I was working on an ERP database upgrade project at the Waukesha County (WI) courthouse.The go-live date was just a month off. At the time I was locating and implementing Oracle software patches to address a shrinking list of identified functionality issues and separately walking the two female county DBA's through the upgrade. The Chicago area contractor had wanted me to relocate to the Milwaukee area, but this was their only Wisconsin project, so I decided to move to a northwest Chicago suburb near a Metra train station and commuted 83 miles a day to the courthouse. The county DBA's and Unix administrator were supposed to back up the test servers and databases nightly, but project management required me to be at the courthouse by 7:30AM to ensure the databases and related application processes were available by 8AM for testing. I had to wait until 7PM to implement any new patches.
We were on the lower level of the courthouse, and it started off just like any ordinary business day. I had an Indian developer (programmer) working with me on the project, and unlike me, he had agreed to move near the site for the 6-month project. (I took over the DBA role two months into the contract.) He came in around 9AM as usual, but then started telling everyone, with a sense of urgency in his voice, that he had been routinely watching the Today Show when it was interrupted with a news report over a plane crashing into one of the Twin Towers. There obviously were no common area televisions on the floor (although I think one of the client personnel later brought in a portable unit and a host of other people crowded around his cubicle). I remember thinking at the time maybe they were talking about a Cessna sideswiping the building. I got back to work, knowing the client would object to paying contractors frittering away the business day at their expense. But you couldn't get away from it; clients were dropping by my cubicle telling me the latest news piecemeal--a second plane crashing into the other tower, another plane hitting the Pentagon, and of course the heroic tragedy of United Flight 93. The nation's planes were grounded, where exactly was the President, etc. I struggled to make sense of what I was hearing; however, it was very clear by that time we were not talking about some isolated accident involving a malfunctioning small aircraft.
There are iconic moments etched into the memory and hearts of every American--Mayor Rudy Giuliani's unscripted sure-footed leadership in the aftermath; President Bush with his arm around one of the heroic firefighters at the ruins, vowing these terrorist attacks on American civilians would not stand; bipartisan members of Congress standing defiantly together in front of the Capitol, etc. I remember shortly thereafter coming to work a subsequent morning and joining a group of about 2 or 3 dozen fellow citizens in front of the courthouse, praying for the victims and our country.
As a former Oracle employee and making my living the last 16 years as an Oracle DBA, I took special pride in Oracle account manager Todd Beamer, whose rallying cry ("let's roll!") to rush the Flight 93 cockpit was written onto the pages of American history.
I do not miss the aftermath of 9/11, which stressed the nation's economy and nearly buried the nation's airlines. I do miss the fact that our national leaders put partisan differences aside for the common good at least for the time being. Today we have a President whom does not call for common sacrifice but an unearned transfer of wealth and is running up the debt on future generations facing tough global economic competitors, mistakes personal popularity as support for his leftist policies, confuses style with substance, speaks glibly of bipartisanship but whose actions don't match his rhetoric, and has a compulsive need to apologize to American critics.
I know leadership when I see it; I saw it in how President G.H.W. Bush mobilized an international coalition of several dozen nations as Hussein conquered Kuwait and was threatening Saudi Arabia; I saw it in how Mayor Giuliani handled an unprecedented crisis; and I saw it in how President George W. Bush protected the homeland over the remainder of his two terms in office. Watching Obama mishandle health care reform despite strong majorities in both Houses of Congress has been painful. In contrast, George Bush started off his Presidency after a controversial election which many Democrats claimed (and still claim) was "stolen" and a split Senate which months later switched party control as the Democrats lured over to their caucus a malcontent liberal Republican senator. Despite holding a much weaker hand than Obama, Bush managed to pass in his first term two major tax cuts, the No Child Left Behind education reform act, and Medicare prescription drug coverage (not to mention dealing with the tyrannical, destabilizing regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq).
I'll close with an embedded video: Alan Jackson's sobering reflection on the events of 9/11, which perfectly encapsulate how we Americans coped in the aftermath of this unspeakable tragedy. We will never forget Todd Beamer and the thousands of other heroes and victims of those fateful events.
