Dan Holdridge, while certainly concerned, told his father he was safe 20 years ago.
But Holdridge knew better.
Earlier, the Deerfield resident, installing a new computer network for the Pentagon’s Command Center, had heard that one of the World Trade Center towers had been struck by an airplane. Probably a small one, an accident, Holdridge and the rest of us thought. A plane that had curiously lost its way on the crispest, sunniest morning imaginable.
But as Holdridge stood in a smoking area with his friend and colleague, Bobby Shelby, his Motorola flip phone with the faulty web browser relayed more information. A second plane had hit the other tower, and from that smoldering chaos came a clear message: we were at war. Holdridge called his dad in Connecticut.
“Don’t worry, dad,” Holdridge told him. “We’re at the defensive capital of the world. I’m at the Pentagon, and it’s like a fortress.”
Then, returning to the present, Holdridge told me, “I was trying to convince myself as well.”
At 9:37 that morning, while still standing with his friend, American Airlines Flight 77, traveling nearly 400 miles per hour, crashed into the Pentagon. Shelby hadn’t finished his cigarette by then. And that’s a good thing.
“The blast picked us up and threw us to the ground,” Holdridge said over coffee recently. “Each (co-worker) directly to the right of us died. We were it, the only ones left, 10 feet from the wall that held up from where the blast was.”
He and Shelby were the lone two people chosen to work on the network installation who survived the explosion. It killed 34 of his colleagues, 184 in the Pentagon overall.
So now, through public speaking, a video and his book, Holdridge tells his story to anyone who wants to hear it, consumed now with what he should be doing for the rest of his life: promoting kindness and gratitude.
“I felt that 184 people who died right next to me didn’t have a voice,” Holdridge said. “If I am a voice for 184 people, I feel the need to say, ‘Hey, stop; whatever you think you’re entitled to, you’re not.’ Everything has an appreciation base, and there is nothing in life that you are entitled to. A September 12 does not come for everyone.”
Our conversation began by phone, but it was soon clear that this was a face-to-face story, that Holdridge – who grew up in Connecticut and has lived in Deerfield with his wife and stepson since 2015 – had emotion and sadness and paranoia that could manifest themselves in some way.
And they did. At the coffee shop, he observed what no one else cared about. Or thought about. His eyes scanned the place. He made a plan. An escape plan. Just in case.
He spoke with the fervor of a religious leader, eyes intense when not tear-filled, hands waving in different directions or hitting the table for emphasis, pausing to regain composure, his coffee untouched throughout our 90-minute discussion.
“I know exactly where everything is in here now,” Holdridge said. “I check everywhere I go. Then I feel safe.”
It’s part of his post-traumatic syndrome, to make sure fire exits have been located, no matter where he goes. Tricia, his wife of nine years, is a social worker who previously lived in Concord and Pembroke. She’s a hair-band fan. She once took her husband to a Motley Crue concert.
The sudden fireworks display sent Holdridge scurrying for cover, under his seat.
“I felt guilty taking him,” Tricia said by phone. “There were fireworks, and I didn’t expect that. The Fourth of July is fine because he knows it’s coming, but if not, he has an enhanced startle response because of 9/11. It triggers claustrophobia.”
Said Holdridge, “Noise and booms are part of the deal. I’m just grateful it was just that and not worse.”
So grateful, in fact, that his experience and newfound perspective run his life, tell him how to behave, what to say, how to feel. He travels the country spreading his message – to corporations, schools, local residents – about never taking life for granted, speaking from a place that forces you to keep quiet and listen.
A cliche, sure, but it resonates with all of us, no matter how many times we hear these lessons that have been learned. From any survivor who was involved 20 years ago. In New York City. Or at the Pentagon. No one’s left from the crash in a remote Pennsylvania field.
That’s where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed, after passengers struggled to regain control of the plane from four terrorists.
Holdridge once tried to reach that field, in Stonycreek Township, to pay his respects. “I was three miles from it and my body started sweating,” Holdridge said. “I started shaking. I couldn’t do it.”
He revisited his own experience, which has evolved into his job, along with being a project manager. He said he gets expenses for his presentations. Sometimes he’s paid for his time. He says he gives the money to charity.
He’s got a video that explains some background. Then he tells his story.
A computer techie, he was working in Boston when he got an offer for a temporary job at the Pentagon and started there two weeks before Sept. 11. Upkeep and updating were needed, and that included the network in the Command Center, where 36 people in total would work.
He had known Tricia for years by then. They met in 4-H Club and dated in high school. Now, they were just friends. Close enough for Tricia to plan a weekend trip.
For Sept. 13, 2001.
Meanwhile, Holdridge was beginning his new life. New apartment, new city, new job. He explained that the Pentagon has 18 miles of corridors and five levels. Inter-building packages and mail sometimes were delivered by Jeep.
On that clear morning, Shelby and Holdridge were on their way to a meeting when they stopped at a designated smoking area. It had a thick, concrete wall dividing them from the rest of their staff.
News had trickled in by then. One of the Twin Towers had been hit by a plane. Then another. Shelby puffed and Holdridge relayed the news, anxious for his friend to finish his break so they could move to a TV.
Reached by phone, Shelby remembered, “I threw my cigarette out, and at that point, the C Ring wall exploded.”
