We all knew where we were that morning.
I happened to be in Upstate New York when my phone rang. Before I could even say hello I heard, “a plane just hit the World Trade Center.” I didn’t have TV at my little farmhouse in Woodstock, NY so I ran to my neighbor’s house. Then the second plane hit and, in an instant, in my mind, I said, “they got us.”
That started a strange series of events. In my tiny town, there were Army vehicles at the end of my sleepy road keeping all vehicles away from the Ashokan Reservoir fearing that someone may be attempting to contaminate New York City’s water supply. We were essentially quarantined. The image above shows how remote an area I was in.
An hour later my phone rang.
It was an elderly woman who I did not know asking if I was OK. This was not a day for disputes; it was a day for compassion. So I just assured her that I was in fact OK. I stayed on the phone with her a bit and learned that she was actually trying to check in on Michael Lomanaco who was Chef/Director for Windows on The World, the restaurant located atop the North Tower of the World Trade Center. So I guess he also had a home in Woodstock, NY. Michael Lomonaco wasn’t in the North Tower at the time, but everyone present in the restaurant when American Airlines Flight 11 hit either perished from the plane’s impact, smoke inhalation, or died in the when the tower collapsed 102 minutes later.
My brother was a fireman in a town 19 miles outside of New York and he wanted to help. It took almost a week for his ladder company to get clearance to go. When he arrived, he said people were lined up as they marched to the sight cheering them as if they won the World Series. He spent a day at the site, but got an unspoken message from the New York City crew that they “wanted to dig out their own.” He understood and in the most uncomfortable of ways, so did I.
And about two weeks later, I learned that I lost a little league buddy and a high school friend on that day.
I am not one to give big props to celebs, but George Clooney’s acceptance speech at the Emmy’s rang true to me. And that was “to help find a way to keep the spotlight burning on these heart-breaking situations that continue to be heartbreaking long after the cameras go away.” To me, it was a fresh turn of phrase on, “We will never forget.”
Where were you on 9/11?
And what are you doing to keep the spotlight burning? ~Mike
Mike LaMonica's Blog 
I live maybe 40 miles from NYC- and what I remember is sitting in Science class freshman year hs and hearing that we had to stay in that class room until we were told to. The teacher tried to find out what happened. We had several announcements and our teacher telling us that children who has parents who work in the World Trade Center/ Twin Towers to go down to the office immediatly. The teacher found out information and explained to us what had happened. Nothing seamed real, it didn’t seam right. We couldn’t imagine what had happened even when he told us. I want to say we tried to look on tv in the class room or maybe we wanted to but it didn’t work. It wasn’t until my parents picked me up and I was able to see the tv I knew what had happened. And even then it did not make sense or seam real. When leaving school I just remember the stillness in the air. The silence in the air. The sadness in the air.
I’ve watched a million videos and seen just as many photos of the attacks, the death, the tributes, the smoke- and it still seams so UNREAL. I knew it had happened, but seeing it in person is what really stabbed me in the heart. Driving into the city and seeing that large hole missing, was a stab to the heart. To humanity. And visiting the grounds during clean up was like no other experience ever. The sadness that was hovering over that almost beautiful and peaceful heap of metal. It brought chills and tears, sadness and really no hope. I can never imagine the feeling that day. Pictures do say a thousand words- the look in the people eyes. We all felt a part of it, but being there there is no words or thoughts to imagine. Wanting to help came over me, but being so young there wasn’t much I could do.
When I visited the towers post 9/11- it was silent but at the same time so loud. You could hear noises of them trying to “clean up” the debris, the machines, the normal NYC noise. But at the same time, TIME stood still. It was eerily quiet wth mutters of voices. And that feeling of sadness took over.
I know I will never forget 9/11 and will always remember the togetherness America once was. The smiles of strangers and the comfort in our own. So many innocent lives were lost, but their legacy lives on. Their love lives on. We were United as One and need to still be united as one. Every year I search tributes and pictures and videos because I don’t want to forget the stories of Hero’s, the stories of America, the stories of people’s lives and how it affected them. It reminds me we are human and this is real life. This is not a movie, it is not a book or story, but it is something I lived through and so many others lived and even sacrificed their lives and didn’t make it through. We have to be thankful that we are still here so we can make a difference in this world and country.
Sorry if this went too long but I just wanted to tell my story and then I just got carried away. I love America and I can say I will never forget 9/11- it is always in my heart❤️
That day changed the whole world. We must never forget. Move on, yes. but forget, Never! Here is my account: http://snippettsfrommymind.blogspot.com/2011/09/where-were-you-when-towers-fell.html?m=1
I was on a plane flying from West Palm to New York. I commuted each week from West Palm to my job in NYC. My office was on the 102nd floor of the North Tower. I was flying up that week on Tuesday, instead of Monday as I would normally fly up, and was skipping the mandatory 8:15 AM Tuesday morning meeting.
Wow, lots of comments on the post! An emotional hot spot, for sure. September 11th is my birthday. And words cannot express the conflict I feel every year. At the time, I was regional director of PR for Noble House Hotels and Resorts. I was officed at Grove Isle, in what used to be the marina building. I drove to work, started getting happy birthday phone calls and by 9:30, those turned into “did you see what happened?” calls. Never really felt the same since. ~Rebecca
Wow Rebecca. I will make sure to wish you a happy birthday. I hope some way you can shift your thinking on this…maybe celebrate another day or something. But I bet you thought about all this so I’ll just shut up. And now comes the 10th anniversary. I’ll be posting my 10th anniversary tribute next Tuesday…
Idea! Maybe if it robbed you of your birthday, you will be forever young!
~Mike
I was in Baghdad Iraq on September 11, 2001. I was invited by the former Iraqi Government to Iraq in August 2001 and arrived in Baghdad on Sept. 9, 2001 and was trapped in Baghdad until Sept. 19, 2001
Hi Larry-
Thanks for sharing. I can’t believe where you were but one thing’s for sure. We all knew where we were on that day. My best to you.
~Mike
I still can’t believe what happened nearly ten years ago.
~Mike
BIO 110 Purdue University just ending when it happened. Got back to my dorm room and my roommate was watching it on TV. The first plane had just hit and no one knew what was going on. Saw the second plane hit and it was obvious what was going on. I will always remember that. Campus went through weeks of random class cancellations due to bomb threats and anthrax scares. My roommate and I used to watch Letterman every night. His monologue when he came back on the air really got to me. I look it up on YouTube from time to time.
I was sitting in my office with the TV on just getting the day started when I saw the news report of the first plane hitting the tower. I stopped my work and just watched as the whole world changed that morning. I remember driving home at lunch just looking at the Ms Delta cotton fields and thinking , somehow even they were not the same. What a sad day in this world. I had met you while you were on a trip with John T Edge of Food and Wine traveling around the Ms Delta. We were cooking some wild hog on a Sunday afternoon at Hopson and ya’ll stayed around to check it out. I could not stop thinking about you there in the tower. I worried for several weeks about you. Then I saw you talking about the DOVE on TV one morning. I was so happy to know you were OK and so sad that you had to deal with such a tragic event. I hope that someday you can return to the Delta and we can cook up some more Southern stuff for you.
I really like your post. I was in gr. 1 when it happened(I’m in Grade 10 now). I was walking home from school for lunch with my mom when our friend told us about the planes hitting the Twin Towers. My mother rushed me home and turned on the television. That’s all I remember. I made a video some time back about 9/11 that I think would be of interest to you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChPpPYkenVk
Hi Mike
Here’s my link toward my article:
http://cequetulis.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/ou-etiez-vous-le-11-septembre/
But it’s in French… Good luck to anyone who feels like deciphering tonight!
Thank you for your link and for sharing. Even if it was in French. My best to you.
~Mike
Hi everyone-
I have started responding to your touching stories and vivid memories. If it takes me until 9/11, 2011, I will. Thank you for bearing with me. I am closely reading through more than 500 of your memories. It takes time.
All your comments are important. So I want to give them careful consideration before I respond. And sometimes, after reading your memories, I just need a break. I know you understand.
Thank you all for sharing.
~Mike
If “all your comments are important”, why are some of them not published on your blog? Are only the prescreened experiences of a select number of individuals worthy of publication? If so, why?
I am publishing all responses that recount personal experiences of this day, including your own which I found to be fascinating.
I am not publishing comments that advocate burnings of religious texts or things of that nature. That is not what this is about. If anyone wants to advance those types of agendas, I suggest they start their own blog as did I.
I hope you can respect that. Thank you for your service to this country.
It was my freshmen year of high school in Oklahoma. I remember hanging outside before school that day and overhearing conversations about it. They didn’t cancel our classes, but a lot of parents took their kids home. We didn’t know what to expect. We had the TVs on in every class room. I don’t think I realized the severity of it until later in the day. I remember watching the news in my last class of the day and watching a body fall down the side of one of the towers. That’s when the hit me.
I still get chills thinking about it and reading everyone’s comments here.
Dear Jessica-
Thank you for sharing. I still get the chills as well. My best to you.
~Mike
thanks for the information.. i will be visiting your blog
Great and thanks.
I posted some thing before about 26 minutes amateur video for the WTC attacks and when I uploaded it on youtube find some thing amazing, beside the pain and bad memories there is a great hope for dream of uncle sam, I am Egyptian but I like American life style and its democracy …god pleased you all
Dear Hesham-
I am sorry to reply so slowly. It is taking me a lot of time to go through the comments, but is well worth it. Thank you for taking your time to comment here.
~Mike
I was in a ‘Learning to Create Publicaitons’ class with co-workers in a hotel in Tampa, FL. At our 10 am break, our teacher came in and announced that someone had flown two planes into the WTC. He said that he was required to finish teaching the class, but that if anyone needed to leave, he understood. One woman said her niece worked at the WTC and left in tears.
It seemed so unreal, because we weren’t seeing it. Somehow we just wanted to stay in the class and not face reality. But one of my co-workers got calls from her husband during breaks… yes, it had happened, people were jumping from buildings, etc. As we had breaks, the teacher would update us on what had happened. Some slipped down the hall to try to catch a TV.
Ironically, one of the images the teacher showed was an advertisement with a man in a business suit, falling through the air from a high rise (actually two) and the caption, ‘Is your career in a free-fall?’ The teacher was oblivious to what we were seeing. I got sick to my stomach.
When we went down to the hotel lobby for lunch, everyone was glued to the TV and the towers were collapsing (or re-runs of that). Then we finally said, “this is really happening.”
Driving home, I remember that the traffic was unusually light (govt buildings had been evacuated) and looking at the tall buildings and wondering if one of them could be next.
When I got home, I learned my teen-agers had been watching it live all day at school, and my husband had watched it from home. The two other co-workers and I often contact each other on 9/11 and remember that we were together that awful day.
My cousin’s husband normally works in one of the other smaller towers. They were just returning from taking their daughter to college and he was not at work that day. He surely would have perished, being the last out to make sure his co-workers were safely evacuated.
Thanks, Mike, for allowing all of us to share in your post. God bless you. God bless America.
Thank you for sharing with me and everyone here. From your co-worker’s husband, “yes, it happened.” That is something most of us could almost ask today. Amazing. Keep the spotlight burning.
~Mike
I remember very well that day. It was midday in my country Albania (GMT+1) . I saw it on CNN during the midday break and I couldnt believe it. I went to check in the internet and remember that websites were down (CNN, EURONEWS etc) becuase they have reached the limit of the visitors. Than I said “my god it is true”.
I hope that it will never happen again.
Dear Arben-
You are proof that the entire world changed that day. I’m not that great at geography, but something is telling me Albania is a long way from New York and this event. Thank you for bringing it so close. My best to you.
~Mike
I was in the Presidential Emergency Operating Center with Vice President Cheney as American Airlines flight 77 approached the Pentagon. I am the “young man” who was tracking flight 77’s incoming distance that former Sec. of Transportation Norman Minetta referred to in his 9-11 Commission testimony in 2003. Sec. Minetta’s testimony was curiously omitted from the official 9-11 Commission Report.
According to Secretary Minetta:
“There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, ‘The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out.’ And when it got down to, ‘The plane is 10 miles out,’ the young man also said to the vice president, ‘Do the orders still stand?’ And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, ‘Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?’ Well, at the time I didn’t know what all that meant.”
source: http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing2/9-11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-23.htm
I have taken a security oath so I cannot say anything more about that day. Since I did not reveal my name, I should be OK with my superiors for posting this. Thanks for reading and God Bless 🙂
God bless… you did your best. No one wanted to believe what was happening that day.
Dear Sir,
I saw on CNN only once the “road” of that fight that you were in charge to watch. On the last moments, there was a “rally”… That particular flight was only once presented on CNN, but the rest, the other flights’ “road”, were always on screens.
From that moment I understand that the flight was shut down by …. It was a terrible moment, but in a war you must act and/or react: you or the enemy. I just consider that it was a remarkable and quick reaction to an unimaginable attack. The attack socked a whole world,not only U.S. Congrats for your actions, reactions and your courage and sorry for the people that you lost there.
I will never forget those moments in spite of being in another country. It was a panic of see two important building being attack, the planes that were consciously targeted to the buildings – I could see on the records that the speed was increased in a turn, when, in theory, you are not allowed to accelerate…- and the buildings falling down. Shortly, yes, they got you in that day.
I just hate the war and the use of force, but, you know, the life brings us in difficult moments and we have to act and react.
The life and freedom must be protected and if it is necessary use the all means to stop the enemies if they want to stop or to block the freedom and the life!
I was in nyc working.
