coat rack, and our little girl was able to start kindergarten on Monday. That kept me in Toronto and changed the flight I took to Los Angeles. You had no way of knowing it, but you saved my life.
Suzy, thank you for agreeing to turn our lives around when neither of us knew how we were going to manage it, and for doing so much of the work once we did. I’m sorry I left you in Toronto to carry that burden, and I’m sorry that, having seen what the first move had cost you, I asked you to go through another one. I have a great deal to be grateful for in the life I’ve had since 2001, and I wish I’d taken better care of the people who made it possible.
And Myrna, thank you for telling me how you were feeling that day at the Palo Alto Creamery. I don’t know whether you remember the milkshake or the conversation, but I will never forget sitting beside you and finally beginning to understand why we needed to go home. I’m glad you trusted me enough to tell me. I wish we could talk now.