That September DevCon 12, the biggest developer conference of the year for VFP, was being held in San Diego on the week of the 10th. I lived in San Diego back in the 80’s for ten years and had many old friends there, so I decided to leave Saturday morning and hook up with a few of them.
Of course, my wife wanted to come, but it wasn’t practical because the kids were so young, and I would be attending seminars all day for the entire week. When I got in, I gave my oldest friend a call, Ken Zeigler, and we met up at the hotel for a swim. Ken and I had some crazy times together when we were young and full of vigor. I remember a motorcycle trip we took to Baja California, where we got robbed by the Federales, and had to walk our bikes for miles in the blistering sun after we ran out of gas until we found a town with a bank. We had a lot of really wild times together, much of them involving women, booze and bonfires on the beach.
Ken is now married with two teenagers. We went to the Old Town Café and enjoyed a traditional Mexican dinner. It makes my mouth water just thinking about the food there. Mexican food in San Diego is like no other; it has a flare and a particular spiciness you will find in no other city. Ken’s wife was a little suspicious of me, considering how far back my friendship with Ken went and the times we shared, but I assured her those days were long gone, and I was a family man, just as he was.
Seeing Ken again was really wonderful, but the conference was my main priority. There was a lot to be learned, and some new features in the next version of VFP would be unveiled in the Keynote speech. There was electricity in the air Monday morning when the conference started. People were buzzing with excitement, and I carefully looked over the seminars, planning my week to get the most out of the direction I wanted to go in as a VFP developer. There were so many great sessions I couldn’t quite decide, but the one thing I was sure of was that I wanted to be moving toward an n-tier application model, where the user interface was presented with barely any business logic, with the exception of some input validation, and the business layer would be in objects separate from both the interface and the data, but would be the go-between the two.
The concept was not new, but had never been really effectively employed in VFP. Now, because of some new features in the operating system and VFP, the concept could be used with relative ease. That night after a full day of cramming my brain with knowledge I talked with several VFP developers I had gotten to know on the Universal Thread, a message board devoted to VFP developers from around the world.
It was late, and I was tired, so I decided to turn in early. The next morning I was out of bed earlier than normal because of jet lag, and I turned on the television. Almost every channel showed one of the Twin Towers in New York burning after a jet had slammed into it. I watched in disbelief, and wondered how in god’s name could something so awful happen?
And then, low over the horizon, I saw another plane approach. At first I thought I was watching a reenactment until I saw the plane slam into the other tower. And then it hit me full force: America was under attack!
I threw on some clothes and went down to the lobby. Dozens of television sets had been setup in the lobby and people were glued to them. We all stared in disbelief as the towers burned. A few minutes later another jet slammed into the Pentagon, and then another crashed in Pennsylvania.
Finally, New York’s boldest and proudest architectural achievements, the Twin Towers, collapsed into an enormous dust cloud, taking with them thousands of lives. I could not stop crying.
It took several minutes to get through to my wife. She was in tears as well. “When are you coming home?” she asked.
“I don’t know. They shut down all American airspace, so I have no idea. Try not to watch the TV all the time. It only makes it worse.”
“I can’t help it. How can anybody be so evil? Who would do something like this?” she asked.
"I don’t know, Gloria. All I can tell you is that America will never be the same again. Things will be different from now on. I will call you when I have more information about getting a flight home.”
The DevCon conference promoters decided that the week’s events should go on as planned, and I went to my seminars, but my heart wasn’t into it. Finally, I rented a car and drove around San Diego, looking at old haunts. My most poignant memory was when I drove up to Point Loma, not far from where I lived in Ocean Beach, to the Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery and walked through the rows of fallen military heroes. I was both heartbroken and scared. I knew the ramifications of what was to come.
American airspace would be closed for at least two weeks, and there would be no flights out of San Diego. If I wanted to get a flight, I would have to go to L.A. Because I could not afford to pay for an extra week at the hotel, Ken let me stay at his house until I found a flight.
At last limited American airspace opened up and I found a flight to New York. It left rather late at night. There were maybe three people on the plane. Nobody said a word the entire way home. Being on a plane so soon after a terrorist attack of that type and magnitude left me at a loss for words, but I was thankful when my flight landed safely at Kennedy Airport, and I got home to my wife and kids. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of the magnitude the Twin Towers had on the Manhattan skyline, and how much I loved those towers. But mostly I think of all those who lost their lives and the effect it had on their loved ones on that fateful day, September 11, 2001.
Love to all!
James M. Weil
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