I am from Australia, and I will never ever forget this day, one for the tragic events in your country and secondly because it was the night (in our country) after I fell off a roof at work and broke my back. I was thinking to myself in hospital watching the story unfold live, in a lot of pain, that a lot of people have a lot more to worry about than me. It was like a natural pain reliever…
My thoughts are still with you all
Dear Robbo-
I hope you have since recovered from your fall. On that day–from those buildings– no one did. Thank for sharing and be well.
My best to you.
~Mike
I was heading to a photo shoot with a client. We were driving through a lot of beautiful Iowa farm country. It was a postcard kind of day with a rich blue sky and billowing white clouds. Not much traffic on the highway. (Quite a contrast to a bustling New York scene.)
I called the studio to say we were running late. A woman answered. She was crying. I asked if she was OK. She said I am – our country isn’t. We’ve been attacked.
It was so unreal. So unbelievable. We turned on the radio. That’s when I really started to feel it. After the shock, there was fear and grief. Like so many others I felt shaken to the core.
That moment — that news— changed all of us profoundly. And no landscape will ever look the same.
I am a photographer and some of the best and worst pictures I have in my mind.
The irony of that day is that is was the most beautiful day on the upper East coast as well. Ten minutes before, being in New York, I could not believe how beautiful it was. Until the world changed. Thank you for sharing with all of us.
~Mike
Well, I’m from Estonia … My memories about 9/11 are pretty bad. I was in Latvia and I just got home, when my mom asked me to turn the tv on . We we’re shocked, eventhough I was like 7 years old, the accident seemed so frightning to me. I was afraid that the whole world will be in war. Like it was World War III or something.
Dear Lizee-
Hi and thank you for sharing with everyone. Pray for peace extra hard. And be well.
~Mike
Thanks for sharing and for writing up this entry. I was in film theory class in college. Someone had knocked on our classroom door and said that a plane had flow into one of the WTC buildings. She could patch the news feed to the monitor in our classroom if we wanted to see live coverage.
The teacher kept lecturing for a couple of minutes while we waited for the news to kick on–my classmates and I watched in silence. The teacher then ended class early. I went straight to the student center where I saw a group of my friends. We had gathered on top of a flight of stairs and watched the news from the multiple screens. I remember people crying.
Hi-
I know why your teacher kept lecturing. It just didn’t set in. And it still doesn’t really. Thank you.
~Mike
Indeed…it didn’t seem real. In fact, perhaps she also kept lecturing to reiterate that it wasn’t real. Couldn’t be real.
I was at work in the administration offices of the local bank in Pittsburgh. I was listening to the radio I had walked away from my desk and when I return several coworkers were standing around my desk listening to the radio.
When I heard what was going on I left the office and went downstairs to the area where the TV’s are usually on the NYStock exchange. I was able to see everything.
My family gets together ever 9/11 and I don’t even think any realizes it. We just sort of gravitate to each other on this day.
That is a great way to remember this day. I do my best to take it as a “personal” day off. My best to you.
~Mike
Great post.
I was on the road to a meeting. When the meeting finally started, no one was interested in the content, but were peeking at a muted tv running in the back of the room.
Thank you. I never set out to make this great though. I just thought everyone knew where they were on that day. It’s unbelievable.
~Mike
I was with my father and a colleague sitting in a Cafe Uno drinking coffee and discussing a meeting we had all just come out of when my wife called me very upset saying that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I remember being irritated because she did tend to be a bit dramatic and her version was just too much to believe. There was no Television so I started downloading news flashes on my mobile and I remember just sitting there in disbelief and shock.
I didn’t see any television footage until I got home but watching the towers fall reminded me of the controlled demolitions I had seen when studying at college and from that moment I knew that this was not just an appaling act of terrorism but the beginning of something far more sinister.
Hi, I am sorry to get back to you and everyone so slowly. I had a death in my family last week and am just getting back into it.
It was and is something far more sinister. I like to think the good guys always finish first. Maybe I’m a little naive like that. Good will prevail thanks to you.
~Mike
I was eating in my home… because i had to go to the school. This day will be always in my brain… wtf, what a pity 😦
I was getting ready to fly to America from Stockholm on the 14th. My mother was hemming a pair of trousers for me when a friend called on the phone and asked me if I was watching the news before she told me that the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane.
I almost laughed at her, thinking she was joking, but she told me to turn on my television and when I did I got the most overwhelming sense of watching a movie, it just couldn’t be real. But, of course, it was. It took a while for the shock to settle, for the truth to actually sink in, and then the second plane hit and it seemed the world was unraveling.
I still can’t think about that footage without tearing up. That we can want to hurt each other so badly, that any human being could plot and scheme to do such a horrible act to people they have never met is so horrible and unfathomable, and still it happens every day.
I didn’t get to fly on the 14th, but on the 20th, and every single day between the 12th and the 19th a relative or friend would call up, worriedly asking me if I was really going to fly to New York? Truly touched by their sentiment, I replied that if I was ever going to fly to New York, now would be the time. The chances of something so unthinkable happening again within a week felt slim to none. Of course my thoughts went out to the people who were hijacked on 9/11 as we coasted towards the city and her lights began to glitter below me. It looked so tranquil, seen from above; so inviting, like a promise. It was very strange to think that such devastation had occurred only the week before.
I went to the top of the Empire State – it being my first visit in New York, how could I not? It was night, the city once more a glittering carpet below, and in the distance two bright, wide beams of white light where the Twin Towers had stood before. It was such a monumental testament to what had been lost and I will never forget the sight of them.
I am doing too little to keep the spotlight burning, but perhaps this post is at least something.
The tragedy that happened brought a whole world together in mourning and outrage. The most tragic element of any tragedy is humanity’s need to move on.
Your account is touching. To see those wide beams of light so shortly after the unthinkable must have been breathtaking. It has united the world in a way.
Just reading your post and being a part of our collective memories is keeping the spotlight burning. Don’t sell yourself short. Thank you for everything.
~Mike
In the UK, collecting my son from school. We were horrified and truly felt for every American on that day. Your pain was ours.
Thank you for sharing Linda. Peace be wherever you are.
~Mike
i was on a plane from sydney to la i think, i was suposed to be going on holiday to america but then they decided that they would have an air lockdown at the time and fighter jets escorted my plane to land in hawaii and get this I WAS SLEEPING WHEN THE FIGHTER JETS CAME i swear that would only happen once in a lifetime and i slept through it
If there was anything to sleep through, this was it. Unfortunately, we all had to wake up sometime. Thank you Tim.
~Mike
I will never forget being in Biology class taking a test. To this point it was the hardest class I had taken and when the announcment was made I barely even comprehended what it all ment.
It still is beyond comprehension for me and for the world. I wish you well and thank you for sharing.
~Mike
I was in class, I was in grade 6 then. Our teacher came into the room and turned the TV on without explaining anything to us. It was scary, none of us knew what was going on.
Dear Kris-
When the singer Marvin Gaye wrote: “”What’s Going On,” he couldn’t have even imagined this? Be well.
~Mike
thanks for share
I am European too, I live in Vienna/Austria, and I remember the day as if it was yesterday. I was highschool senior, it was the 2nd week since the school started again. It was a very weird time as my parents split up and I have moved with my mom and my brother to a new apartment.
I came home and ate my lunch in front of the TV, in the middle of all packing cases and pure moving chaos. The TV in the living room was old, and was not working properly. When I flipped through the channels I just heard the words “airplane” “world trade center” and in the first moment I thought it was an accident. I switched to the second Austrian national channel, where I had no pictures on this telly, I could only hear the voices of the moderators. I realized that the normal TV program had been broken up, and I thought, this is quite unusual as it was just supposed to be an accident. Suddenly it came to my mind, I dashed into the sleeping room, where the tv was working properly and in the second I turned on CNN I saw the second plane hitting the WTC. In the first moment I thought how perverse it was, I was watching in my cozy and safe home an act of terror live on TV, I was watching how hundreds of people were killed. I was staring at the screen and could not move away from where I was sitting and I could not believe it. Friends called: “Have you seen this?” “Do you watch this?” “Do you believe this?”
It was horrible, even more horrible than a heavy earthquake I experienced a few years ago. We were all seriously worried as we did not know, how the US would react on this. Next day at school it was like someone died. There was such a tension in the air. Everywhere. Nobody knew how things will go on. It felt like the end of the world. Kind of.
Dear Mia-
I feel like the world lost a part of itself that September morning. It is horrible, but it’s people like you and comments like yours that keep the spotlight burning.
Thank you.
~Mike
9/11 will forever be etched in my mind. It was my youngest daughter’s birthday and we were trying to have a birthday party for her. All the planning and preparation had gone forth. So when the news broke that morning, it was like a nightmare; it felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. It was truly one of the sadest days of my life. I remember how we struggled through the birthday celebration, trying to make the best of it for her sake.
Dear Shirley-
I wish that you can somehow mark this day with hope for your youngest daughter even though, on that day, hope was nowhere to be found. Please find it for you and for all of us. Thank you.
~Mike
I was at a friend’s apartment. We were glued to the TV though the whole ordeal. It was a sad sad moment. I remember realizing then how short life is. 😦
Dear Chris-
I hope you enjoy every minute in happiness and good health.
~Mike
I’m European and although I live in Australia now, I was in Portugal at the time. It was the afternoon, and I had just taken my son to vaccines. What strikes me the most is that I had decided I wanted to separate from my then husband the day before, and I was going to pack when I turned on the TV and saw the towers in smoke. I did not pack… any petty feelings of discontent seemed very small compared to what was happening that day. I sat and watched the news all day. Next day I could’t cast out of my mind that song by REM: “It’s the end of the world as we know it”. Many years later I did separate and I met and fell in love with an Irishman, who told me exactly what it was like for the English speaking world to have 9/11 happening. I cry more now than I did that day. The cultural differences did not allow me to grasp the horror, the loss… I know better now, and I cannot watch a documentary on 9/11 without crying. I am not American, but I feel the pain as if I was.
Dear Bruna-
On that day, I hope we all became one. No matter what country we are from.
~Mike
Reading everyone’s stories is amazing, and it also reminds me of the Earthquake in Haiti this year, I lived in Haiti when it happened, January 12th, 2010. I don’t have many stories about the 9/11, as I was pretty young (and still am) and I live in Canada. all I remember is watching the news with my dad and seeing the two buildings up in smoke. But reading all of these stories really reminds me of my Haiti earthquake stories. I saw so much, more than any high school student expects to see in her lifetime, and there was just so much desperation and poverty, and lots of tears on my part. I had lived in Haiti for about 6 months before the quake, so I did have many friends and close ones that lost their lives, or their family and their homes. But, every year I do take some time to think and pray about what happened on September 11th, and I have always wished to hear other peoples stories, so that I can know what happened on that day. I also hope that from this, people do realize that even after the cameras are gone, the disaster isn’t fixed yet. people still suffer for years after things like this happen, especially in Haiti, where they had nothing to begin with. I really hope that people can learn lots from these experiences. Thank you all for sharing with us!
Madison.
Dear Madison-
You sound so wise for being so young. We all pray for the people of Haiti, both those living and those who did not make it. We will never recover form either of these events, but we can keep these days close to our hearts and thnk our best thoughts. One thing’s for sure: we have learned from these experiences. Thank you.
~Mike
Again, thank you all for your comments. I feel that this has shifted from being my post and has now become OUR post. All of your comments have become larger and better than the post itself.
So many of you have told incredible and personal stories. I will read all your comments over and over again and be responding as soon as I can.
Today, I wrote a follow-up. When you have a sec, to give it a look.
https://mikelamonica.wordpress.com/2010/09/12/its-912-now-what/
Thank you for keeping the spotlight burning!
~Mike
I was in the air when it happened, somewhere around / north of DC I guess, as the pilot had just announced we were beginning our initial descent to LaGuardia.
I lived in Florida then (as I do now), but I was on my way to my job in New York to which I commuted each week.
My office was on the 102nd floor of the North Tower.
For virtually no reason at all, I flew up Tuesday morning that week instead of Monday morning as I usually did, and skipped our Tuesday morning 8:15 AM mandatory staff meeting.
Needless to say, I was very lucky that day.
Not so, for my co-workers and friends that actually got up that morning and made it to the meeting.
There’s a lot more to the story, as you can imagine, that is more appropriate over a beer / in person. One day I will write in more detail about my experiences.
*hug* I’m so sorry.
WOW! I appreciated reading through everyone’s stories. This was a moving post that definitely stirred up a lot of emotion and memories from people from 9 years ago.
Hi Sunny-
Yes wow would be the word and I thank you.
~Mike
I was very little — in kindergarten. I barely remember it, however I do remember some details…I remember how the windows looked out to the World Trade Center, and how the sandbox was right in front of it. How I was actually playing in the sandbox, then looked up to see the first plane hit the building. How everyone gathered around 58 RD when they found out a girl in her 20s died. How confused and freaked out I was. Needless to say, my teachers were freaked out too, and they closed all the windows and moved us along. I give them major props for keeping their composure all day so we didn’t flip out.
But I was very scared, especially when I saw my mom scared. Everything after that was really just a blur; the significant part of that day was actually seeing the plane hit the tower. It was quite a sight for a five year old. 2001 was just a horrible, horrible year for me.
Again, I don’t remember much. But I still feel just as bad every 9/11 as anyone else does. I wish I could give some sentimental quote, but I’m no good at those types of things. Well, loved the post! Sorry about your friends.
-The Critic Monster
http://criticmonster.wordpress.com/
Sentimental quotes are just really poignant words strung together. To me every thought, feeling and memory I have read is poignant.
