EDITOR’S NOTE: Shirley A. Watters — who retired in December 2004 and moved to Port Angeles the following year — was an intelligence officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, working at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
Here is her recollection of that day.
By Shirley A. Watters
As a survivor of the 9-11-01 attack on the Pentagon, I feel very fortunate to have survived and saddened that so many were less fortunate.
I was sitting at my desk working when there was a very large explosion, my computer shook, and debris fell from the ceiling.
The plane hit within about 50 feet of my office near corridor 5.
We were advised to get out as there was fire.
I barely made it out before the automatic fire doors closed in the corridor.
I remember thinking we had survived an earthquake, but it was while we were in the Pentagon center courtyard during evacuation that I found out it was a plane that hit the Pentagon.
I feel extremely lucky to be here writing this memory because if the plane had hit from a different angle, I more than likely would have been a casualty.
There was a lot of confusion that day, and on every Sept. 11, I fly a 9/11 remembrance flag on our flagpole all day.
I think about the seven co-workers in my unit who did not survive and just how lucky I was.
A day does not go by that I don’t think about it.
On 9-11, it took me four hours to get home where it normally only took me about 45 minutes, and through Pentagon City and all the way home I played Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless The USA” over and over again.
That got me through the ride home and I never was more proud to be an American than I was that day.
God bless America!