Covenanter Recalls Terror of Pentagon Plane Crash

WASHINGTON, DC (October 23, 2001) - Tyler White has always wanted to be near the action as a worker in Washington, D.C., having served a state senator and having provided consulting services for the military.

On September 11, White was as close to the action as anyone. His office is across the street from the Pentagon. He and two female co-workers were less than half a mile away when a plane struck the Pentagon and killed nearly 200 people.

White is the son of pastor Patrick White of Christ Community Church in Allegan, Michigan. He works as a defense consultant for the U.S. Army in the area of congressional relationships. He and his colleagues were listening to radio accounts of the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center in New York City when one co-worker saw the unthinkable.

"She said, 'Oh my gosh, there's a low-flying plane over there,' White recalled. His office is only an eighth of a mile from the Pentagon, separated only by a parking complex and a highway. "The immediate response around here was varied," White said. "There were some people who were scared and ran off. However, I mainly work with retired military people and they were more calm and started gathering the troops. Our next response was to call people in our company who were placed on site at the Pentagon (about one-half of White's company). All of our co-workers turned out to be safe and those we couldn't contact right away (we learned later) were helping other people in the initial search and rescue."

While White and his co-workers were calling associates across the street, Tyler's wife, Jennifer, was headed to her husband's office. She had felt the reverberations of the blast from their home in Alexandria, Virginia, about two miles from the Pentagon. White walked outside of his building to wait for his wife, describing the scene as "orderly chaos."

White also sought information concerning the whereabouts of his parents, who were traveling in the Holy Land. White worried for days wondering if his parents were safe.

"The scary thing for me was that my parents were in the Holy Land when everything was happening," said White, who served four years as a legislative aide for State Sen. Spencer Abraham of Michigan before taking his current position. "In fact, they landed in Tel Aviv, Israel, 20 minutes before the first plane hit the World Trade Center. It took a day or two to hear from them - they sent a fax to their church saying they were okay. I talked to them a couple of days later. They had to spend a couple of days sequestered in their hotel, but they basically went on with their 10-day tour in Israel and Egypt."

Life has returned to some sense of normalcy for White. He sees the giant hole in the Pentagon building when he goes to work and admits, "I have a little bit of fear because I see things most of the public doesn't see . . . I go through a range of emotions daily."

White has noticed a change in the attitudes of many people. They are more helpful, more polite and more patriotic. The latter quality has been in abundance lately, especially in his office, which is dominated by military people ready to aid their country in any way they can.

"I wouldn't want to be anywhere else right now," White said. I think everyone out here is concerned with making things better, even if they have different opinions of what that is."

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