~Mike
Mike, congrats on being Freshly Pressed and thanks for your comments on my marriage blog. Of course I remember 9/11. I had a newborn baby boy with whom I was up much of the night. I had gone back to sleep in the morning, and my husband woke me up to tell me the news. We both sat on the couching holding this child wondering what world we were bringing him into.
It was a devastating time. But as time went on, and as time goes on, I feel more strongly than ever that each of us must be part of the solution. We need to bring our hope and the source of our hope. And we need to use our unique gifts to help solve global, national or local problems. Bringing positive, creative new people into the world only adds to my hope.
Peace to you and to all those still suffering from the effects of 9/11.
Lori
Hi Lori-
I hope all is well with my new friend. I am still going through the comments and again wanted to thank you for supporting me. You have a unique gift. Please keep in touch and I’d love to hear from you soon.
My best to you and your family.
~Mike
I was a sophomore in HS in science class when we flipped the television on and watched the planes crash. I will never forget that day. When I got home from school that day it was a blue sky and both of my parents were home sitting on the couch watching the news. silence.
This was a good idea to remind people to remember where they were on 9/11 and not to forget.
Thank you. It was not really my idea. I was just fortunate to create a gathering point for everyone who read and responded. Like you. Thank you so much for sharing in this important remembrance.
~Mike
I remember where I was on 9/11. I remember being confused (I was without cable at the time) as I walked into a college history class. I saw images on an old t.v. screen and assumed we would be watching a boring video in my American history class. Much to my surprise, I was watching the present unfold.
My husband and I had moved out of Brooklyn on September 10, 2001 and September 11th was my first day commuting into my Wall St area job from the Hudson Valley. We took the train to Hoboken and I transferred to the path train and got off at the World Trade Center. I was looking for a specific magazine and stopped at a newsstand before I walked out of the building. I had crossed Church Street and was looking in the windows at Century21 thinking how much I was going to enjoy my new commuting route. Then I heard the loudest plane I had ever heard. It was so loud I had to put my fingers in my ears. Then moments later I heard and felt the impact of what I now know was the first plane hitting the building. I thought it was a bomb and remember thinking, “this is where I die” as I ran down the street and across Broadway. The ground undulated underfoot and I remember cabbies standing next to their stopped cars pointing upwards. The plane hit on the opposite side from where I was so when I looked up I couldn’t see it. I thought that some kind of media stunt had gone horribly wrong since there were papers flying everywhere. I know realize that they were papers from people’s desks and filing cabinets up in the tower. I rushed towards my office which was across town from the WTC. I was very upset and crying and trying to reach my husband on my cell phone. I stranger saw me and told me not to worry that everything was going to be alright. He hugged me and when we said goodbye he was walking towards the towers. When I got to my office everyone was freaking out. There was a window in the corner of our floor where you could see the towers and everyone was crowded around it and looking when the 2nd plane hit. I had NPR on the radio and when I heard that there was an unaccounted for plane and that the pentagon had been hit I knew that I needed to get out of there. My husband and I planned on me getting up to times square where he was working and then we’d figure out our escape plan from there. The only way to get there was to walk so I started out trying to stay as far west as possible. I had just started and was right by the South Street Seaport when the first building came down. I remember people screaming and running in all directions. I could see the top of the tower collapsing out of view. I decided after that to not look back anymore. When the 2nd tower fell and I was already on Broadway in the Soho area, I didn’t even turn around. People all around me were pointing and staring openmouthed downtown but I kept walking up. I stopped briefly at my friend’s apartment on 19th street for a little moral support. I wasn’t able to reach my husband on my phone anymore – we didn’t have texting then – so I just sent him mental messages and counted the blocks as I walked and walked and walked. All around me New York was being New York, amazing and beautiful and so sad and broken. We didn’t even know how sad yet. The saddest of all were the hundreds of flyers and posters people made looking for their loved ones. I guess it’s when we thought that there’d still be people trapped, there’d be bodies to identify and not just fragments. I finally made it to Times Square. I found my husband waiting outside of his building at One Time Square because there had been a bomb threat or something. I was so happy to see him. We tried to get on a NJ ferry up on the west side but were told that it was closed. The only way out was to go back downtown and catch the ferry there. He and I walked all the way back downtown together. As we got closer we started to see people utterly covered in white ash. I remember we saw a business man carrying his briefcase. He was white from head to toe and looked like the statue of the business man on a park bench somewhere downtown except that he was moving. We finally made it back to South Street Seaport where we’d catch the ferry. The sidewalks were covered in white ash and there were hundreds of scattering footprints. People must have panicked in the dust cloud coming towards them and ran in all directions to try to escape. Our ferry ride was surreal. We rode past the end of Manhattan where there towers had been replaced by towers of black smoke reaching up into the blue sky. It really was the most beautiful day. The ferry let us off in Jersey City (I think) and we had to walk all the way to Hoboken to get a train to come back to our temporary home. It was the longest day of my life. I am so thankful that I am still alive and that I didn’t have to suffer more than I did. I am definitely a different person now and I miss that girl that I used to be sometimes. It makes me very mad when I see people trying to claim ownership of this tragedy for their own needs. People of all religions and races were in those towers that day and they all perished equally. Intolerance and hatred drove the men who planned this and carried it out. We can’t answer this with more intolerance and hatred. I can’t stand it when I hear how everyone is upset that someone wants to build a Muslim Community Center on “hallowed ground”. Hallowed ground, really?? What about the peep show and the strip club that are also in the same radius of the WTC. Aren’t they on hallowed ground as well? Grrrr. Don’t get me started.
Thank you for letting me share. I will never forget.
What an intense post! Thanks so much for sharing.. felt like I was right there with you.
May God continue to bless and your family!
I was working a temp job at an opthalmologist office where the doctor took leave to serve his national guard duties in Texas. That morning a patient called and asked if we had seen the news. Another secretary tuned into a radio station and we listened as the second plane hit the towers. I lived in Port Huron, Michigan and I will never forget the day. Beautiful sunshine, patchy white clouds dotting the sky. It felt like a good day, and I was stunned that such a beautifuly day would be so deceiving. We closed the office early and I could not rush home fast enough to watch the news being as I could not believe my ears. I was horror struck and ended up spending the evening with my parents. That night I said a little prayer of thanks for those on the third plane that were able to call their family with words of love in their last moments, and a prayer for those left behind while their loved ones were either missing or lost.
Thank you for reminding us to remember and never forget!
It is a day I will never forget. My wife was taking care of an elderly woman at an exclusive home for the elderly. My Dad and I were at home watching this atrocity on television.
Fear was all that I can remember; fear for my wife, Dad and myself. I was afraid this was the beginning of the end for this country, perhaps the world. I still do.
I was afraid that my wife and I would be separated because of other bombings that would follow. I’m ashamed to say that those in the planes and buildings were last on my priorities. It was a horrible time for us all.
Now, every time I see videos or movies with those two buildings standing where they no longer stand, it gives me an uneasy, sick feeling I can’t describe, not even now.
Your article was great! Thank you.
Bill
I live in Saint Louis, MO. I was three weeks into maternity leave with my daughter and was in a deep sleep. It was nine oclock when I recieved a phone call from my mother, who was at work. The first words, loud and clear were “We’re getting bombed! We’re at war, here in America. It’s happening here! Turn on your TV!” I jumped out of bed, ran around the house turning on all the tv’s and questioned my mother in disbelief. I remember thinking of bombs raining down on us and how it just couldn’t possibly be. I screamed for my husband to get up, get up, get up! The first image on the screen was a live shot of the Pentagon. I panicked, still in disbelief and sat on my sofa, eyes glued to those images, repeating everything over and over…my eyes burning with the devastation…still in disbelief. I remember never leaving the television for two days straight. To this day, the images are there, with all the songs about unity that brought us together. At that very moment, America was one person, one heart, one soul. We shared the pain and we stood up for each other. As with the delay and disbelief in the attacks, I am in disbelief that it has already been nine years. I did not know any of the parties involved with the towers, planes, or nearby surroundings, but 9-11 has affected me for the rest of my life. It has affected all of us. I can’t imagine the emotional death it fell upon those who did lose someone. It brought me closer to my family, proving how short of a life we have and how we need to share every moment with our loved ones. No grudge, no hate, no negativity. It has taught me a lot. It has also given me the panic of being helpless in a situation and how if America, Earth, etc ever has a bigger devastating blow…how can we prepare? I shine the spotlight on everyone around me. I forgive. I smile. I carry with me the love for everything. I give blood when I can. I say thank you. I hold doors open. I do what I can to let everyone know that I care. That they are important. It’s the only thing I can do to contribute to society. I keep 9-11 in my heart and I treat those around me the way I did THAT day.
It wasn’t quite 9am yet, just got out of trains, I was walking to work on Madison Avenue (to 40th St). I looked up in the sky, saw a commercial plane flying particularly low overhead (strange, I thought). I got to my desk, started my computer. People heard that a plane crashed into the tower. I thought what a terrible accident. Later on, a second plane crashed into the second tower. What are the chances of it happening. Never did terrorist attack came to mind. I search the web for news. Then it hit me. My sister worked in the Towers. Fear and panic overcame me. I called her cell. No signal. Nothing. I started crying. My sister later called her husband from a payphone. She made it out of the South Tower (she didn’t listen to the announcements for people to stay put… she went down those stairs fast). A bit of relief she was safe (and she was pregnant with her 3rd child and didn’t know it). My friend (now husband) was down at the Chamber St subway station, but for some reason he didn’t ascend up to street level. That probably saved his life from the pending collapse and debris.
At the same time I was grateful my family was alright, but the thoughts of the many who didn’t make it out… it was too much to bear. Couldn’t believe it could happen?!
Me and my Mom were driving to a horse show and we heard the news over the radio. My Mom totally freaked out, turned around after hours of driving and we were almost there, and we immediately came back home. I remember sitting on my bed, watching everything, and just crying. When we were driving and heard it on the radio we thought it wasn’t real, and turned on the T.V. to find out it was.
I was living in California at that time. I dropped my son off at school. Heard the phone ring. My friend was shouting on the phone to switch on the TV. Could not believe my eyes. It was so depressing. Things changed so much after that day for my family. Two of my closest friends lost colleagues & another lost her nephew.
It somehow never became the same again. There were beatings in my son’s school – a couple of Indian kids got beaten up as they were brown skinned. We left America that December as I found it hard to cope with all the changes.
years after 9/11
12
Sep
2010
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by GDC in Uncategorized [Edit]
its been so many years and still the mention of 9/11 makes one conjour up the horrible picture in your mind of a television screen…there was a building on fire and a reporter telling you of the event…it seemed like a normal report and yet somehow one was drawn to the screen as if one knew this was just a foretaste of the horror to follow…normally you would listen to the item and carry on getting ready for the day…and yet ..
there was almost an instinctive sense of being human that made one sit and watch the burning building…if you were sitting at home alone, eating your breakfast before work or having a cup of tea or coffee before the tackling your day…i think all the strength and power would have failed you then.. the silent screams that should have come from your lips were inhaled in the most agonising and mouth opening gasp of OH SWEET JESUS…or OH MY GOD…or J”””” F”””””” HELL..or WHAT THE F”””…because you could see people at the windows and on the roof and listen to the narration feeling utterly helpless..
no matter where you were or how old..that television screen showed you just how precious life is to some and how insignificant it can be to others…the unexpected and sudden loss… pain and hurt to so many could happen in less than an hour…and yet the suffering lingers years later…how cruel the taking of a life can be…or more so why are some people allowed to be so bad to inflict monstrous pain onto their fellow men..
why do we feel so close to the agony of those who suffered in 9/11 one might ask..for years there have been worse or similar disasters,..in many parts of the world…and yet they are swept aside as new and more exciting images and reporting on the newest tragedy…yes they do sell papers and magazines…but why does 9/11 have such an impact on all of us…to this day?
perhaps it is one of the only tragedies that has happened in real time..in our homes..and in front of us…at the same time…no one saw it first..this was it..a real live show and there was nothing we could do about it but watch…the whole world was privy to the agony and sheer callousness of the pain caused in those minutes and then hours and yet years to come…simply put it was just utterly UNBELIEVABLE…
with the help of an instrument meant to allow us to relax and enter into a fantasy world of make believe horrors…we were faced with real live horror and there was nothing anyone could do about it…you would have been too shocked to change channels ..horror in movies is fine to deal with…this was different…there were real people crying and screaming on your screen..
if you were alone…you would have called someone to see if it was real or somehow your television screen had gone mad..or if you were in company…no one would have uttered a word..instead stood or sat huddled together with faces frozen just staring at the television screen…
this cannot be happening…it should not be happening…those poor people..no one dared to move in case they miss something…it was if you knew there was more to come…and yes the horror escalated…
only when the second plane came into focus did the reality hit every single person sitting in front of their screen..just writing it now makes my head spin and my eyes water…i can recall every minute of where i was at the time..i was sitting on the couch in Slough UK…my relationship falling to pieces around my not so dainty ankles at the time..my now ex was walking about and he too stood still to watch…and then the reporters voice seemed to go up an octave when a plane came into focus on the screen..
we watched..it seemed like in slow motion in my mind..although the plane was going at great speed when it hit the building and burst into a ball of flames.. there would there have been an explosive outcry of sheer horror…shock and yet again THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING…
when i was in 1st grade i was in school and my teacher turned on the tv cause something happened so she turned on the news and everybody that the plane crashed into the tower building and i was really shocked and i couldn’t believe it and it impacted me really hard and that all those people died in that building and it was really shocking to me.
