FLORENCE, Ky. — It’s become an adage people now often say: “Let’s be how we were on 9/12,” referring to how people seemed to come together the day after America was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.
For northern Kentucky native Christopher Hall, Sept. 12, 2001 was spent continuing the clearing of a perimeter around the White House he had started the day before.
Boone County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Hall was born and bred in Hebron. As many people in the area know, the sounds of airplanes flying overhead can constantly be heard, given the proximity to the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. One simply learns to ignore them
For Hall, though, that’s difficult to do.
“There are times you’ll hear roaring, and the house will start to shake a little bit. It absolutely puts you right back where you were at, and you start thinking of that moment,” Hall said.
On Sept. 1, 2001, Hall was three weeks out of training, working his new job as a member of the Secret Service. It’s a job not many are hired for right out of college, Hall said, but one he had trained hard for. Coming from a law enforcement family, it was always a goal of his.
His responsibility at the time was security outside of the White House.
He was 23-years-old, and his wife was nine months pregnant.
Hall has shared the story over the years with close friends and family, but not publicly until Monday, Sept. 12, 2022, at the Florence Rotary Club.
The second plane, as he recalled, had crashed into the World Trade Center.
“Someone's coming in, and they’re screaming we’re being attacked, we’re being attacked. They’re coming for us. And at that moment, all I can think of is my wife and my unborn son,” he said. “And I thought, ‘how the hell can I get out of here? I’m 23-years-old.”’
Hall grabbed a gas mask and his cell phone to briefly call his wife.
“‘I love you, and tell our son I love him.’ And I hung up the phone, and I took off running,” he said. “They just said, ‘evacuate the building.’ OK, well that wasn’t covered in training — how to evacuate the White House in a national emergency.”
He, his fellow Secret Service members and other officers started moving people out as quickly and as far aways as they could. Meanwhile, smoke from the Pentagon billowed over the White House.
“I thought, ‘is this really happening? The ground was shaking. Like, you are shaking. The fence was shaking,” Hall said, before pausing. A plane was audibly flying over the rotary club. “You guys hear that? Imagine a sound 100 times louder. It sounded like a plane was coming right for us, and in that moment, I can say I surely thought I was going to die. I looked in the sky and said, ‘Lord, please watch out for my family.”’
Hall said he was thinking about how he had always wanted to be a father and was going to miss his opportunity.
“At that moment, that plane flew right over us, and it couldn’t have been more than 100 feet in the air, and I was never so happy to look up and see USAF on the bottom of that plane,” he said.
He and the other responders managed to evacuate a three-block radius around the White House. Hall got to see his wife briefly that night, and then was right back to work on Sept. 12, 2001. That night, his wife started going into labor.
“Really bad timing, honey,” he said to laughter.
It was, however, far from a laughing matter at the time. Hall was given 48 hours to be with his wife as she delivered their son. The national disaster had triggered a lot of women to go into labor, Hall said, leading to hospitals “cramming multiple women in rooms,” as he put it.
“I’m just a young dumb kid from Hebron, Kentucky. Here I am in the middle of a war zone in Washington D.C., avoiding planes coming at us, and now my wife’s giving birth. Talk about a week of having to grow up,” he said.
After that, it was 12-hour shifts with no days off for the next four months. He finally got some reprieve around January. That’s when he got a phone call to go to Salt Lake City for the Winter Olympics for six-and-a-half weeks.
At that point, he and his wife decided it was time to come home to Kentucky.
Hall said he kept a journal following Sept. 11, 2001 that he still can’t read.
“That has been sealed ever since I moved back from Washington. You have to deal with things and move on. It’s a byproduct of what the job brings,” he said. “I haven’t reopened it since, and I know one day, probably in like a time capsule kind of manner I will, but for me it’s still fresh. It’s as fresh as the day I got married. It’s as fresh as the day my children were born.”
He watches the memorials each Sept. 11, but still can’t bring himself to visit the memorial in person in New York City.
One thing that hasn’t changed: he still puts on his uniform, and does the only job he’s ever known. That now means leading the Boone County Sheriff’s Office’s patrol division.
Last year, he faced another near-death experience after he was hit by a car that was fleeing a police pursuit. The car was traveling at 42 miles-per-hour. He was thrown 113 feet. Even still, he puts on the uniform.
“It never even crossed my mind getting out of this profession — not once,” he said. “I guess I’m meant for something greater and better. Maybe this is one of things I’m around for, to share the story.”
Now Hall’s son Jackson is about to turn 21-years-old. Jackson has heard the story many times.
“You could’ve easily grown up without your dad, and likely, probably should have,” Hall said. “Thankfully, the Lord blessed me, and that didn’t happen.”
Hall and his wife now have three children, and continue to live in Hebron. He has since received a request to return to the Secret Service, but declined.
“I’m good. We’re good. I’m happy where I’m at,” he said.
As for Sept. 12, Hall said he agrees it’s something people should strive for every day.
“We’re Americans. We’re all together,” he said. “Where do we go from here? We were all looking to each other to help each other get through such a tragedy.”