Pentagon; Civilian worker relives attack
with each walk down corridor
BY JOHN STARK
THE
The shattered west face of the Pentagon has been pieced back together, and Tamera Selhaver Ramos and the others who survived the Sept. 11 attack there are back at their desks.
Externally, the U.S. Army has taken pains to recreate the nation’s military
nerve center just the way it was before a hijacked jetliner slammed into the
building and killed 184 people, said Ramos, a former
But inside the heads and hearts of those who survived, there’s still a lot of wreckage.
"We’re just kind of like little shells walking around," Ramos said.
Ramos, 34, is a civilian Web developer in the Army’s G-1 office, which has wide responsibilities in personnel management. When the plane hit the Pentagon near her office, dozens of her friends and co-workers were killed. Ramos and two colleagues barely made it out alive, groping on their hands and knees along darkened, smoky corridors that reeked of jet fuel. She suffered severe bruises and a dislocated hip.
"The next couple of days went by in a blur," she said.
No time to cry
But there was little time to recuperate, no time to grieve. The Army was already mobilizing for a counterattack, and desperately needed G-1 to be up and running, Ramos said.
Three days after the disaster, all of the G-1 survivors were summoned to
what the military calls a "mandatory all hands," where they learned
what they had to do, and learned who was confirmed dead and who was missing.
Ramos and the rest of the survivors spent the first weekend after the attack
setting up computer equipment salvaged from the wreckage in temporary
headquarters in
"There was no time to break down," Ramos said. "You just couldn’t."
Ramos did her crying during her morning commute to work.
"That was the only time you’d get a little outlet," she said.
She and a lot of other people were struggling with emotions they didn’t have permission to express.
"People kept telling me, ‘You should be thrilled, You’re alive,’ " Ramos said. "You’re supposed to be happy, but you’re not. … It’s not what you’re feeling in your heart."
About a month after Sept. 11, Ramos finally took the time to talk to counselors, and some healing began.
"It was very helpful to hear them say, ‘You’re OK how you’re reacting to things, you’re normal," Ramos said.
For weeks, Ramos found it almost impossible to get a good night’s sleep.
"Every time I closed my eyes, I could just hear the screaming," she said.
At Ground Zero
In November, she and her husband, Pete, went ahead with their daughter Franchesca’s promised visit to Disney World for a fourth-birthday celebration, but they turned in their plane tickets and drove there.
In December, they caved in to the pleas of her
"Even if I wanted to hide under the bedcovers, they weren’t going to let that happen," Ramos said. "Grandma issued me the (plane) ticket before I could even say ‘no.’ "
The flight out was smooth, and the holiday time with family was restorative. The flight back was neither.
"The return trip was bumpy and at one point I lost it," Ramos said. "I just burst into tears."
Every time the plane lurched downward, Ramos said she relived the feeling she had when the floor of her office lurched downward on Sept. 11.
"I felt this whole sensation of just dropping into space," she said.
It is a feeling that hits her anew every time she walks down the long Pentagon corridor that leads to the office she and her colleagues reoccupied in January, with the smell of jet fuel still noticeable despite attempts to ventilate the building.
Ramos said she could get to her office by a different route that might spare her the vertigo triggered by the long corridor, but that’s not how she has chosen to deal with it.
"I still feel if I just keep walking down there it will eventually go away," Ramos said.
In February, she went to
"I felt like I needed to see it, to put the pieces together," she said. "I can’t say it was a healing thing. … I just wanted to make sense of it all."
Even at that late date, fumes from the wreckage gave Ramos and Franchesca asthma attacks.
In recent weeks, Ramos and other survivors have thrown a lot of energy into upcoming anniversary events. Among other things, she has worked on a massive commemorative quilt. She said she wanted to feel as if she had done "something worth living for" before the first anniversary of Sept. 11 arrived.
Ramos explained that she and other survivors now feel as though the last year disappeared from their lives.
She said she and many others are trying to figure out how to deal with the year ahead. They don’t want to keep mentally going back to the day the world changed, but they don’t want to blot it out, either.
"People have not really processed all their grief all the way through yet," she said. "A lot of us just put it off and kept on working."
COURTESY PHOTO
SURVIVOR: In February, Tamera Selhaver
Ramos, shown with her daughter, Franchesca, visited
AP PHOTO
MEMORIAL QUILTS: A detail of one of the various Sept. 11 memorial
quilts, made by family and friends of victims, is seen on the National Mall
Aug. 31 in
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Copyright 2002