I was teaching 8th Grade United States History at a middle school in western Wyoming. I had the complete attention of everyone of my students that day. They wanted to know why this had happened, and we spent the rest of the school year trying to find out. Some of them have since been to Iraq and Afghanistan serving in the military.
I was in high school in Australia at the time. I remember it happened around the time between 1 and 2nd period of classes and I was walking up some stairs and somebody told me their mum called their mobile phone (they were rich to have a phone back then at age 13 or so) and told her about it because she had been in New York a few days prior on holidays. It’s crazy how you remember exactly what you were doing when these things happen.
I remember exactly where I was on September 11, 2001. DW and I had only been married a few months. He was at work, and I was in the middle of a Jazzercise class when one of the women started shrieking. She had just received a phone call from a family member telling her that planes had crashed into the World Trade Center. At first we were in disbelief that it could be a terrorist attack, but class was cut short, we all gathered up our children and headed home. Every news station continued broadcasting the devastating, and almost debilitating news the whole way home. DW got home almost at the same time. There was nothing to say, as we spent most of the day watching the continued news coverage in silence, holding each other as close as possible.
I don’t remember… it’s been soo long! But I live in Canada so I only saw it on tv and when I visited in 2005.
Now a year later (+ one day as of this post) it’s a great question. Where was I? I’m a little hesitant to respond, because I’ve always thought of it as ”
Where were WE”
I’ve been a pilot and soldier for almost all of my adult life. During 2001 I had just been hired at my hometown airline (Midwest Express in Milwaukee), and was scheduled to fly to New York on the morning of the 11th for some simulator training. Ironically it is also my birthday.
While packing for the trip, and head to the airport, I had the morning talk shows on. The usually gab fest on a sunny fall morning, interrupted by CNN around 930am central time. Sitting on the end of my bed, a few feet from the screen, everything became very very quiet, except for the news anchors questions and disbelief. Despite all the conjecture about the damage to towers, deep down I think I knew it was going to get worse.
The silence around me was interrupted by the phone ringing. For the next hour or so, all that knew me as an airline pilot and soldier started to call to find out if I was okay, or was I already in New York. That got me thinking about all of my fellow pilots and soldiers, wondering if they were okay. As I drilled down the list, everyone was accounted for. We had a crew from the unit stuck in Atlanta, and one of my best friends had just departed La Guardia that morning and was en-route back home.
As the day unfolded, and the scope of the attack came into focus, all I could do was wonder, knowing only it had all changed. My flying for a living, my military commitment, this country’s future, etc.
The last thing I will always remember that day is walking along the Lake Michigan lakefront, and noticing the continued silence. Our apartment building is prominent enough that the airliners landing in Milwaukee would travel right by on their way to landing to Rwy 19; but not that day, nor many to follow afterward. It’s the silence I’ll always remember.
I was stationed at Camp Lejeune in NC on that day. I remember sitting in my office when a fellow Marine go the call that a plane flew into one of the twin towers. We went into the Office of the Day room and turned on the tv to see what was going on. A few seconds later we saw the second plane hit the second tower. We knew then that we were under attack.
I contacted my commanding officer and we continue to watch the news throughout the day. When it was time for me to go home at the end of the day, my wife came to put up and my captain asked me where I was going, I told him home for the day. He said Staff Sergeant not today, you are the Guard Chief and we need to stand up a guard detail.
I spent the few hours with my captain and others working up a guard detail of 20 Marines working four hours shift. I did not go home for two days. 9/11/2001 changed my life because we knew from that day forth that our boarders will alway be subject to attacks from those who hate the American way of life. I am proud to say on that day, I was ready to defend my country.
On Sept., 1st ten (10) days prior, my wifes’ dad died of a sudden heart attack. He was strong, tough, but very likeable, nice guy. We always felt that a strong presence [God] needed her dad to help guide people toward the light during 9/11. We were in Michigan at the time and received a phone call from our daughter who lived in Ohio. Our daughter alerted us to turn the TV on. “We will never forget” is absolutely true. We will never forget. Take care folks and God Bless.
Thankyou for sharing , all I can do is give you cyber ((hugs)) . I was in my apartment in St Pete FL on the phone chatting with my Mom back home in a small town in Michigan.
I spent a good part of the time, sitting down by the water, reflecting on this horrible tragedy.
It was late afternoon in South Africa and was raining (in Cape Town). I was 17 years old and was at swimming training at a gym that had televisions all over. My coach was usually very strict but everyone was distracted by the news on the tv…there was a great collective gasp from all the gym goers when the 2nd plane hit.
My husband and I were on our way to work in Colorado Springs. We worked a few blocks from each other and were carpooling when we heard the first report on the radio. When I heard the report, I got a mental image of people falling from the sky. When I arrived at my office, someone had already set up a TV in the conference room that was showing the live video. It was horrible and even more horrific was seeing what I had imagined just moments earlier.
I remember the shock I felt as the second plane hit the towers. I tried calling my family in NJ to ask about my sister who was taking classes just two blocks away from the trade center. It took a while to finally get through and I was relieved to learn that she was okay and at home in NJ. I watched in disbelief when the towers fell. I was just a young girl when the towers were constructed and remember standing on the observation deck when they were opened to the public. For as long as I can remember, the trade center was part of the NYC landscape and in less than an hour it was gone.
As the day wore on, I learned that a distance cousin had been trapped on one of the top floors and had died when the towers colasped. When the news of his death reached his part of the family, his grandmother (who had a weak heart) died instantly from the shock. It was terrible and the affects on my family are felt to this day.
When people have ugly things to say about the events surrounding 9/11, it causes me great grief and quiet anger. Its very easy for people to shoot their big mouths off about terrorism and how “we” got what we deserved. All I can say in reply to them is that obviously they were not personally touched by death from the acts of violence against innocent people on 9/11. They lack human compassion for those of us who lost a loved one during that horrible time.
I had been celebrating my 14th Birthday that day and had been to school. I was none the wiser about what had happened until I got home.
I remember my Mum just sat on the floor in our sitting room, the TV on and her crying. I wasn’t sure what was going on until I saw the second plane hit the towers. At that moment my Nan called and asked me why everything was the same on all the TV channels and I remember not being able to fully answer her.
I used to hate the fact it happened on my birthday, but I was young then and now when I think about it, I just realise that if it had happened another day it would of been on someone else’s birthday or wedding or birth.
Mike, thanks for sharing. Here’s my story: http://pattihenderson.wordpress.com/2010/09/11/september-11th-sky/
I was at work and we were allowed to stop to watch the news so we all stopped working.
I realise now that all the past wars were all the same as what happened on this day. Any bombings going on anywhere in the world reminds me of terrorists, whether it’s planes going into buildings or planes bombing from overhead. It’s ALL the same. Everyone involved in killing people are terrorists.
I was in South Korea. Prepping for North Korea to take advantage.
I remember my brother had a flight to the US about a week after 9/11. I almost didn’t want him to board the plane because I was scared another attack might happen. Having been able to watch the news unfold live on CNN while the tragedy was happening was pretty scary and will forever be stuck in our minds.
My heart goes out to the victims, survivors, families and everyone else who had to go through such trauma.
I was in my 5th grade class, my teacher Mrs. Jones said did you see what happened? She turned on the TV and we all watched as every news channel showed the destruction and chaos and loss and sorrow. I didn’t know this one single act would take a toll on my life as a muslim for the rest of my adolescent life. I had never been bullied but after that day was young girl I wore a hijab and occasionally was called bin laden walking home.
They didn’t know I had family in those towers. I didn’t know what to feel, I wanted to reject my own faith to become accepted. Weak as it may sound. My mother told me to stick through it and reinforced Islam taught peace and those extremists thought they had no other choice. That is not an excuse nor will it ever be she told me.
Yesterday was Eid on the anniversary of 9/11. I celebrated it with my family as an american. There are troops over seas that are muslim that fight for this country to have the freedoms every race creed religion enjoy just as the President said. It is us, America is us. It was a matter of innocent people meeting shit happening. Not a matter of a Holy war.
I’m 19 now and can understand the ignorance behind the Qur’an burning. I will not take anything for granted in my life time and will not allow my own children to either. I can only hope every child will be taught peace and seek to understand others as well as themselves.
Always stand by what you believe in. You are very young, yet very wise. I, as a Christian, have your same faith. Faith in God, peace and understanding. We have radicals just as every other religion, that take the words of their Holy Scriptures completely out of context. Fortunately there are still a greater majority that do understand the real meaning or the words in them, and abide by them.
Keep up the good work.. and keep the Faith.
God Bless
Totally an event burned into the memory banks – same with the Reagan assassination attempt – I was only 5, but I remember walking in and telling my mom that the president had been shot – and she didn’t believe me at first….
I was at my parents’ house in CT, pregnant with my first child (though I didn’t know yet). My routine was to flip on CNN every morning, and my dad was getting ready to head into work (he’s an Episcopal priest). I just remember the extremely surreal scene, that early on, of people trying to make sense of a plane smashing into one of the towers. My dad and I were really hoping that it was an accident – and then I yelled as we watched the second plane hit in real time. After that, my only thought was that I hoped it was a terrorist group and not the act of a nation – I really felt like that would mean WWIII right off.
After that, as more news was coming in about the Pentagon, it occurred to me that my younger sister (in college at the time) was possibly at work in her internship at Fort Detrick in Maryland. I was concerned b/c Detrick is a bio-research facility and it’s where they send the “backup” government people in case of national emergency. I know what they surmise about flight 93, but I still think Detrick could have been a possible target. I called her, grateful that she was in her dorm room, and she started in right away about one of her friends, whose dad worked out of the towers, and she couldn’t get through to her mom to find out anything. For some reason, I was able to call through from our switchboards, and the girl’s mom was happy to hear her daughter was fine, and conveyed that her husband had literally checked into his sales job, and walked out of the towers in time to see the first plane hit.
A while later, after the dust was still settling, I found out one of my marine corps platoon mates from OCS had lost her brother, brother’s wife, an uncle, and two cousins. She was really fired up to deploy to Afghanistan, and while I wished I could have given her the message to have an open mind and heart, I knew she needed to do what she had to. It was really something to hear that news from her – she and I had gone to the Holocaust museum a while before, and she was trying at that time to come to grips with her feelings about having family members who’d been Nazis during WWII – she was so upset that it was part of her family’s legacy…she is still in the military, working for Wounded Warrior now.
erebusetnox.wordpress.com
Hi Mike,
What a post and yes we will never forget. I was 14 years old, sitting in an English class when we found out. The teacher didn’t really know what to say besides ‘the twin towers have fallen’. Then, like most people we all received drips and drabs of information. We have close family friends there so they were called and luckily they were ok. On a personal level, although I didn’t know anyone affected, many of my friends did and my heart really went out to everyone. That evening, all we did was, like pretty much everyone around with access to a TV… we sat there gobsmacked. I couldn’t believe people could have it in their hearts to do something like this, to devastate the lives of others and their own family’s.
It is these events, that are so tragic in manner, that has inspired me to try my best and make people aware of a better way of living. A life of love.
May all the victims of 9/11 RIP, may each person in the world remember that life is short. Whether it’s the best of times or the worst of times, it’s the only time we’ve got.
Gives me chills
I had to pay a bill that morning, so I called on the phone to pay it. The company was somewhere out east. When I finally got someone on the phone, after two or three tries, the lady apoligized to me and sounded all frantic. She couldn’t concentrate and told me they were having phone problems because of what had just happened. I asked her, “What do you mean?” She said, “You haven’t heard?! A plane hit one of the twin towers! We’re watching the news and trying to find out what’s going on. It’s all over the T.V.”
After I hung up, I immediately turned on the T.V. and saw all the coverage. I was in shock. Then…I saw the second tower get hit ON T.V.! I knew we must be under attack and I panicked because my children were in grade school at the time. We live in the mid-west in what is known as the “Air Capital of the World,” Wichita, Ks., where all the airplane factories are located. I thought for sure we would be hit because of this.
I tried to call my husband at-the-time, but he was on a construction site in a little town outside of Wichita and his phone was not working. He didn’t know what was going on. (Although, I never forgave him, even years later for not calling me that morning when all was chaotic.)
I wanted to run to the school and get my children, for the same reason someone else mentioned above–if this was going to be the last day of our lives, I wanted us all to be together. Instead, I called the school and spoke with the staff. She said they had been receiving calls all morning from parents and had decided to keep the school open so the children would have something to do and be distracted. I thought maybe this was the best idea, even though I kept fighting going to pick them up anyway. I started to drive to the school to pick them up, decided against it for the fifth time and just drove around for a while with the radio on. I had been watching it all morning on the T.V. and couldn’t get the panick out of my head. I wanted to go to my Church, any church, and pray. But I was too afraid to be somewhere that was not close to the school in case anything happened, so I prayed in my car while I drove around.
I never watch the shows that come up during this time of year, because it is still so horribly etched in my mind. This year, I did. …and I cried like it was yesterday. I will NEVER forget that day. And I am amazed at all the ordinary people that became instant HEROES by acting on instinct.
Where were you on 9/11?
I remember it vividly, having also retold it. I was working in an office in a Boston suburb, with back to back appointments all morning, and hadn’t had the chance to check email or phone messages, although my cell phone (on silent mode) had curiously buzzed quite a bit – but I figured I’d wait until noon to check. At 11:15 I poked my head out and asked the office manager trotting past my door if she had seen my obviously tardy 11:00 person, hoping the answer would be a cancellation so I could run a hasty bathroom errand. She replied: “Haven’t you heard? We’re closing the office”.
