Copyright 2002 Omaha World-Herald

Reprinted with permission

Sept. 10, 2002, Tuesday SUNRISE EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A;
HEADLINE:
Final words, final hours before all changed
The day before the attacks on the World Trade Center was like any other for most.
By Stephen Buttry
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
The big change for many in the Omaha area that day was the closing of the
westbound lanes on the Interstate 480 bridge across the Missouri River.
The next day everything changed.
For the generations that will never forget the day that has become known as
9/11, Sept. 10, 2001, was just another day. The day before.
As the 19 terrorists prepared their deadly attack, people in the Midlands
pursued the mundane and profound activities of everyday life.
People worked that Monday. Roberts Dairy bottled 110,000 gallons of milk.
Carlson Hospitality Worldwide fielded 14,932 calls and made 4,798 hotel
reservations at its Omaha reservation center. Workers prepared exhibits for the
next day's opening of Husker Harvest Days in Grand Island and the Omaha Products
Show at the Civic Auditorium.
Gary Schwendiman decided to attend a meeting in Washington that Monday,
rather than spend the first few days of the week at his firm's new office in the
World Trade Center.
Schwendiman and his son, Todd, run Schwendiman Partners, a Lincoln
investment firm. They had opened a new international office in June 2001 on the
78th floor of the north tower.
Rather than working in New York that week, Gary Schwendiman decided to
attend the board meeting in Washington of Everest Funds Management, a mutual
fund led by Omaha businessman Vin Gupta.
After the meeting, Schwendiman played golf at Burning Tree Club in Bethesda,
Md. He flew home late that evening on Gupta's jet. Todd Schwendiman worked past
midnight in his tower office.
"Todd locked the office up in New York about the time my head hit the pillow
in Lincoln," Gary recalled.

People played that Monday. Papillion-La Vista beat Omaha Burke, 20-13, in
football.
Thomas Gouttierre, director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the
University of Nebraska at Omaha, was the morning speaker at the Loveland Golden
K Kiwanis. He told the club of the threat of al-Qaida. Not that Gouttierre
foresaw the next day's attack. But he had followed the group's activities as a
U.N. senior political affairs officer in 1996 and 1997.
In Gouttierre's Sept. 10 speech, Golden K Kiwanis members heard a preview of
hundreds of interviews Gouttierre would grant in the weeks ahead. He told about
the "unholy alliance" among Afghanistan's ruling Taliban regime, al-Qaida,
Pakistan's intelligence service and Muslim extremists in Pakistan and Saudi
Arabia.
Gouttierre also received disturbing news that day, that Ahmed Shah Massood,
leader of the Northern Alliance forces that were fighting the Taliban, had been
attacked. Gouttierre immediately saw the hand of terrorist leader Osama bin
Laden in the attack. Initial news reports did not say whether Massood survived.
Gouttierre assumed correctly that this meant he was dead.
Also that day, Gouttierre prepared for the weekly three-hour lecture in his
Tuesday international studies class. His scheduled lecture topic for Sept. 11
was international terrorism.
People spent money that Monday. The Omaha data center of First Data
Resources processed 21,852,530 credit card transactions. Almost 700 people
visited Borsheim's. First National Bank processed 2.1 million merchant
transactions.
Fire Capt. Rick Klein spent Sept. 10 making last-minute preparations for a
class that members of Lincoln's urban search and rescue team would take the next
day. Klein is logistics manager of the team, which specializes in working in the
unstable debris of fallen buildings.
The team's class scheduled for the next day was the "Structural Collapse
Technician Course." Before the end of the month, the Lincoln crew would be
sifting the wreckage of the largest structural collapse ever.
People got in trouble that Monday. Omaha police filed 337 incident reports.
Creighton University economist Ernie Goss was attending the annual meeting
of the National Association for Business Economics, at the Marriott Hotel in the
World Trade Center.
Friday evening, Goss had dined with his wife, Jackie, at the Windows on the

World restaurant atop the north tower. He remembers the spectacular view of
Manhattan.
On Sunday, Goss had read a research paper at the conference. His paper on
the Internet's impact on productivity won a competition, for which Goss received
a plaque at Monday night's awards dinner.
Goss drank too much coffee and didn't sleep well that night. He changed
plans to catch an early flight out of town. He left the Marriott less than six
hours before it would collapse under the debris of the towers.
Before Goss would make it back to Creighton Wednesday night, the association
sent out another plaque, assuming the original was lost in the catastrophe.
People ailed and healed that Monday. Seventy patients underwent surgery at
Nebraska Health System hospitals in Omaha, and 144 patients visited the
emergency room.
Gov. Mike Johanns visited the College of St. Mary in the morning and held a
press conference on health-care grants. After returning to Lincoln, he hosted a
delegation of visitors from Peru.
At the governor's mansion that evening, Johanns dined with visiting
California officials, interested in expanded use of ethanol to help cut air
pollution.
People flew that Monday. Thirty airplanes took off and landed at Offutt Air
Force Base.
On the last day that Afghanistan would remain obscure to America's public,
UNO's Peter Tomsen met in Rome with the nation's exiled king, Mohammad Zaher
Shah.
Tomsen, a retired ambassador and UNO's ambassador-in-residence, worked
unofficially to bring together various Afghan exiles, hoping to lay the
groundwork for a post-Taliban government.
While they were meeting, the king was stunned to receive word that Massood,
the Northern Alliance leader whom Tomsen had met in June, had been attacked in
Tajikistan.
Tomsen won the king's support for an office to promote a loya jirga,
Afghanistan's traditional national assembly. That evening, Tomsen worked on
winning similar support from royal relatives he thought were undermining the
unity effort. He took six of them to dinner at an Italian seafood restaurant.
The bill came to about $ 300.

