Two planes are off the radar.
Two decades later, those words are seared into Virginia Buckingham’s memory.
She got the call from her office, moments after two planes struck New York’s Twin Towers on 9/11. The world soon learned that terrorists had hijacked those planes from Boston’s Logan Airport– which Buckingham ran as CEO of the Massachusetts Port Authority.
Courts later absolved her of liability–under federal laws in 2001, airport security checkpoints were the airlines’ responsibility. The system needed drastic changes.
But in the days following the nation’s deadliest terror attack, headlines screamed for Buckingham to be fired. Six weeks later, she resigned from her dream job, and wrestled with guilt and PTSD that pushed her to the brink of suicide.
“I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. That’s the truth. It was hell,” the author of On My Watch: A Memoir, said Thursday at Great Conversations.
The annual gala, moved online by the pandemic, helps Morristown-based nonprofit Morris Arts support art programs across Morris County. After some technical glitches, paying guests joined Zoom video chat rooms hosted by 25 personalities from the arts, business, science and sports.
COVID BLAME GAME
In her 2020 memoir, Buckingham offers lessons from her struggle to reclaim her self-esteem in a culture she says wrongly equates blame with leadership.
Parallels between 9/11 and COVID-19 are obvious to her.
“Everyone’s blaming everybody else for not reacting fast enough, or not meeting the right way or whatever, instead of just accepting this as a pandemic, for goodness sakes.
“Who the heck knows how to handle something like this that has never happened in our lifetimes?” she told her Zoom circle, which included several businesswomen, a hospital official, and the head of a local nonprofit.
A former chief of staff for two governors, Buckingham shared how she rediscovered joy after 9/11, with help from a grief counselor, an adoring husband, and flashes of kindness from strangers. It was an arduous journey.
She tried to be stoic. Raised in Connecticut with seven siblings, Buckingham was taught the value of hard work by her father, a milkman who took extra jobs to support the family. She threw herself into a new career, writing political columns and editorials for the Boston Herald.
Then came another call. Her attorney said she was being sued for wrongful death by the family of a 9/11 victim.
It “shattered my heart and my soul,” recounted Buckingham, who had a 2-year-old son and was pregnant with her daughter when she quit Massport.
“I considered myself a good person, who would do anything to protect people. And…a mother of two young boys, who lost her husband, lost their father, was blaming me and asking the court to hold me accountable.”
Seeds of doubt took root.
“Could it be true? Could I have done anything to stop it?” she grilled herself, endlessly replaying the dark days of September 2001.
Bruce Springsteen’s haunting Empty Sky became her soundtrack. Alone with her thoughts and the cold Atlantic, near her home in Marblehead, MA, she contemplated ending her life.
“Being a mother won out,” Buckingham said.
Video: ‘Empty Sky’:
‘WE SHARE A PAIN’
Kindness came from unexpected places.
A woman who lost a daughter on 9/11 urged Buckingham to honor the victim by living a good life.
A newspaper colleague gave Buckingham a statue of Ganesha, Hindu god of overcoming obstacles. She keeps the statue near her bed.
“There’s that kind of cliché saying, that everybody’s going through something, so always be kind. And maybe before COVID that sounded kind of pollyanna-ish.
“We know for sure it’s true of everyone today, and I do my very best to pay that kindness and compassion forward,” she said.
She attempted to do that by reaching out to a Portland, ME, ticketing agent who was tormented by his words for a 9/11 connecting flight: “Mr. Atta, if you don’t go now, you’ll miss your plane.”
Mohamed Atta was ringleader of the September 11 attacks.
“Well, Virginia, we share a pain,” Mike Tuohey told Buckingham. She considers it her greatest conversation, a moment of healing.
On My Watch took 13 years to write. She resolved to finish the book when she was named a Presidential Leadership Scholar, a program established in 2015 by former Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush.
Readers have thanked Buckingham for helping them navigate hard times. In a crisis, she advises, “hold on like hell to what you know is true.”
Ultimately, that got her through.
“I feel healed. I feel whole. I feel incredibly grateful, incredibly optimistic,” despite occasional bad dreams and bouts of sadness, said Buckingham, now a vice president with Pfizer Inc.
She anticipates marking this year’s 20th anniversary of 9/11 quietly, on the shore at Marblehead.
The tide often deposits sea glass, bottle fragments that symbolize resilience for Buckingham.
“What comes to rest on the sand is this exquisite, beautiful, valuable thing that is not recognizable, perhaps, as what it started as,” she said. “But it’s still capable of bringing joy.”
