It’s been five years now since I stood looking out the window on the 10th floor watching clouds of black smoke billowing from the Pentagon. The company I worked for at the time had offices on the 10th floor of a building in an office park about 10 miles due west of the Pentagon.

At the time, no one really knew any of the details about what was happening. Someone poked their head into my office and said there must be a huge fire someplace in or near DC and to come and take a look out the window. And at just about the same time, we heard the news that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon. Since Reagan National Airport is just south of the Pentagon, we initally assumed that this was an accident and really had nothing in common with the events taking place at the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York.

As the news of these events unfolded, a sense of fear and foreboding grew among us. A fairly tall building close to Washington, DC was not the place to be at this time. And, to make matters worse, the security people did a lock-down of the building…nobody in (or out) until further notice. So we had no choice but to sit there and wait it out…and listen to the ominous and confusing news reports about the second plane hitting the WTC and the plane that eventually crashed in Shanksville, PA.