Photo Caption: During her summer 1993 internship with Cohn & Wolfe (now BCW Global), Mary Beth West (left) stands with her college friend Jennifer Fesmire on the Staten Island Ferry near Lower Manhattan, with the former World Trade Center twin towers in the background. Only months earlier, in February 1993, the first WTC attack (a truck bomb) had failed to bring down the towers.
The 20-year commemoration of those lost in the 9/11 U.S. terror attacks – and what the legacy of 9/11 meant not only to the United States but also to the world either directly or indirectly – bring with it an altogether different level of somber reflection to many, in 2021.
Without fail, we are confronted with the lasting reverberations of that single tragic day in 2001.
We face anew the bewildering wake of the United States’ actions and inactions in Afghanistan and the troubling legacy that more recent developments now portend.
And for those of us in the global public relations community, we are reminded this #PRethics Month that the power of truthful information, delivered quickly, can hold life-and-death outcomes in the balance.
We recall that on September 11, 2001, two commercial jets crashed into New York’s World Trade Center towers, one commercial jet crashed into The Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and one commercial jet (Flight 93, widely presumed to have been intended for the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington) crashed into a pasture near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, with the terrorists who commandeered that particular plane having been overtaken by courageous passengers on board, who wrested power from the hijackers to save lives of fellow U.S. citizens on the ground.
In so doing, the patriots on Flight 93 potentially saved the lives of two of my closest family members that day.
Both of my husband’s parents were in Washington D.C. – and my father in-law was in the U.S. Capitol Building itself – the morning of 9/11, in meetings with members of the Tennessee U.S. Congressional delegation, as part of an annual trade-industry legislative event, while his wife, my mother in-law, was awaiting his return, back at their hotel only a few blocks away.
In the initial minutes after the second plane hit New York’s South Tower of the World Trade Center (WTC) at 9:03 a.m. and the situation quickly was surmised in media reports as an in-progress terror attack on the U.S. homeland, my husband began calling my father in-law’s cell phone, urging him to leave the Capitol, where he knew his father was in meetings.
However, while the hallways and congressional offices of the U.S. Capitol were abuzz with what was transpiring at the WTC, the events unfolding were widely perceived in real-time as happening “up there” in New York… and not something of an immediate threat in D.C.
My father in-law told my husband not to worry, as he soon was scheduled to walk into Senator Bill Frist’s office.
But then the clock hit 9:37 a.m., and Flight 77 struck The Pentagon.
Within minutes, Capitol Police barked orders to everyone in the building to RUN! – not walk – out of the Capitol Building. “GO! GO! GO!” reverberated and echoed down the marble hallways, akin to a military-drill.
As he hit the doors to exit the building, my father in-law encountered absolute-yet-surreal mayhem ensuing in the streets, with hundreds of people running in every direction, as smoke plumed on the all-too-close horizon from the crash that had just occurred blocks away at The Pentagon – a similar scene to what one might expect to see in a Hollywood disaster film.
His mobile phone was suddenly useless, amid cellular telephone lines and networks to and from D.C. that were immediately jammed. He swiftly made his way on foot to his hotel, to find both his wife and a landline.
My memories of that morning include not only the chaos and – yes, complete terror – of seeing and hearing the avalanche of media reports from the events of that day, but also, of my husband’s frantic, touch-and-go phone calls, trying to reach his parents.
In a near-panic, my husband began seeking out a mode – any mode – of transportation for his parents out of the city, with all air travel immediately suspended and every rental car having been snapped up almost instantaneously in the Greater D.C. Metroplex – as no one knew what was going to happen next, or where, or how, or to whom.
Speculations of other potentially hijacked planes were being rumored in the media as still at-large in the skies in and around D.C., New York, and across the eastern seaboard. All eyes in D.C. were tracking upward to the skies, as low-flying U.S. fighter jets began streaking trails across District of Columbia airspace, at near-deafening decibel levels – ready to take-down whatever they needed to take down.
As an automotive dealer, my husband was able to wire money and then purchase by phone – over landlines – a Chevrolet Suburban from a Downtown D.C.-based car dealer, for his parents and several of their colleagues to drive the 822 km back home to the relative safety of Tennessee.
This personal experience – compounded by the knowledge of thousands of Americans who never made it home that day, including those on Flight 93 who averted a far heavier disaster on the streets of D.C. that could have claimed the lives of my family members – forever altered my views about the harsh realities of our small world, the power of information, the criticality of people to be informed while caught in the throes of crisis or imminent crisis, and the fierce urgency to command information as a force for good and the safety of innocent people.
In truth, our world today is as dangerous as ever, and, one can argue, far more so now, in light of recent world events.
While most of us work in organisations with limited scope and reach, the mandate we must command as a global industry for truthful, accurate communication and information throughout every level of government, media and human enterprise, remains evergreen.
Across the political spectrum, across nations and across world-views, we may differ on ideas of policy.
But on this point, we must unite: that there are certain brands of corruption and indeed evil in this world. If the powers of our industry are not placed squarely in service to confront such forces, much can be lost – never to be retrieved.
And it can happen in a single day.
Mary Beth West, MPRCA, serves as co-chair of the PRCA’s Ethics Council and as senior strategist of Fletcher Marketing PR in the U.S., which produces the #MsInterPReted PR podcast. Follow PRCA’s Ethics Month, at #PRethics.