In a fraction of a second I misinterpreted that statement wrongly multiple ways. A problem with power in the building? The company is folding? Of the other random possibilities that occurred to me, even the most catastrophic paled in comparison to what she said next.
Seeing my clueless expression, she elaborated: “The US is under attack”.
Still a bit incredulous, and suspecting a prank, I smirked, “Spiders?” (she hates spiders).
“This is for real. Buildings in big cities are being hit by planes and now we’re hearing that more planes are missing. It’s all over the news”.
We were the only two left in the building. In the next few minutes, we sat by a radio and she filled in enough details to decide it was time to check on my family and drive home. Before leaving, still a bit incredulous, disoriented and trying to focus, we spent a few moments hastily crafting an appropriate outbound office phone message, something along the lines of: “We are closing temporarily so our people and customers can attend to their pressing needs. Please check back with us for updates as your situation allows”. I had to leave the message in my voice because she was too upset to pull it off.
By 11:30 AM I was in my car doing the 45 minute highway commute. Many vehicles were speeding by, some of them quite recklessly, and none of them had sirens or lights or decals. I finally checked voice mail on my cell phone. It was full of messages from Boston area security and emergency services and a few business acquaintances with whom I hadn’t spoken in a number of years. I then realized that my home office phone number, used in a previous executive role in a Boston bank, was not only still forwarded to my cell phone but also apparently lingered on a number of Boston security agency and emergency service speed dial lists. Most of my messages that day were from those Boston contacts looking for supplemental help or relaying heightened security alerts. A few were seeking personal counseling services or othe crisis advice. My banking role had included handling such matters. When I arrived home I learned that my sons’ schools were dismissing early and my wife was arriving soon too. I then tried to respond to some of my cell phone messages by looking up old phone lists still taped inside my home office desk drawer, only to find that those contacts had either changed jobs, or were still active but understandably overwhelmed, or juse went to voicemail.
Silent sky is eerie to anyone living near a coastal city like Boston. You become accustomed to constant sporadic jet plane noise overhead, so you immediately notice the silence when it all stops.
Over the following days and months, I learned that one of the planes that struck the Twin Towers, which the terrorists had boarded in Maine before it made a stop in Boston on its fateful last day, carried with it a number of local people, most of whom I didn’t know except a business colleague: Danny Lewin from Akamai Technologies.
The casualty reports reminded me of the late 70’s, a time when I was learning about fellow high school graduates who had suffered or died in Viet Nam. Current day news was also comparing the events of 9/11 to other blows suffered by the American psyche, including the assassination of President Kennedy. On that day, I was in grade school and practicing a “duck and cover” drill with my class. This particular drill was interrupted by a ring on the classroom phone. Our teacher, teary-eyed, hung up from a call with the Principal informing her we were being dismissed and bussed home early because the President was sick. The following few days were spent at home, watching our parents cry, and watching the funeral on TV.
At this juncture in anyone’s life, I suppose it’s considered normal to have flashbacks, occasional musings about potential catastrophe, and hope for positive outcomes from events all over the world. I wouldn’t characterize it as a constant drumbeat by any means. Rrather it is a series of remembrances that increase in frequency on significant event anniversaries. The rest of life is spent striving to do well and good, appreciating our freedoms, and teaching our children those values.
I was sitting in my livingroom in Alexandria, Virginia watching the buildings burn on tv, talking on the phone with my sister in California. We’d just been on vacation to NYC and had gone to the top of the WTC tower.
As we watched on tv & talked, I felt a concussion that made the windows & doors shake. All I could say was, “That can’t be good.’ I couldn’t even comprehend, even with what I was watching on tv, that this had just happened again 5 miles to my north at the Pentagon.
Afterwards, I remember how silent the world was without any airplane noise from the sky while we waited for the last plane to hit.
at that time, i’m still schooling at high school in malaysia. it is trully a shock.
I was in college, and walking through the commons area in my building. There was a huge crowd and the usually quiet commons was packed. The two small tvs were on and I asked another student what happened. I was told that a plane just hit the world trade center, and I stood and watched while the second plane hit. It was hard to process what was happening, it felt like I was watching a really bad movie. Shit kind of hit the fan from there because my small college was located right near the airport. They shut down everything and sent us all home. It took hours for me to make the 30 minute drive since all the roads near the airport were blocked by law enforcement. I called my boyfriend who was in the marines, freaking out. . . I don’t really remember much else. . .
All I know is that now I am married to an Army guy who goes on deployments all the time because of 9/11. Not bitter, just saying that the reality of the world after 9/11 is something me and my children live with every day. I will NEVER forget.
God bless you and your family for your service and sacrifice. We will not forget!
Taken from my blog:
China lived in New York at the time of 9/11.
I remember getting her on the phone fairly quickly,with my heart pounding in my chest watching CNN films of people jumping from the burning towers. Still early.
She said,”Do you know what’s going on?”
“Stay home,honey,just stay home.”
The newsroom at one of those placid early morning news programs was getting phone calls from women, mostly women who didn’t know where else to call. “My husband works at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 104 floor of tower 2 do you know anything???”
Moments later the towers were rubble on the ground. That was so awful.
But my child was safe in Queens,with her roommate tucked into her little apt. My child was okay.
At least that’s what I told myself.
Everyone scars differently.
Some wounds can’t be seen.
Sometimes we just don’t mention them.
I was in 1st grade in 2001. I suppose I was in school when the attack happened, but I had no idea anything had happened until later that afternoon at ballet class. We were on a water break and I noticed there was a small TV in the back room that wasn’t usually there, and that there was a smoking building on the screen. I didn’t fully comprehend the nature of the situation till I got home and told my mom that they had a little TV and that the news was on. That was when she explained what happened, but it was still many years later when the full gravity of the incident hit me. It’s hard to believe when you’re looking back on something like that and all you can remember is a little TV in the back room of a dance studio.
I think about it often.
Not just on the anniversary of 9/11.
I remember very well what I was doing on that date.
The night before, a musician I know flew in from New York City to record a theme song for a television show.
We decided to catch a late dinner.
The next morning, I woke up very early to bake my favorite rock star a tart. A plum tart to be precise. I delivered it to the Roosevelt Hotel. When I returned home I turned on the television and witnessed what I first thought was the scene of a Will Smith movie.
Tragically it was not.
I called my Mother to tell her the news. The instant she saw the image of the burning World Trade Center she said, “We’ve been attacked.”
I know so many people were so surprised by the viciousness. While it was shocking, I’ve always had the sense that anything can happen in this world.
Photo of all the men, women and children who lost their lives on 9/11
Plus it’s always occurred to me that the places that I’ve lived are attractive targets for terrorists.
Washington D.C. because it’s the nation’s capital
Los Angeles because it’s a major city
San Diego because of the proximity to military bases
But you have to live your life. Faith, hope and love help me a lot with that.
The thing that I remember more than anything that day was that in the final moments of their lives, those passengers on the doomed planes were not calling to see how well their portfolios were doing. They were not flipping through fashion magazines to see what was going to be in style the next season. They were not gossiping about their neighbors.
In fact they were calling loved ones to tell them, well, that they loved them.
The Starring in Your Own Life Lesson is that you don’t need a tragedy to prompt you to do the same. It could be a call, an e-mail, or a homemade tart. A plum tart to be precise.
My husband and I were in a hotel in Palm Springs. We turned on the TV and were watching the Today Show and then it happened. We stayed in bed for hours just watching the horror. A day I will never forget.
We were at the office when the news broke. Then, everybody started checking on families, relatives, and friends. Reports were supposed to be submitted that day, but nobody seems to be concerned about that anymore other than the 9/11 incident.
Jess B. Hinkle
http://jesshinkle.wordpress.com/
I was actually watching Neighbours (an Australian soap for the uninitiated). It was interrupted with the news that there had been an attack on the World Trade Center. I was shocked but not that shocked. A few weeks earlier I was on holiday with my family in Egypt. We were staying in a hotel in Sharm El Sheikh (Apologies to any Egyptian readers) and there was a political conference happening there. I asked one of the hotel staff what was happening out of curiosity and he said those guys were the bigwigs in Arab politics and they were discussing an impending terrorist attack in America and how they could stop it. I guess you could say I witnessed a part of history.
The grace of our Lord sustained you. These stories are touching.
I was on a rooftop on Houston and Lafayette, only a few miles away. Saw the first tower go down. Unreal.
My Mom Was At Retmains Working There, They Had A TV On, Live Of Twin Towers, When it Was Live, There Was only 1 Tower Hit, My Mum Kept Watching Live, When It Was Live, The TV Showed A Plane Coming Towards The 2nd Tower, She Saw It Hit It And Screamed, There Were About 20 People There At That Time With Shocking Faces. B4 The 2nd Tower Was Hit, My Mum Thought It Was An Accident, Than She Saw The 2nd One, And Was Like, OMG, But She Still Thought It Was An Accident, She Came Home After 30 Minutes, The Buildings Were Still Standing, She Turned On The TV And It Said The Planes Were Hijacked, Than After A Little, The Towers Collapsed, Than We Heard The Pentagon Got Hit Right After, and Than Another Plane Hit This Field, My Mom Said There Were 19 Hijackers Planning For YEARS To Do This.
Oh and They Are Making The New World Trade Center In The Same Spot In New York, I Saw it On TV, and I Even Went There With My Family To See, Only A Quarter Of It Is Done. Its Gonna Take About Another Full Year!!
I remember exactly where I was. In my office, TVs were on and we all thought it was an accident before the second plane hit the second tower. I couldn’t believe it had really happenned, especially when we learned about the plane that had crashed on the Pentagone. Later, during the night, I woke up thinking all this was just a bad dream, until I switched the TV on. It just felt like none of this was real…
I visited the Towers back in the 80s as a new immigrant from HK to Canada. Still remembered it was such a grand place and I even bought a Napoleon pastry there…, can’t believe the Twins are gone… . When it happened I was in a MI hospital and as I saw the newsclip on TV, I thought it was the end… . Something big must have happened, I thought.
Well, it wasn’t… and we are still living till this very day (8 years later). All of us, who are spared to live till this moment, I believe, we have a purpose…, not necessarily for ourselves… .
Me too, I pray man-caused catastrophes like the 911 will never ever happen again anywhere…, God have mercy on all nations.
I was in second grade. I was in gym class when we first heard the news. My gym teacher quickly turned on the mini tv he had in his office. We all sat and watched in terror. Most of the kids were being picked up by their parents. There were only a few kids who stayed the whole day including me because my parents were not home to get me. I remember being confused. I was confused that someone would want to run planes into American buildings. But I am older now and have a better understanding conflict and war but I still don’t support it in any way. Give peace a chance. We remember.
i hope this tragedy never never comes againt
I just started my first year @ JMU and was on my way back to the apartment from class. My roommate came to me and said “you need to look at the news”. I didn’t know what was going on, but when I turned on the TV and seen the news about the attacks, I was speechless. I called my mom & family back home in Richmond and just couldn’t believe it. It makes me sick to my stomach to see the images of the devastation. I tried to look on YouTube at the news from 9/11 & couldn’t watch because it makes me so upset that someone would do this. Even to this day as I reflect, my heart and prayers continue to go out to the families and victims of that tragic day in history.
In front of the TV unable to move
I was 15 and I was in gymclass. I only heard the news when I got home and turned the news on. I live in Belgium, so for us it happened in the afternoon. We stayed tuned to the telly all evening, trying to understand what happened.
Some amazing stories here. I was pretty young, so didn’t really understand much. Probably my generations’ first real glimpse of the evil in the world that no-one tells you about when you’re a kid. I remember my mum crying, and getting this overwhelming feeling that from that day forward, life was going to be very different for millions of people.
It was late at night here in Tokyo when the World Trade Center buildings were attacked.
It was quite a shock.
Fuji Bank had a branch in the World Trade Center and many Japanese died…
http://tokyo5.wordpress.com/2010/09/11/wtc-crane/
Today is the ninth anniversary of 9/11, a date that will live in infamy.
For it was on this date in 2001 that two American Airline jets took off from Boston’s Logan Airport crashed into the two twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.
At the time of the crash which claimed the lives of almost three thousand people in an insidious act of terrorism, I was in bed asleep after working the night shift at Algonquin College. I only heard about the crash when I got up that same afternoon when a roommate in my house said to me that something dreadful had happened in New York.
When I turned on my television, I could only stare in utter disbelief as I saw one of the American Airlines jets crash into the south tower of the World Trade Center.
I was out of town on business. I could not get home for nearly a week. When I finally did get myself booked on a flight I was shocked to enter the airport in Toronto and see machine guns everywhere. We ate our food on the plane with spoons b/c they wouldn’t let anyone have sharp items like forks. It was not an inconvenience at all, but a blunt reminder of what had just happened.
I just started my training in the I.T. Department when the maintenance person told me that a plane hit the WTC building. A short time later he came back to my office and said that a second plane hit the other tower. At first my impression was that something was causing planes to follow the wrong flight route. Maybe the control towers made several serious errors. I continued my work until several coworkers came to me asking if I heard about the crashes. I explained what the maintenance person told me earlier. They then went back to work. Another half hour later some more employees arrived at work and asked me the same question and then asked if I could turn on the radio for all to hear. It took more than a couple of hours to find a radio, but with the help of my manager, a radio was turned on. That is when I finally heard what has happened. At the end of the day, I walked home. The transit was on strike at that time so I had to walk over 13 blocks. As I walked home, I noticed that everyone on the streets were not only silent, but I also noticed the strong silence in the air by the absence of planes. People were either glued to any TV in store windows or they were walking aimlessly. It was very eerie. To answer the blog’s question, I was in Vancouver BC.
