We in the Port Authority’s Washington DC Office were safely distant from the attacks on the WTC but, with so many friends and colleagues there in New York, it was as personal as it was unreal. News reports drew the four or five of us to the television screen. (At some point I pushed record on the VHS deck, thinking a recording could be useful. Years later, I tossed the several VHS cartridges knowing that virtually anything on video can be found online nowadays. Besides, in years after I did not want to rewatch what occurred that morning.) It wasn’t long before the horror of the day intruded just a few miles away. A commercial jet breached the Pentagon, taking a terrible toll on 64 passengers and 125 who worked there, including an office where I would meet Army Corps of Engineers personnel.
In those numbing days of September, we recorded in the PA directory what we could learn of survivors and those who were gone, that we might serve as a clearinghouse for many who called. We all learned the fullness of what had been at risk that morning – the U.S. Capitol included – as well as what was lost.
Maybe two weeks following the attacks, it became all the more real when my wife, Nancy, and I traveled from our home in Virginia to Manhattan. The air had a lingering pungency the moment we emerged from the tunnel. With Dan Maynard, our (late) colleague in Government & Community Affairs, and Lynn Tierney, FDNY Deputy Fire Commissioner (and former PA communications staffer), we took in the unworldly scene as workers continued their round-the-clock, floodlit search for lost lives. Being there that night and again in the next months and years served as an unnecessary reminder of the reality of what had been unimaginable.
Stories told by those who survived were part of the melancholy and heaviness I felt into the next year, albeit nothing like what you who were there were experiencing. I had – still have – unceasing admiration for the people who took up the task to recover, relocate and resume their work.
From 1949 until it was (foolishly) closed in December 2005, the Port Authority’s Washington Office overlooked Farragut Square, three blocks from the White House, It was a frequently used base for our dislocated colleagues, some of whom had been rapidly reassigned to develop heightened expertise in transportation security. Executives and staff came to Washington to participate in industry discussions, policy development meetings and congressional hearings. Congress and federal agencies worked to understand security vulnerabilities at ports, airports, river crossings and transit facilities. PA personnel were effective and essential to that effort.
In the months and years that followed, the events of that September day dominated the work of Port Authority personnel in Washington. New laws and regulations were written, debated and adopted; government was reorganized. Recovery, rebuilding and security were the all-consuming objectives for our agency and the nation.
Paul H. Bea Jr.
Washington Representative (ret.)
North Andover, Massachusetts
