Since 9/11/2001 was a Tuesday, I was getting ready to go to the Fillmore County Board Commissioners meeting. I briefly noticed on the Today Show that something had occurred in New York City. When I arrived at the courthouse, several employees and a couple other county commissioners were in the coordinator’s office watching the Today Show on a small TV. It had been determined that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Buildings. It appeared to be an accident. I believe as we were watching, a second plane came into view and hit another tower. Very shocking and hard to concentrate on our task at hand.
We started the meeting, but it was interrupted several times by coordinator staff to update us. We would take breaks and watch updates as more information was broadcast about what was occurring on the east coast. We had a long meeting planned for the day already and the news kept getting worse. Comments from us ranged from – How is this affecting us locally? Is something bad planned for our area because of proximity to Mayo Clinic? Do we need to declare an emergency? Is there actually anything we could do? But we did not take any action related to the 9/11 events that day. We started the meeting at 9 a.m. and finished about 3 p.m.
I went home and was supposed to go to a seed corn field day that evening but could not get myself enthused to attend. I spent the rest of the day and night watching TV and wondered what the effect of all these events of the day were going to be on my family, our nation, the world and particularly, Fillmore County.
Duane Bakke
Lanesboro, Minn.