I was sleeping in my room in Chennai, INDIA and it was daytime/evening. The bell boy rushed in and woke me up!! Saying “the world trade center was attacked!!” I thought he was mad and upset that he woke me up. He kept saying it, and since I was sleepy I didn’t give much thought to it as I thought he had gone mad!
He came back again screaming like a mad man and turned on the tv to show me the news… I was shocked !! For a moment, I thought this was a crazy Hollywood movie, but slowly it all seemed to be real.
The first thing that came to my mind was “OMG!!” and I thought to myself, thank God I visited the towers and went to the top before this happened.
I was 10yrs old when I visited the towers and I took pictures from the top floor. Those pictures are so much more now!!
I was standing in a classroom after school and watching one tower burn. I remember saying “What an awful accident – how does something like that happen?” Within a few minutes, the second plan appeared and then we began to comprehend the enormity of what we were seeing. I’ll never, ever forget that day. I despair that the world seems to have learned very few lessons since then.
living in wundowie waking up thinking normal day then turn tv on & then 24/7 for weeks & weeks watch the fall of tower & two other buildings… but then govs dont get blame for constructing buildings from porous fiberous welded wired poled eves beams frames just continue on allowing the mass murders of how many a day as war gore efforts continue plus weather that wipes out how many in a year while junk piles up regardless who in oppositions..??
so not glad to be alive in these days but have to grin bare on regardless…
I am a NYC cop. Here is my story:
http://oshea12566.wordpress.com/2010/09/11/nine-eleven-part-two/
I live in England, United Kingdom, 5 hours ahead of New York and just got in from work. My young son greeted me with “A plane has crashed into the World Trade Centre tower.” I replied, “What World Trade Centre?” “New York,” was the reply. My reply back was, “Yeah right!” Then I turned on the tv and the full horror of it hit me as I watched still with disbelief. The rest is as we say history although unforgettable history. I’m pretty big and tough but I freely admit unashamed that I shed a tear that day!
I was in London so it was about 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Someone walked into the office and said something about a plane hitting the World Trade Center so we all went to a meeting room where there was a TV and watched the news, live, as it was happening. We saw the second plane hit and I will never forget the sight of that. I have not spoken of 9/11 since then. Every year I refuse to read anything about it but last night, I sat here reading what everyone wrote. Some stories are just gut wrenching. Cannot imagine what you all went through. Thank for writing. Especially to the brave lady who missed her meeting because of her niece not putting out the rubbish. You are one brave woman! We watched the news as the towers collapsed and a stupid image came to my head, that of King Kong from the 70s remake with Jessica Lange and how he climbs one of the iconic towers. A symbol I associated with New York and my mind could not comprehend how the towers were suddenly gone along with all those innocent people. I hope all those innocent souls are at peace and in a better place.
I think it’s time make a change for the world.
I was in seventh grade and was woken up by my mother. Being a tired pre-teen, I don’t actually remember what she said to me. I remember getting up and going downstairs and watching the first tower fall on tv before going to school. As my Dad and I were walking out the door so he could take my siblings and I to school, he said “This is big, I mean, this is going down in the history textbooks!” and then shuddered a little. I spent the rest of the day worrying about him and wondering if we would have to move, since my dad works at Lawrence Livermore Lab and people at school were telling me it was a target.
It’s 9/12, now what?
https://mikelamonica.wordpress.com/2010/09/12/its-912-now-what/
~Mike
I was going to school that day. By the way, I was a 2nd grader when it happened. Anyway, I remember my sister telling me, my mom and my other sister about the Twin Towers and what had happened. I was so confused lol because I didn’t know what the Twin Towers were. Later that day, I found out what the Twin Towers were when my teacher explained it to the class. I was sad.
That day, I nearly missed my flight. The limo service driver was late picking me up at 4 AM. On the way to JFK, he gets pulled over in the Bronx for speeding. Luckily the driver was a moonlighting cop, so no ticket. I had flown to California (the destination of the two planes that hit the Twin Towers) several times over the previous several months, but that day’s destination was St. Louis, MO. I was in the air in route to my destination when the first plane hit. The captain announces over the intercom that due to a national emergency, we must divert to Dayton Ohio. National emergency? What, like nuclear war national emergency? President assassinated national emergency? What? In route to Dayton, the other plane hits the second tower. We now have an air force escort, the captain announces. We land, I inquire to the airline staff, how long will we be here, no one knows. I suggest they release the luggage, they do. On my way to baggage claim in the vacant airport, I see a TV showing the burning towers. I rent a car, I must promise not to drive east (toward New York). I find a hotel and try to grasp what has happened.
I’m from Germany and was in my hometown Berlin on my way to work. I entered the train and read the news on the screens of the newsticker service, which is provided there. I exactly remember the message on the screens. It was: Airplanes hit the Word Trade Center. And I remember how confused I was: Why the plural? How could more than one airplane hit the towers? What happened that day was something I never thought that could ever happen. My thoughts are always with all the people und familys, who lost that day someone beloved.
I use my bedroom TV as an alarm clock and I work a split shift, going in at 10AM. I woke up that morning to a man on the TV yelling, “Oh my God!!” as the second tower was hit. I watched in shock like everyone else. I tried to find out whether I was expected to report to work — remember, no one knew what in hell (literally) was happening — but couldn’t reach my boss. He was not a nice man and I knew if I stayed home without authorization I’d get in trouble, so I went in.
I had a TV in my office and kept it on the coverage as people came in and out to watch. I was numb and frightened and all the other things we all felt. But one thing I’ll never forget:
The TV happened to be on NBC. They were talking about how people were jumping from the buildings and they showed someone falling. The shot was zoomed in close enough that someone who had known that person could have recognized them, and that snapped me in two. I closed my office and sobbed into my hands for that person, for all of them.
I had just woke up early at home in Mississippi, trying to get my sleep cycles adjusted after flying in from the middle east, over New York, the day before.
I will never forget. I was sitting at my desk at work (I live in Michigan) and received an interoffice communication on my computer. I was stunned. Our office shut down immediately after the second plane struck the tower. I went to my son’s school to pick him up and I was glued to the television at home for about a week watching all the coverage and wishing I was able to go to New York to help.
I think of that day often; the souls inside the building that perished, the brave firemen and emergency responders that also perished, the survivors and all the many on the streets affected by the debris as the buildings callapsed, the victims on the airplane, everyone in the Pentagon along with the victims on that plane, the victims on the plane that never reached the intended destination, and countless millions of others.
What a devastating day in our lives.
I must say, though, through all of the tragedy we faced that day and the days following, America showed compassion, preserverance and heroism like none other.
GOD BLESS AMERICA!
Deja M. Ogletree
I pray for the continued strength of everyone affected by these awful chain of events.
I remember exactly where I was that horrifying morning. I was staying at my mothers house getting my little girl Allie ready for school. I was having a difficult time because she is a quadriplegic and was not really feeling all that well. But I decided to try to get her to school anyways. I turned on the tv expecting get the Barney Show.. I was watching the tower burning and smoke everywhere on the tv. Then the second one hit..I was in a state of shock. I ran down the hall screaming “there attacking the United States!!!” My mother jumped up and ran towards the TV. She just started crying and praying to God to protect us all.. I will never forget her face-scared to death what was coming next. “How could this be happening” my Mother said..I looked at my daughter and held her very tight and said you can’t go to school today.”.America is at War ” My heart was changed forever. I never imagined that America was hated so bad after helping so many….I was very naive back then!!!!! Not now. I will always remember that day! God Bless the United States of America!
I was in 6th grade and my teacher didn’t tell us all day until we had a sub in another one of my classes and then we watched it on the news for hours while I made the perfect dragon for some puerile project we were suppose to be working on. All I could think when I watched it happening over and over again was “Bet Al Gore is happy he’s not president,” which I actually ended up saying aloud and I think my substitute teacher yelled at me for five minutes on the subject until I cried. He later apologized to me and I finally forgave him not too long ago.
Every year I listen to this American Life’s segment on the topic and sob and cry every time, which is insane for me because I didn’t even cry when I totaled my car and almost died this summer, but everyone else did. Every day the spotlight burns so brightly on that moment, I don’t think we are able to move on. Now a war is burning out of control all because we can’t forget. I never will forget but I just wish we could forgive
Hiking in the Yosemite backcountry on Ten Lakes Trail. Came out two days later and found out what had happened. Stunned, and not sure exactly what the hell was happening. One thing that stands out is how eery I thought it was not seeing or hearing aircraft.
I was in the fourth grade in a school in Fort Worth, Texas. I remember my parents coming to get me from school. I never understood why at first. Accidents happened all the time on the news, so why the big deal now? I finally understood over the course of the day, and even more through the years, how truly horrible this was. It still pains me terribly to hear about all the people who lost loved ones, even though I did not know anyone who perished in the attack.
The people on the plane who took action and tried to stop them were truly heroic, and although it is so horrible that it happened, I am proud to know we are such a strong country.
I was sick at home (on the southern coast of South Africa) when my husband woke me from a feverish sleep with the news. It had just happened. Later when I woke again, I thought I had dreamt it all. I was so sad when I realized it was true. This was not only an American tragedy – it changed the World forever. It was as if we all lost our innocence that day.
Gee where was I?
I was at home in Teaneck, NJ. I just stat down to have breakfast before work..
At that time I worked for MSNBC in the IT department.
I turned on Direct TV and saw reports that there was a fire in the WTC and they weren’t completely sure what happened. Then it happened on live TV, the second plan hit the other tower. I was a bit stunned.. thinking to myself, it’s going to be a busy day and It was. I immediately left for work and by the time I was exiting off of the NJ Turnpike (18E) I saw the dust rising as the towers collapsed.
Work at MSNBC was hectic and we worked long shifts for weeks after the attack.
All the electric in Bergen County had been turned off on 9/11 and all major roads were closed. I returned home in complete darkness that day.
You could smell the smoke from the collapse in NJ and if you were in Greenwich Village area of NYC you could smell a burnt oil smell that hung in the air for weeks after.
It was like being in a dream and was probably the worst day of my life. Even after all this time I still find it difficult to watch any documentaries about the day and I feel the loss.
I still can’t watch any coverage about 9/11 to this day as it is too upsetting.
I was in 5th grade at the time, and it seemed like any other ordinary day. At around 10 AM, the teacher began getting calls from the main office informing her that students’ parents there were there to pick them up. By lunchtime, about half the class was gone. I was confused with why so many students had left early but the teacher did not tell us what had happened. I knew something was definitely wrong when my mother came to pick me up from school. She normally never came to pick me up to walk the short five blocks. She told me that the World Trade Center towers had been hit and collapsed. When I got home, I turned on the TV, and only one channel could send could broadcast programming, and all I saw was repeats of the towers being hit and falling. It made me sad watching that, but it wasn’t until I got a little older that I could truly comprehend how devastating that event was. Watching footage from that day, interviews, and other news stories still brings tears to my eyes regardless of how much time has passed since that day. The sacrifices made that day by policemen, firefighters and everyone else who helped showed me another side of human nature, one of love. September 11 also elicited a feeling of intense patriotism that I had never felt before. I will never forget that day and how united the country was in the aftermath.
I was in a small town called Uspillata in Argentina. I was serving an LDS mission and had lived in the country for almost 1.5 years. I remember feeling very lonely and uncertain about the world.
I live in NJ, about 20 min away from New York. I was a Junior in High School and I was in U.S. History class. Our teacher was in the middle of speaking when another teacher peeks his head into the classroom, steps in and interrupts saying…. “Something horrible happened. A plane crashed into one of the towers in New York.” He was very upset. He wanted to cry.
You hear the class go “What?! That’s horrible”. At the time we were thinking it was just a very bad accident. Our teacher was asking the guy questions but he didn’t really know anything else…He just said he saw it and that we should turn on the news.
So we attempted to put on the TV but it didn’t work. The class, thinking it was still an accident started to talk since nothing was going on. I believe we were going to try to go to the guy’s class and watch it but by then I think they were ordered not to turn on any TV’s.
We were all upset wondering why they would not allow us to see what was happening. Our friends who had phones were getting information from people outside of school. That’s how we found out the second plane hit. We were all so shocked. We knew it couldn’t possibly be an accident if a second plane hit. That same friend who was giving us the update was called to the office. He goes. He comes back to get his backpack and leave. The intercom turns on from time to time announcing names and eventually mine gets called. I go downstairs to the office and I just see the whole school filled with parents waiting to pick up their kids.
My older sister and my mother are there waiting for me. I’m like “What happened?” and my sister’s like “We’re at war Isabell. We’re being attacked.” Something to that effect. I get home and I watch the news and I just started screaming and crying “No!!…Oh MY GOD! ….No!” as I watched the Towers go down.
I looked away and cried for a couple of minutes and then for the rest of the day, I watched all of the footage of what happened.
I remember when the news showed people jumping off the building together, holding hands, so many of them did that, I guess to take control of their life one last time. They knew nothing could be done for them. Every time I think of that I start to weep. I’m crying right now. I’ll never forget when they had closed up on a man who decided to jump. You could see him so clearly. He was a tall, white man. He was bald, perhaps about 160 lbs wearing a light blue striped collared shirt, and navy blue pants. The camera was following him all the way down. I got to see his facial expression briefly.
