Scary memories of Big House and Sept. 11

By Paul D. Bowker
Posted 9/8/21

The Big House was scary that day.

I and about 100,000 of my football-loving friends were in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on September 22, 2001, for a college football game between Michigan and Western …

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Scary memories of Big House and Sept. 11

Posted

The Big House was scary that day.

I and about 100,000 of my football-loving friends were in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on September 22, 2001, for a college football game between Michigan and Western Michigan.

Our world had changed.

Eleven days prior to that game being played at Michigan Stadium, planes hijacked by terrorists had slammed into the World Trade Center’s twin towers in New York City and also the Pentagon outside of Washington D.C. A fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania when passengers overcame hijackers in the cockpit. Nearly 3,000 were killed that day.

Saturday marks the 20-year anniversary (if we can call it that) of the horrors of September 11, 2001.

Our nation shut down. We vowed to never forget. And rise up stronger than ever.

The silence following September 11 was deafening.

We all have our stories of September 11. And I have mine.

I had been in Blacksburg, Virginia, on September 8 to cover a college football game between Western Michigan and Virginia Tech. I headed for North Carolina on Sunday to meet up with my daughter and wife, who was working at a Research Triangle firm near Raleigh, North Carolina. My car was still back at the airport in Indianapolis.

Tuesday morning, the day of the attacks, I was in a doctor’s office with my daughter for a routine checkup when I saw the nightmare unfolding on a TV set in the waiting room. Remember where you were at that time?

Almost immediately, the skies above us were emptied of aircraft. Everywhere.

The feeling of horror, of sadness, of tears, eventually turned to questions. What now?

College football shut down. All sports shut down. Major League Baseball went dark for six nights. The NFL called off its Week 2 slate of games.

All flights were grounded, which meant America was frozen in place.

I had no way of getting back to Indianapolis to rescue my car and return to my apartment in Michigan.

The athletics director at Western Michigan University had gone straight from Virginia Tech to Philadelphia for a meeting on Monday, two days after the game and one day before the attacks. So she was stuck, too. A car dealer in Kalamazoo, Michigan, had one of his employees drive a car to Philadelphia to pick up the athletics director and bring her back home to Kalamazoo.

After two days, under really tight security checks at airports, flights began to resume. I eventually got back to Indianapolis. Very few words were spoken on the plane or in the airport. Our world had changed.

For me, college football resumed on September 22 at Michigan Stadium with rumors of places like the Big House being targeted for more trouble.

The Iowa Hawkeyes wouldn’t return to action until a week after that, on the 29th of September.

At Michigan Stadium, security was tight and police were everywhere. Nerves were on edge. People were anxious.

And then Michigan’s band took the field to play the national anthem. American flags came out. Patriot shirts were almost as common as “Big Blue” shirts. Cheers rocked around the Big House. No doubt the same thing happened at Kinnick Stadium a week later when the Hawkeyes played Penn State.

It was at that moment that maybe things began the return to normal.

No, you can’t take away our games.

And you certainly can’t take our flags.

The day meant something big.

When Iowa State hosts Iowa this Saturday at Jack Trice Stadium in Ames, it’ll mean something. It’s September 11.

Let’s never forget.

 

 News columnist Paul Bowker can be reached at bowkerpaul1@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @bowkerpaul.