Interview:  Vickie Lipscomb - son, Jason Lipscomb (25 years old) Pentagon Employee
                                            Computer Network Manager

Date:        September 14, 2001

Interviewer:    Betty Dotson Lewis

My son, Jason, was in the Marine Corps. for five years.  He got out in January.  Currently he is employed as a computer Network Manager by Lockheed Martin at the Pentagon, Washington, DC.   If anything goes wrong with the computer system at the Pentagon, he is responsible for determining what is wrong and repairing it.  His division is responsible for troubleshooting, maintenance and repair of the computer networking system in the Pentagon.

All branches of the Service use this computer system, Army, Navy and Marines.  This is the main communication system at the Pentagon.

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I was teaching my 6th grade class at Summersville Elementary, Summersville, West Virginia when the secretary announced I had a phone call.  At first I thought about not taking the call because the class was in the middle of a project that I didn't want to leave but then I decided I probably should.  It was my daughter, Brandi, calling from Seattle, Washington where she is a student at Bastyr University.  When I heard her voice I immediately thought she was going to tell me they had another earthquake in Seattle.  She had never experienced anything like that before going to the State of Washington.  When they had one, she was in class and she said when it happened everyone started holding on to the walls or whatever they could get a hold of and leaving the building..  It was a very scary experience for her.  She didn't say anything about an earthquake though, instead she said, "I don't know if you have heard or not but the World Trade Center in New York City has been hit by terrorists with two hijacked planes and the Pentagon in DC has been hit."  She hastened to say that Jason, her brother, was alright.  He had just called her to let her know he was fine. 

I went back to my classroom and turned on CNN to see what was going on.  In a few minutes I got another call and it was Jason.  He was heading home from his job at the Pentagon..

Jason said that the shift he works is from 10 pm to 8am but almost every shift they work over an hour or so in the morning to make sure everything is in proper working order before leaving..  In the Pentagon they keep CNN on all night long so they were watching tv when the World Trade Center was hit in New York City.  As soon as the 2nd plane hit another tower they knew it was a terrorists' attack.  Working in the environment he is in and having been a Marine for five years, he was familiar with their tactics.  Jason said that he immediately  felt a need to go home to check on my wife and 10 month old baby when I realized that terrorists were hitting us and I saw what had happened to the World Trade Center.

So, at that time I left the building and in approximately five minutes after walking out of the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, a hijacked plane flew into the southwest section of the Pentagon. 

Jason works in the northeast section of the building but the hit on that wing was devastating.  He was off from work for one night and then returned to his job.  A lot of people were unable to come back to work as soon as Jason for various reasons but with so much damage and so much to be done, he felt like he needed to return to his job at the Pentagon.

When asked about the type of damage done, such as infrastructure damage, etc., Vicki said that due to the nature of his job they really didn't discuss that.

When asked about how many people lost their lives and what positions they held, again, Vicki said that he really was not at liberty to disclose very much information.  The only thing he said was that in the event it had been another wing, the damage and lost of lives would have been greater.  Fewer people worked in the section that was hit.  He did say there was considerable damage done to the networking system.

I was stunned for the remainder of the day.  I was very thankful my son, Jason, was alive and well.

My students and I watched CNN that day and we discussed what had happened and I explained to them that they were watching history in the making.  We discussed the World Trade Center, the businesses that occupy the Center and how important they are to our economy.  My students could not figure out why someone would want to do that to America and why would they hate us so much.

We talked about Jason and they were concerned.  I got a lot of hugs that day.

Our students at our little school since that happened have been wearing red, white and blue clothing and pins with the American Flag on them.