To see that…I’ll never forget that. That was the saddest, most horrible thing I’ve ever seen. Just horrible.
Every year, All I can ever think about is how much those victims suffered. It will always break my heart. My prayers and my heart go out to those who lost a loved one on 9/11.
I wrote about this last year, before I had a blog, just to myself. Because 9/11 really gets to me. I remember and I grieve, I cry to this day over the lives lost. And thinking about it today, I realized why it still seems so horrific to me. I watched it live on TV as it happened. I was watching people die, right there on tv. Innocent, real, people. That is why. I hear about innocent real people dying every day. I see tapes of innocent, real people dying….but those people are not all that real to me. They have already died or I have heard they died. This was in real time death and destruction that I had never seen. Senseless and tragic. It could have been me. It could have been my family. It was just sheer chance that it wasn’t. Again, I think that is why, 9 years later, I cry. I grieve. As do we all. The shock of losing a great president to a sensless act of violence was what my mother remembers. She knows where she was when she HEARD Kennedy was shot. My grandmother knew the shock of Pearl Harbor when she was first confronted with the reality that our strong, independant country COULD be attacked…she remembered where she was when she HEARD about that. I SAW it. I WATCHED it happen and there was nothing I could do. Nothing I can do to erase the memory of watching those lives lost. I will say a prayer and send love into this world.
I was actually sleeping because I didn’t have class until 2 PM that day. My father called me at around 9 AM because he was in his car and heard the news on the radio. But by the time I woke up and turned the TV on, it was not one but two planes…
I was outside work, in the Red Cross Bloodmobile donating (I still have my donor card with the date on it) … it was very quiet inside as the donors/nurses/volunteers were all listening to the radio as the news was coming in. The Bloodmobile left as soon as our group was done as they were called back to their headquarters … I will never forget that day …
The morning of September 11th will never be forgotten. I was sitting in my 8th grade class when one of my teachers came storming in the classroom yelling “the towers are going down.” At that point, I didn’t really understand what was going on. The shock and fear that masked my teachers faces is unforgettable. Another teacher brought a television quickly into the classroom and everyone sat silently staring as CNN displayed the horrifying video clips of planes penetrating the twin towers. I will never forget that day.
God will never leave the families of the innocent victims.
Everybody has a story to tell all around the world. So, I sent an email to all my friend to pray, chant and celebrate the life, the love and the forgiveness with this song – Stand by me – because we are all together with our friends, north, latin or south americans!
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2539741
I live in Sydney, Australia. For us it was night time. I was in bed about to go to sleep and as usual had the late night news on. Just as it was about to finish (approx 11pm Sydney time), the presenter said they had to go to some breaking news in NYC, apparently a plane had crashed into the WTC. It was early stages, they were reporting an accident. My dad who was trying to get to sleep in the other room had on a Portuguese news radio show broadcasting straight from Portugal and he was hearing the same thing. I heard him rustling about, so I went and asked him if he had heard about the plane crash, he said yes, but thought, as was reported, that it was an accident and went back to his room and to sleep.
I went back to my room to continue to watch the rest of the news and the local channel had switched to one of the morning American TV shows, by then that crew, not sure which show (Good Morning America possibly) had set up a camera onto the Twin Towers. And I remember watching live the 2nd plane crashing into the Tower. And it was then they knew it wasn’t an accident.
The next day I went to Uni as usual and as my campus is close to the Royal Australian Air Force base all we could hear all day was the planes and hercules getting prepared for battle as the world didn’t quite know what we were in for.
Thanks for a great post and allowing people to express their feelings and thoughts.
Hi everyone-
A magical thing happened today. The comments on this post shined brighter than the post itself. It stopped becoming my post and became OUR post. Worldwide.
I am writing a quick follow-up with some thoughts and feelings about it so let me hop, say a prayer, hug your loved ones and have a good night. ~Mike
I was 5 years old, and in Africa. I still remember this day. It was barely a week after my birthday. I never slept properly for the next few days. My parents thought I was sick. I guess no one really believes the kindergärtner.
I have friends that are twins that lost both their parents. My best-friend lost her mom. Her dad left the family. My uncle was there at that time in Philadelphia. He was supposed to go to the WTC that day. Thankfully, he had a big project due. Damn, ppl r lucky…
Check out my blog 4 a full scale event tomorrow…
http://zeworldmatters.wordpress.com/
i was in memphis, tn on sept. 11, 2001– working the morning show at fox 13– we watched the first plane hit and were confused, shocked– the second plane hit– we were never the same. this country and that news room pulled together– i’ll never forget the most amazing experience i had as a producer.
I was in DC that day. I was there.
I was in Germany working for the Dept of Defense in Grafenwoehr, when someone came into the office and told us what was happening. I was married to a soldier in the US Army at the time. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. After taking 2 hours to get home which usually took 20 mins, I watched everything on tv. The post was in lock-down and I was awaiting a call from my husband. Sheer disbelief as to what was going on. FOX news covered it very well. While I was removed from being in America to watch that horrible event unfold. I was thankful that our President had the resolve and steady hand to lead us that day!!
Today I spent the morning, welcoming troops coming home from the Wars overseas. Hate the wars….But don’t take it out on on United States Military men and women…they are doing their job so that we can do what we do each day!!!
God Bless them and Police, Firefighters, and EMT’s that helped others on that fateful day!!! We will NEVER forget!!!
I wanted to share my friend’s photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/giladrosner/911#
He lived in NYC in 2001. On his way to work, the disaster happened and he took the photos as he worked his way out of the city and over the Brooklyn Bridge.
i was in new york in the twin towers i am today 34 years old that day i was soooooooooooooooooo scared and i still reagret being in that building
I was working for a water treatment company , I was in Athens Pa on my way to an client house . whenIi arrived there they were in the kitchen crying and I aked if anything was wrong . they pointed to the tv,
the news was showing what just happened. It was the worst day for this nation. Today we Rember the fallen . We will never forget.
At the time I was a 17 year old high school junior heading into second period physical education class. My school was located in the small town of Cape May Court House, New Jersey (about three hours from New York and four hours from the District of Columbia). I recall sitting in my squad lines as our teachers took attendance and then paused as we teenagers went about our normal silliness like on any normal day. The teacher came back with a post card in her hand and informed us of an accident that had just occurred at the twin towers in New York. Nobody really believed her, in fact several of my peers seems to let out a little bit of laughter out of pure disbelief as if it were some joke. Of course our teacher was not laughing and eventually gave up on us. But as the school day wore on, word of the attack began to grow more and more with each class. Most teachers were unusually silent throughout the day, I could sense a bit of their unease. The principle had ordered all students and teachers to no turn on any televisions in any classrooms with no exception, not even to run a VCR. No one, not even I could fathom what had been going on in both cities all that morning until lunch time came.
Normally, lunch hall consists of hundreds of students eating lunch and socializing loudly. However, the lunchroom that day was considerably quieter than ever with most faces fixed onto the few TVs in the large hall, all showing the devastation of lower Manhattan. The news that our teachers had been sharing with us all morning now could be identified by pictures and video of buildings on fire, debra everywhere, and people in serious distress.
All practices for after school activities were cancelled the rest of the week. Arriving home later that day, it was obvious how serious things were when I noticed my typical regiment of MTV and other entertainment on FM radio were all tuned into the same broadcast. No music, no laughter, no entertainment, no happiness…just pain.
I had stepped into the shower that morning getting ready to start a new job. The Today Show was on in the bedroom. I was wrapped in a towel when I came back to the bedroom and saw that the first tower was in flames, and they were taking about a plane hitting it. As I was trying to understand what I was seeing, the second plane struck, and my legs nearly buckled. I think I screamed. At work that morning, the TVs were on, and I just couldn’t believe my eyes when the first tower twisted and slowly started to collapse – that’s the image I will never get out of my mind.
We lived very close to an airport then. It was so eerily quiet with no jets taking off, except the Air National Guard’s F16s, flying down to NYC to patrol the skies. My husband was in Salt Lake City on business. It was a horrible week to be alone, and then I was so anxious when he flew home that Friday. I remember all the phone calls, as people reached out – Did you hear? Are you okay? Did you know anyone there? Where’s the family – is everyone safe?
There was so much sadness, and I had so much pride in our country and our citizens – we were at our very best after this tragedy. More caring, more aware, more gentle, more strong. The pain brought us together.
I was walking to my advertising class in college when I saw a fellow student who was also walking to class. I asked her how she was doing and she said, “Not good. Did you hear what happened in NYC?” She didn’t have to tell me anything else for me to know that it was a terrorist attack. I was not suprised, but I was shocked. The media had been talking about a terrorist attack happening since “Y2K.”
We all sat quietly in our seats when the professor came in and said that there would be no class today. I still remember his exact words. “It seems pointless to be sitting here studying advertising when people are burning and falling to their death in New York.”
I went to the university union where there were televisions that were brought out for the students to watch what was happening. So many young people watching in horror with their mouths gaping open. Some crying. Some in shock.
The university soon closed for security reasons and everyone who did not live on campus was asked to go home. At home, I called my dad who was also told to go home by his office building after someone called in a bomb threat at his building. Soon my mom and brother were also sent home by their employer and school. It was an eery feeling. It was as if America had completely shut down.
I was at home. My siblings and I were homeschooled and I was a sophomore in high school at the time. My Dad called my Mom and told her to turn on the news so we saw everything live from before the 2nd plane hit. Quite a few of my friends didn’t see the footage live and I’ve never gotten some of those images out of my mind.
I was just a baby at the time but from how much I have learned about this subject, I feel as if I was there. I think that the people responsible for the attack were extremists that wanted our freedom, and instead of becoming citizens, they felt they had to attack us. Since America is the strongest country. I think after the attack, they felt they were the most powerful people in the world. I think people should realzie how brave the firefighters were. Untill this very day, these images effect our lifes, and effect the lifes thousands of firefighters, one being my father. In the end, I think America did a great job sticking together through this hard time. I feel America has gotten stronger through this experience.
Thank you my beautiful niece.
Thank you for making me so proud and for being so strong. Please call me tomorrow. Your Uncle Mike loves you all so much. Like a skabillion.
I was walking into my 8th grade English class around 9 a.m. To this day, I can still remember the teachers who let us watch TV and the ones who didn’t. It was not a normal day. It will never be a normal day.
I will never forget that day. I just arrived home from school. I live in Hungary, so because of the time difference, when this tragedy happened, it was around 3pm here. Was hard day at school, when I got home I turned on the Tv. Surfed through the channels and I saw something strange. I couldn`t believe my eyes. CNN Live. All I could see was a tower, and smoke flew out of this tower. Im an extremly sensitive person. I turned the volume higher just to here every little detail, and the I could not believe what I was hearing. A plane crashed into the WORLD TRADE CENTERs tower. I started to cry……..I was 16 years old back then. I ve never seen anything like this before. My granny opened the door, she brought in my lunch….I asked her to sit down and be quiet. And then I saw another plane…….crashed into the other tower….live…..I couldn`t move could even hardly breathe….it was like watching a movie…..when the towers cololapsed, and I saw people running and screaming on the street realised that this is real……
I don`t know anything about what is the real story behind this tragedy, I reject politics, all I know is that was the moment I decided I`m gonna change my life. I`m gonna help people, I`m gonna be a good person. Seeing this terrorr made me a fighter. i WANNA FIGHT FOR GOODNESS. I WANNA FIGHT FOR A BETTER WORLD, and I guess I`m not alone with it:) Peace Love and Harmony…..they r things to fight for and TRUTH
These things will make the world go round.
I was at school, in 2nd grade at the time. I didn’t know about what had happened until I came home, though. After the bus dropped me off at home and I walked inside, I remember seeing my mom stare at the TV in horror, with tears in her eyes. I turned to look at the screen and saw an image that stays crystal clear with me to this day. That of the Twin Towers burning away. Seeing that and the way my mom looked, I knew something very big and very bad happened.
After watching for some time and listening to the anchor re-explain the situation, I began to understand what exactly was happening, why it was happening, and the real severity of it all. I continued to watch the coverage on CNN with my mom for what seemed like hours. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the screen. I also felt like I didn’t move an inch for the entire time I sat there watching. My mind was focused, just trying to make sense of everything it could the whole time.
Although I had only just turned 8, I remember that entire day with incredible detail. And, at that age, I somehow knew that September 11, 2001 was going to be an important date forever.
I’ll never, ever forget what I saw on that day.
I was in Lima Peru we knew the 9/11 by TV news . It must not happens again, was so sad for people that live in my country . We pry God for you and all that have died in this day. You are so couragous to continous your life. America is an example for the world. God bless you all.
In the Spanish Academy in Cuzco, Peru, during my expedition across Latin America. It was on that day that my expedition transformed from being some freewheeling adventure, into an investigation into US foreign policy. I’ll never forget that day. I’ll never forget how later on the evening, I watched Dan Rather comment on the astonishing collapse of Building 7. As I watched Building 7 go down, it was at that moment that I said to myself, and started screaming at the TV, “This is pure f–king bullshit! You m—-f–kers!”
Since then, my world went from the golden age of the tech boom era of the 90’s, into this long, dark, strange morass of a decade.
Working on the Atlas V rocket launchpad @ cape canaveral, FL
I was at my doctor’s office that morning. I saw the second plane hit the tower on their television set in the break room. At first I thought it was some kind of movie, y’know, something fiction. I thought nothing of it – until I got in my car to drive to work and heard it on the news.
I can understand how many people believe 9-11 was an inside job. One of the reasons would be: why was no fuselage seen at the crash site in Pennsylvania? Also: where are the black boxes? There’s plenty of reason to think this way. Those are just 2 small examples.