The plane hit a few hundred yards away. At a section that killed the people they worked with. All of them. Shelby described it as getting ambushed by the biggest ocean wave ever. They both said they had enough time, only a moment, though, to acknowledge that this, indeed, could be the end.
“Felt like a bomb,” Holdridge said. “The plane disintegrated.”
The two friends were blown into the air. Some things can never be recalled. Or were ever known. How far did they fly? Who was the woman who drove them to the hospital? How long were they unconscious?
Actually, Shelby doesn’t remember getting knocked out. They both remember fireballs and flames and inhaling something that in no way resembled breathable air. A fine white mist appeared, pulverized concrete and plane.
Shelby said debris floated and charged down from the sky, part of the plane, part of the building, part of the nightmare.
“Just insane,” Shelby told me. “I’ve never seen pieces of stuff like that getting thrown that far.”
They were lucky. Holdridge says a meeting was rescheduled that morning, and that messed with fate’s timing, impacting when, exactly, he walked with Shelby for the break. The wall shielded them from the more dangerous area, occupied by their co-workers, all of whom perished.
And a cigarette, for perhaps the first time in history, saved a life. Two lives, in fact.
Shelby had kept silent about this next nugget of information. He told his wife and kids. No one else.
“I never stop to smoke a cigarette before working,” he told me. “I only smoked after work was done. A little voice said, ‘Stop and smoke.’ ”
They were bruised from head to toe. Shelby’s ankles, oddly, were the size of grapefruits. Holdridge tore his rotator cuff. They both had big chunks of glass in their scalps. All over them, really. Blood streamed down from their head wounds.
A woman drove to the area to help. Shelby couldn’t remember her name. Holdridge said it was Erin Anderson, and she stopped and drove them to the hospital, where MASH-like procedures were performed. Pull that big shard of glass out. Wrap it. Who’s next?
From there, about 90 minutes after the crash, the word spread, from Holdridge to a family member, from there to everyone else.
“I was afraid to call Dan’s family,” Tricia said, “because I didn’t know what they knew.”
Holdridge took a shower that night at a friend’s home and heard a light, fragile pinging sound at his feet. It hurt when he began washing his hair, and Holdridge knew instantly that pieces of glass were dropping from his head and landing on the shower floor. Leftovers, not seen or attended to, back at the crash site.
He got a ride to Connecticut two days later and stayed with his parents. He returned to work at the Pentagon on Sept. 30. The wall that had been reinforced after the Oklahoma City bombing before the plane crashed into it remained a pile of rubble, a crumpled mess.
Holdridge and Tricia, whose weekend trip was canceled 2o years ago, married nine years ago. They both grew up on a farm and fell in love with Deerfield’s slow, country setting, moving there six years ago.
Holdridge now does public speaking and is a project manager. He suffers from PTSD, on a higher level than Shelby. Tricia knows all about the intel gathering Holdridge does before he enters a room.
“In a busy restaurant, he needs to sit where he can see all the exits and he likes to put his back to the wall,” Tricia explained. “When we go to new places, I can see him scanning. He won’t ride the T in Boston.”
Holdridge is eager to speak at local Sept. 11 ceremonies, spreading the enlightenment he feels and hoping to – in very plain language – save the world from itself.
For the 10th anniversary, he went back to the Pentagon, where he delivered his message of appreciation, a greater awareness.
He met a woman who had lost both her sons. One died from a medical condition. The other took his own life, believing that that would allow him to see his brother again.
She gave Holdridge a pair of flip-flops after he spoke. He had no idea why. Until she told him.
“After hearing your story,” the unidentified woman told Holdridge, “and what you have gone through, you’re the first person in my life who wanted to understand what it’s like to walk in my shoes.”
He had the flip-flops in a knapsack when we met and says he brings them everywhere.
Positivity, not anger or bitterness, dominate his thoughts. Especially this time of year. He and Shelby text often in Septembers. These days, they’ve been talking baseball, good-natured ribbing from Holdridge the Red Sox fan to Shelby, a fan of the woeful Baltimore Orioles.
They talk about that day 20 years ago, of course. The luck created by a cigarette and a rescheduled meeting. It’s a bond, special, a common experience none of us can imagine.
Holdridge hasn’t finalized his speaking engagement for this year’s local tribute. His energy to relay information is limitless. He looked relaxed, for most the part, when we met. He wore blue jeans, a tan Red Sox hat, a tight salt-and-pepper beard, recently past the stubble stage.
He paused, sometimes for as long as 15 seconds. He wiped his eyes and refocused. He said good thoughts never trailed far behind, even as he lay in the grass bleeding, part of the craziest triage system ever seen.
Ribbons marked the degree of urgency needed from various wounds. Green, yellow, red, black. Holdridge was marked green, meaning he was going to live. He saw yellow and red ribbons, doctors frantically sewing those wounds closed and moving on.
He saw black ribbons all around him as well.
Holdridge thought about fishing with his family, hugging them. He thought about his dad. He had tried to shield him from reality, telling him that the Pentagon was the safest place to be, just seconds – maybe minutes – before the walls and ceilings crumbled.
He saw a lot of people, uninjured, all around him, looking to donate blood. Some took it further than that.
That made Holdridge feel good.
“Someone said they needed help,” Holdridge said. “They said someone was missing, they couldn’t find them. These people went back into the burning building. I saw that as a glimmer of hope.”