Bonnie Jo Mount/WASHINGTON POST - Dannye Ivey tried to change her schedule but was not able to swap with anyone. Had she swapped she would have been on American Flight 77 -- the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
Sometimes she thinks that finding meaning in any of this horrible madness would be impossible. “I don’t know why some people are here and other people are not. There must be a reason. My kids need me, but Michele’s kids needed her, too.”
Sometimes she thinks that she was spared for a purpose, but she hasn’t found that purpose yet. Maybe there’s no purpose, other than to be utterly, unbelievably grateful, and to stay in flight.
Following news of Osama bin Laden's death by the U.S. military, visitors to the Pentagon Memorial remembered those who lost their lives on 9/11.
Sometimes life sucks, and in the middle of that, the closet needs to be cleaned.
• • •
In the 1930s, at the beginning of the profession, the selection process for flight attendants screened for temperament and physical perfection. Women were to weigh no more than 118 pounds and had to be registered nurses. In 1936, an injured flying hostess named Nellie Granger dragged two adult passengers off a crashed Sun Racer, then hiked 11 miles to the nearest house for help. She was asked later if she would give up her job. She said, “I wouldn’t give it up for anything.”
When Dannye’s younger son was born with a heart defect, she discharged herself from the hospital and started dialing insurance companies. She said, “I don’t want any problems from you, MetLife. I will give you every bit of information you need for this surgery now and I don’t want any problems from you later.”
So maybe this is why Dannye is tough, she speculates. Maybe it’s flight attendants. Maybe it’s her, or the combination of a tough woman and a tough profession.
On the 3,607th day that Dannye has continued to fly, the back-yard barbecue has ballooned. Jim’s cousins from Iowa are visiting, his brother also decided to stop by, and some kids from the neighborhood have taken over the rec room downstairs. What started as a guest list of 12 has grown to more than 20, laughing conversations lit by tiki torches. Dannye sets brownies and pie out on a folding table, then goes to check on the basement.
“Kevin? Brad?” she calls. “Five minutes?” The boys, dark-haired and long-limbed, bound up the stairs.
“Mom is pretty cool,” says Brad, now 16. “Kind of crazy.”
“She’s more laid-back than other parents,” Kevin adds. “She doesn’t freak out.”
They never asked her not to go back to work. “I always knew she would,” Kevin says. “It’s what she always wanted to do.”
“They could have come to me about anything,” Dannye says, sitting on the other couch, watching her sons. “They know that.”
While Dannye was in Los Angeles 10 years ago, Kevin and Brad were home with their grandparents — Jim was in Tennessee for work and there were no flights out. The boys and their grandparents manned the homefront.
“The neighbors kept coming by,” Kevin says. They knew what his mom did for a living. “They thought — you know.”
Dannye sends them back downstairs and goes into the kitchen, where Jim is cleaning up. “You know what they remembered?” she asks, telling him about Brad and Kevin and the neighbors and their knocking. She never knew that’s what they remembered.
• • •
It’s almost 4 o’clock. The flight is descending. The tray tables are up. A business crowd like this should be able to deplane in 90 seconds, Dannye assesses. One of those things she knows.
The New York shuttle can fly a few different routes into Washington. Today it snakes into Reagan National Airport from the north, first passing over the gravestones and the manicured green of Arlington Cemetery. The weather is hot and the sky is a brilliant blue, the way it was 3,605 days ago.
And then, suddenly, outside the right window, a big, low-slung building with five sides.
“Seventy-seven hit right there,” Dannye says, pointing to a corner of the Pentagon. You can’t see anything anymore, of course. “Right there, 2 o’clock.”
A pause. A breath.
Whenever she is on the flight that comes in this way, “I look out, and I remember my friends.”
In her seat, she is quiet. An object of motion, momentarily at rest. She stays that way, still, as the jet flies beyond the Pentagon toward the runway of Reagan National and safely lands. Then she’s out of her seat — the tote bag, the jacket, the overhead carry-on — moving swiftly again.
First in the series: 9/11 widow still trying to find her new normal
Second in the series: Twin misses his other half
Third in the series: Brought together by catastrophe
Fourth in the series: After 9/11, security guard on high alert at golf course
Sixth in the series: After loss, working to fill the void
Seventh in the series: The wounded man
Eighth in the series: Living with ‘if only’
Ninth in the series: The skeptic who was there
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