Dispatches: Retired Shoreline Travel Agent Recalls the Chaos of Sept. 11, 2001

Up until Sept. 11, 2001, the day hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field, it had been a decent year for Shoreline resident Gretchen Atkinson’s travel agency Complete Travel Service.

“It wasn’t all that bad up until that point,” she said. “At that point it became chaotic.”

For the next couple days planes didn’t fly and some of her clients were stuck in airports far away from home.

She found hotels for some but many had to sleep in crowded airports.

“Even hotels were hard to find,” she said. “You couldn’t depend on what your computer said."

Atkinson tried to get her clients flights to their next destination while they stood in line or get them access to rental cars.

“Airlines weren’t taking responsibility. There were no special rates,” Atkinson said. “

“There was one woman who called in absolute panic because there were no flights out of New York and she had to get to Seattle because she was losing her child care in two days.”

Atkinson found her a rental car, one of the last available in the New York area.

“She was just grateful that I found anything,” she said. “We just had to deal with it. When you’re in a service industry you provide the best service you can under the circumstances. You did the best you could.”

“I was pretty lucky with my clients. They weren’t angry at me, they were desperate,” she said. “I think we were all in a state of shock.”

While Atkinson’s clients eventually found their way home, the chaos of Sept. 11 continued. Airlines and airplane makers like Boeing went into a tailspin and the economy, already in a recession, continued to struggle.

“It certainly changed flying for the nation,” Atkinson said. “The Transportation Security Administration was putting in place all these restrictions.”

One impact was that people were less inclined to fly and train and car reservations went up.

Atkinson’s daughter, Kim, who got her master’s at Cornell in finance, had a number of friends in lower Manhattan that day. One of her daughter’s friends died in one of the World Trade Center buildings.

While the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 had some impact on the industry, the changing technology that allowed the proliferation of Web sites that enabled people to cheaply and easily make their own travel arrangements online, led to major downsizing.

Atkinson opened her own travel agency in 1989 after working in the business since 1972. She employed as many as five people before she decided to shut her doors in North City for good and retire in 2004.

“It got so it wasn’t fun anymore,” she said. “They (clients) didn’t want to pay for anything. It got to the point where it was frustrating. When it becomes not profitable and not fun, why do it?”

“Everything changes,” she said.

Today, Atkinson spends her time volunteering in the community, quietly making a difference, 10 years after that fateful, chaotic day.

She serves as a leader in the Meridian Park Neighborhood Association and can be found weeding and doing other maintenance work in local parks.