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By JEFFERSON WEAVER
The man in his late twenties who hated his first name was responsible for counting bales and boxes and kegs as they were delivered to the construction site. He sat in a shack or in his red 1928 Model A Ford. The mass of mud and concrete and lumber would eventually become known as the Pentagon.
It was 1941, and his family owned a hardware business that had one of the construction contracts. Part of his job was to make sure the right materials went to the right place.
Some days, he would cross the road to Arlington National Cemetery and visit his father’s grave. A nearby tree created a shady place to sit and rest, and he often ate his lunch there.
Years later, the tree was cut down, and the man couldn’t find his father’s grave to show it to his youngest son.
While the young man was impatient and didn’t like this part of his job, more than one of the men delivering supplies was glad to have the work at the Pentagon. One of them was a man named James.
He was happy to have a good job, but it was way too far from a farm on the banks of the Potomac, and even farther from his beloved tidewater on the Potomac River.
James was too young for WWI, and too old for the war that loomed on the horizon. Plus, he had a houseful of kids to feed, and when the farm failed, they headed for the city.
But he could drive a truck or a horse-drawn wagon, and knew all about piloting his way through muddy undeveloped roads, so he was hired.
He probably didn’t like checking in with the young man; truth be told, the young man didn’t much like having to question fellows he knew to be honest and hardworking, but rules were rules.
Both men came from the Virginia countryside to work in Washington, one out of necessity, the other by family edict.
They likely never exchanged names. It’s interesting to ponder what might have happened had they hit it off then as they did 20 years later.
That was after the older man took his family back to his homeland, near where the government’s Dahlgren complex absorbed his farm. James is buried within sight of one of Dahlgren’s main gates.
The younger man, my father, returned to the cemetery years later. A young soldier helped Papa find his father’s grave for the first time in nearly fifty years. I have a photo of Papa kneeling beside his dad’s tombstone.
My parents were at Arlington to bury my mother’s brother, Larry.
Mother and Uncle Larry were two of the children kept in food and shoes by the efforts of James, the deliveryman.
James and Papa became fast friends when my parents began the courtship that became a second marriage for both.
Grandfather James died before my folks were married. By then, Papa was working for the newspaper where he finally met Mother.
The point behind this genealogical lesson is this:
My father’s birthday was Sept. 11, 1915.
I’m sure everyone is familiar with what happened on that date 86 years later. We call it 9/11/2001, or just plain 9/11.
Papa died that previous May. I thought the occasion of his 86th birthday would be a day of reflection and celebration, even without him. I hoped to spend that day remembering my father, and celebrating my new job.
I instead took ownership of a new heritage.
My folks had Pearl Harbor.
My siblings had the Kennedy assassination.
I have September 11.
I could have done without the gift, I guess.
I took the attacks as a personal affront. It was a good day, a beautiful day, a day to be happy. And never again could I think of the date the same way.
Mother wanted to go to the cemetery that day. I started the day like I had many before, “making the rounds” of the sheriff’s office and police department, before coming home to wake Miss Rhonda. She was working evenings and nights at a radio station.
I heard the news on the radio, then woke my wife in time for both of us to see the second plane hit the Trade Center on TV.
Even then, it seems like people were disregarding the fact that a plane crashed in Washington, D.C., too.
The stories of heroism aboard Flight 93 in Pennsylvania were already trickling in, and the military was a little too busy to talk much about the attack on Washington.
I kept wanting to know more about the Pentagon, but the horror and the drama in New York, and the inspiring stories in Pennsylvania, meant the Pentagon played third fiddle.
No, none of my friends or family died on that day.
My sister who worked at the Pentagon had started another job weeks before, so she was far from danger.
Those terrorists didn’t want to destroy as much as they wanted to hurt and frighten.
They aimed one of those planes at something my father and grandfather helped build, within sight of the grave of an uncle and earshot of my grandfather’s grave, men who honorably served their country in two distinctly different wars.
And while I’m not really one to carry a grudge, I have to admit, I find it very hard to follow the Biblical injunction to forgive them.
It’s been five years now, but yeah, I still take the attacks of 9/11 personally.
And I sincerely hope that anyone claims to be an American does, too.
— Jefferson Weaver is a staff writer with the News Reporter. He can be reached by telephone at 642-4104, or e-mail at jeffweaver@newsreporter.biz.
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