Our Presidents

“Wake up. Two planes have hit.”

This is part of a series on September 11 in which our staff share some of their memories of the day and their thoughts on the records that are part of their holdings.

I woke up to my dad’s voice on the phone. “Wake up, planes have hit the World Trade Center.” In my groggy state I asked if it was foggy like the time the airplane crashed into the Empire State Building.

“No, Amy. Wake up. Two planes have hit. It’s terrorists.”

Everything was wrong. Nothing made sense. The whole world was upside down.

Like so many people, I reached out to my family and friends to make sure they were ok, to ask questions that no one had the answers to, and to just be close to people I loved as our country went through this surreal hell. I called my dad a lot and went over to my parents’ house after work every day for the first couple of weeks.

I was with my parents the night of September 14, watching the reports of the president’s trip to Ground Zero. When President Bush picked up that bullhorn and spoke to the rescue workers and the entire nation, I turned to my dad and expressed how proud I was. And my dad, ever the man to just say it like it is, simply replied, “You’re telling me.”

I still have a hard time keeping it together when I see footage of September 11, when I read letters from schoolchildren who sent their handmade flags to the White House to bolster the president’s spirits, or when I work with the personal 9/11 artifacts in the collection of the Bush 43 Library.

The only one that doesn’t choke me up is the bullhorn that President Bush used that day to comfort the workers at Ground Zero. Working with the bullhorn brings me back to that day when I knew with certainty that our country had suffered but would not be defeated and how the deafening response to his words exemplified the American spirit.

Working with the bullhorn also reminds me of my dad, who died in 2007. He didn’t live to see me become curator of the George W. Bush Presidential Library. I would have shown him the bullhorn and told him how unbelievable it is to work with the extraordinary documents and objects in our collection, and how grateful I am my career path has led me here.

And he would have said, “You’re telling me.”

Amy Polley is curator of the George W. Bush Presidential Library.

The George W. Bush Presidential Library will be located in Dallas, TX, on the campus of Southern Methodist University. The permanent facility is expected to open in Spring 2013.

George W. Bush Presidential Records are not yet available to the public under the requirements of the Presidential Records Act. The records will become available toFreedom of Information Act requests on January 20, 2014. The images contained in this series were previously released.