People governed that Monday. The Council Bluffs City Council approved an $
8,000 pay raise for Mayor Tom Hanafan. The Bellevue school board approved a $
7,200 pay raise for Superintendent John Deegan. Immigration and Naturalization
Service officials in Omaha interviewed about 40 immigrants applying for
naturalization or seeking a change in status.
Steve Beumler, an Omaha account executive with ACI Worldwide, was originally
supposed to fly into New York's LaGuardia Airport, but a connection mix-up sent
him to Newark International Airport.
He needed to be in downtown New York for a business meeting at 8 a.m.
Tuesday.
A downpour as he walked to a Manhattan restaurant soaked Beumler's pants to
his knees. He sat through a steak dinner at Harry's of Hanover Square with soggy
socks and shoes.
After dinner, he went back to the hotel and hung up his wet clothes in the
bathroom. He made notes for his business meeting and went to bed.
People learned that Monday. Attendance at Omaha Public Schools was 46,065.
Parents attended open houses at magnet schools in the evening.
Former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey's wife, Sarah Paley, gave birth to a son,
Henry, by Caesarean section at 12:23 p.m. Eastern time at Hackensack Memorial
Hospital in Hackensack, N.J.
Kerrey, who trimmed the umbilical cord, remembers thinking, "he's alive and
he's healthy and he's beautiful."
People built that Monday. Construction crews at the First National Tower
installed the gas main to the 37th level and water lines from the 24th to 34th
level.
At the West Center Chapel in Omaha, family and friends of Luella Stebbins
gathered to remember and mourn. Her funeral would be Sept. 11 at 10:30 a.m. A
native of Center, Neb., she had died Sept. 6 in Des Moines of Wegener's
granulomatosis.
That night, her 13-year-old grandson, Kyle Stebbins of Lincoln, posted a Web
site paying tribute to his grandmother.
People toured that Monday. The Henry Doorly Zoo had 1,780 visitors.
At Strategic Command headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base, Adm. Richard

Mies directed an annual training exercise. Bombers, missile crews and submarines
around the country and off U.S. shores followed orders from StratCom's command
bunker as the Global Guardian exercise began its second scheduled week.
The exercise would end abruptly the next morning. By afternoon, President
Bush was in the bunker.
People were born and died that Monday. The Nebraska Health and Human
Services System recorded 87 births and 39 deaths.
At the Joslyn Art Museum, a noteworthy group of visitors gathered for a
dinner in the fountain court and entertainment in the Witherspoon Auditorium by
pianist-composer Marvin Hamlisch and tenor Stephen Lehew.
Warren Buffett's golf-and-tennis fund-raiser was scheduled for Sept. 11,
bringing to Omaha celebrities from sports, entertainment and business.
About 70 to 80 of the guests gathered at the Joslyn the evening of Sept. 10.
Susie Buffett, coordinator of her father's Omaha Classic, recalls people
commenting the next day about the final song the musicians performed, Hamlisch's
"One Song."
The lyrics, uplifting on Monday evening, would echo eerily on Tuesday: "If
we all sing one song, one song of love, one song of peace, one song to make all
our troubles cease. One hope, one dream, imagine what tomorrow would bring if we
all sing one song."
Sources: This story is based on interviews with Gary Schwendiman, Todd
Schwendiman, Ernie Goss, Thomas Gouttierre, Rick Klein, Mike Johanns, Peter
Tomsen, Jim Kanter, Steve Beumler, Bob Kerrey, Wes Stebbins of Lincoln,
Strategic Command spokesman Capt. James Taylor and Susie Buffett. Figures were
provided by the agencies and businesses cited or came from World-Herald files.
GRAPHIC: Color Photos/2 Jeff Bundy/1 Gary Schwendiman of Lincoln decided not to
work out of the World Trade Center on Sept. 10. Rudy Smith/1 Steve Beumler, an
Omaha account executive with ACI Worldwide, with a map of Manhattan. Beumler
found himself walking to a restaurant in a downpour in Manhattan on the night of
Sept. 10.,; RUDY SMITH/THE WORLD-HERALD/1, JEFF BUNDY/THE WORLDHERALD/1sf