Anyway, it was all very horrific, and I hope someday the world finds out the truth, no matter how ugly it might be.
There was no fuselage because when something comes apart at that rate of speed, confetti is all that’s left. This was not an attempted landing; the damn plane went straight into the ground at top speed. Jesus, can we stop this nonsense already? Learn some physics before you spout off.
I was getting ready for my washington field trip. I remember waking up and going downstairs to see my dad on the edge of the couch his eyes glued on the television. It wasn’t until I saw the planes crash and I heard the screams did I understand. At school everyone was somber, no one knew what to do, our trip was two weeks away and all of us even the teachers were suspended in this vacuum of disbelief.
I was staying at my “ex in-laws” duplex in Sun City, AZ, preparing for a week long artist in residence program at the Sun City Art Museum. I’d arrived late on the night of September 10th and fell fast asleep on the couch…. I went online shortly after I woke up, and a friend sent an instant message to me saying…are you watching TV? I thought something had happened in Palm Springs, where I lived at the time, so I wasn’t all that inclined to rush to turn the news on. When I did, I saw the tower falling, and I remember feeling very, VERY small and very VERY alone….which I was, since Sun City is a ghost town during the late summer. I went to the art show opening the next day, thinking no one would be there, but a handful of artists showed up. One had flown into Las Vegas and couldn’t ind a car ANYWHERE. So he rented a UHaul truck and was stopped by the FBI as he tried to cross Hoover Dam. They surrounded the truck, yanked him out, slammed him against the side, and interrogated him for hours before releasing him. I also remember thinking I was falling in love with someone I’d me through match.com and we talked for hours that week. It was all very surreal, to say the least.
I was back from my studies in Krakow/Poland, at my parents place. I just came back from visiting a friend and saw my dad glued to a TV screen, watching what appeared to be an action movie. He made me realize that it’s news, and that a plane flew in one of twin towers in NewYork. I remember sitting there with him, feeling bad for people in NY for such a sad accident, when the other plane hit the 2 tower .. live on TV, in front of our eyes! It was the most terrifying thing, even though it seemed so far away… I was with NewYork & all American people in my heart. I sat there for hours, during all additional news about 2 more crashing planes, in disbelief. I’m still with you today, commemorating the memory of those that died.
I was at a hotel in Toledo, on vacation with my parents. This was a long time ago, so I don’t remember much. My father was watching Fox and I noted the time between 11 and 12 noon.
I was at work in NYC praying that my husband made it out of the building. Luckily, he wasn’t at the WTC site that morning, but his buddy and did not make it. We did not lose any immediate family, but many of our friends did. Driving home on the Grand Central Parkway I was in shock and remembered seeing people driving and crying. The parkway was filled with emergency vehicles on their way to the WTC. My town lost the most uniformed personnel from the attack. Today it is a very sad day.
In grade 8 English class – they did a school announcement – told everyone to stay calm and then informed us that the two towers were hit. All the teachers were given permision to let children who’s parents may work in New York to call them from the telephones we had in our class. Kids from our class had to go to the office, our class phone was broken. My Dad used to work in NY some days, we lived in CT. I don’t think I have ever been that scared, like I was that day, before calling him. Luckily he did not go into the city that day. I cant believe it has been 9 years, that day still feels like yesterday.
RIP to all the victims and condolences to their families
x
I was in my home about 45 minutes north of the city when I heard the news on the TV. My husband was at the doctor’s office for a quick look at an infection before he boarded a plane at Kennedy for San Francisco. I called the doctor’s office. They had no idea what was going on. I demanded that they get my husband out of the examining room. He wanted to go back to his office next to Grand Central and help all the people who worked for him but I thought Grand Central could be hit next and that the workers had already left. He caught a gypsie cab for home and just as they were reaching Yonkers, they saw the second tour blow. My husband used to work at the World Financial Tower and my parents thought he was still there. They were frantic. We ran to our children’s school and pulled them out for no other reason than we wanted them with us. Some parents never made it home that night. Those are the people I remember. goodness.
On the day of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks I was sitting at my kitchen table when I was thirteen years old and I just remember my mom walking into the kitchen and turning on CNN. When I saw the planes hit the WTC on CNN, I couldn’t believe that this had just happened. I think that this anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, every American should take a moment to think about all of the lives that were lost and all of the people who today are probably still dealing with their family member who died that day. Additionally we all should be reminded that we should continue to support the troops in Afghanistan who are fight to make sure that Al-Qaeda can never attack our great country again and they are standing for the freedoms that we enjoy. God Bless America
I was in the navy, on-board ship out to sea. I was somewhere in the Indian Ocean en route to the Persian Gulf. We were sent there as the first force against the enemy, to retaliate. Of course, we were already almost there when the attack occurred. So some of the chronology doesnt make sense.
9/11 is a day that, like many, will be forever etched in my memory. And it is not just that day, but the year following. (Do you remember where you were/ what you were doing on 9/11/02?) I had awakened early that Tuesday morning and had just finished putting my luggage into the car. I was headed from Tucson to Chicago for a job interview.
I was just sitting down on the couch to put my shoes on, while my mother (who would be driving me to the airport) was in the kitchen taking some medication. My dad decided that we should watch the weather to see what kind of trip I would be having. Well, I had had enough with weather as I had found out what the weather forecast was for the entire week that I was to be in Chicago. And I was looking forward to the fact that “sunny” was the forecast for the entire week. But, going along with Dad just for kicks, we turned on the TV — just as the second plane was hitting the WTC.
Mom immediately came out of the kitchen, thinking that they were showing previews of some horror movie that was coming out, and was appalled that they would use the WTC for such a movie! My comment, in utter disbelief at what I was seeing was, “Mom, I think this is for real; this isn’t a movie!”
At that point, figuring that the trip would be called off (and calling the airport to confirm that), I headed back to my apartment and tried to contact somebody to figure out the next action to be taken. But we knew that we had to wait and see how this situation would play itself out. And, having previously lived in New York I also knew people in the City as well, so even from that standpoint I was in shock. Frankly, I didn’t have the wherewithall to even think of trying to figure out how to get to the interview.
Needless to say, the trip did not happen that day, and the interview did not take place that week. The company that I was interviewing for was actually a Japanese language academy. While their main office is in Tokyo, they also have a regional office in Vancouver, B.C. They were given a “no go” from the Tokyo office to have anybody fly into the USA even after planes could fly again. There were a couple of times when they would try to come back to Chicago, but something would happen, the code would go back up to red, and the interview would once again be called off.
Thanksgiving Day that year I finally flew up to Vancouver for the interview. Long story short, I did get the job. March 2002 would see me flying once again, this time to Vancouver for a week of training, and then to Tokyo for a year of teaching. Even then people were still talking about 9/11. It was strange to me, but people were coming up to me and telling stories of where they were that fateful day. One couple was telling me that they were on vacation in New England. He worked in the WTC and was supposed to be back at work on Tuesday morning. As it turned out, he was sick and had just called in before the first plane hit. Somebody else was supposed to have been on the plane that crashed in the Pennsylvania field, but on the way to the airport there was something that created a major traffic jam, and this person just happened to miss that flight. Somebody else worked in the WTC and was on the train. They happened to be running late that morning and ended up on the first train that was able to be stopped before meeting its fate. On and on the stories went.
On the first anniversary of 9/11 I felt so many of the same emotions that I experienced the previous year – reflected on the stories I had heard, prayed for the people I knew in NYC (one of whom was a good friend of Fr. Mychal Judge). No words can ever describe the heaviness with which I went through classes that day. But I have never felt such love from others either. My students, most of whom were business men and women, all wanted to talk about that day. The lesson for the day was pretty much put on hold — or at least greatly altered. Four of my students were in their 80’s and remembered the bombing at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; one even had several family members that were killed that day in the bombing. Learning about how to give directions or how to create sentences in future tense really didn’t matter on this day.
Several of my students were particularly consciencious of how I might be feeling that day, for which I was most grateful. And being able to talk about this with them reminded me that while there is so much hatred that crosses racial and ethnic boundaries, compassion and love does as well. The events of 9/11 became a unifying force between the Japanese people that I had met and any Americans that they knew that day. And to this day that has been a particularly strong bond.
While war and terrorism seek to alienate people from one another by building walls, there is an alternative. Let us use what we have learned from this day to create bridges – bridges of compassion, of love, of understanding.
I was walking on 23rd Street and Lexington Ave. when
everyone was looking up at the very smokey sky, and
strangers were talking to each other saying there must have been a plane crash. We were mortified.
I was working at Bozell and Tony Granger had all of us gather in one of the conference rooms to watch the unforgettable nightmare unfold.
One of my bosses, Rich Levy had taken a flight that
morning from Newark. I stayed at the office till
I heard he was ok, and also to tell his family. He
wound up landing somewhere in the midwest and
driving back with a few account people.
I was lucky, but for the thousands of others, I pray
for their souls.
Mike, I appreciate you doing this.
It’s imperative that we never forget what happened.
Sincerely,
Lauren Diamond
former employee of
Bozell
Creative Dept. 3rd Floor
40 West 23rd Street
New York, New York 10010
i’ve been at home when it happend. i’ve been 8 years old when the planes hit the towers. i’m from germany, many thousand miles away. but i think i’ve never been so scared in my life. i didn’t fully got it when i was eight, i just couldn’t understand how people can do things like that to other people…i actually still don’t get it. but anyway, i was so scared and my parents were shocked. even if we knew that none of the persons we loved have been there, we were sad. so so sad and sorry for those people who losed loved ones. we are still sorry.
I was at West Running Brook Middle School in NH.
Thanks
i was getting for work soon
I was in first grade and they made an announcement through the loudspeakers that a plane hit a tower, at first i though they were saying that it hit the 2nd floor of my school, which my sister was on, i was very confused and the teacher eventually explained it to us. All of our parents came and picked us up and i remember sitting home with my parents wanting to change the channel.
I was in my house getting ready for work.
I lived in Montana at that time and was going back to Illinois for a visit. I was driving through Wisconsin and heard on the radio that a plane had hit a tower in NY. My only thought at the time was, how horrific for the people on that plane and then thinking, how odd it was that aplane had veered off course like that and hit a building…..
Then hearing that a second plane had hit – I felt dread and immediately, the realization of this not being an accident, wanted to make me turn the car around and head back home. But no – I pushed on and the vacation with family was a somber week with all of us taking a look at each other, what we have and what the survivors of the 9-11 victims had forever lost. What America had succombed to – its vulnerabiltiy. ~
I was on my way to work at Lockheed Martin, just north of DC, and heard about it on the radio just as I was pulling into the parking lot. I got most of my information throughout the day from a MUCK since CNN and most other news websites were impossible to load due to the overload in traffic.
I was in 7th grade…English class. I remember certain kids going home, and the total sadness lingering in the building.
I was just getting into my Drama class during my senior year in high school(Northern Illinois area). The two theater instructors had dragged their large TV out of their office and had it on stage(something they had NEVER done, even after Columbine), and there was about 20 other students crowded around. I squeezed by to see what was going on. It was tuned to one of the large news channels and coverage was running, as well as the clips of the attack.
I skipped my next class, as did a few other students, and sat in front of the TV watching what was happening. I am not afraid to admit that I was freaked out and near tears. What bothers me about that time was that school was going on as planned and it didn’t seem like a lot of people knew what had happened. No announcements or anything.
I was in my office at UNC Chapel Hill that morning watching a tiny five inch TV screen that we had there to get weather updates from hurricanes mostly.
My colleagues and I looked and listened in disbelief wondering what might happen next. We all felt a sense of helplessness along with extreme loss. Some of us went to donate blood unsuccessfully as there were already too many donors ahead of us.
Later that same day I went for an afternoon walk on a trail nearby. I subsequently wrote a poem about the event but could not finish it. Just this year I was able to revisit the work, edit and complete it. It is my way of honoring and remembering those who died and all those who worked so hard to rescue survivors. I have posted my poem at sandybroberts.wordpress.com.
Thank you for your account of that day and for reminding us of the work we can do to in an effort prevent such tragic events in the future.
Back home in Spain we’d just finished lunch and I’d gone off to surf the net. My mom stayed watching the TV when they switched to breaking news: one of the Twin Towers was on fire. She called us to come and watch. We all thought it was some sort of joke, or the preview to a new “Independence Day-style” film. It wasn’t. It took us a while to realise that we had just seen the second plane going into the other tower. I remember that day vividly, both before and after the attacks. The newsreaders looked very tired after broadcasting for hours on end, and several wept.
Lest we forget.
dawsr.wordpress.com
http://hummingbunny.wordpress.com/2006/09/11/911-tribute-for-gilbert-granados-2/
I was at work, with a tv and internet. People started gathering through the day.
Four years ago I wrote a tribute post. Project 2,996 is still going strong.
I was in my home in front of tv watching favourite songs,being hungry I was making tea,toasts and then sat in front of tv and changed channel cnn ,holding cup of tea in one hand and sandwitch to other I stand up unintentionally what was i have watched,one plane had struk before I tune to channel,Iforgot to bite the sandwich or sip a tea,then what I watched was un beliebeable live struk of 2nd plane and thats too much to me,I found myself 3 hours after watching all that empty minded or too much filled mind.
Bruce Springsteen -mentioned over and over again in the obituaries. A plug for him today and his album on 9/11, “The Rising.”
Malta.
I had to see the news in Italian (which I don’t speak). But the truth is, with those pictures coming in from NYC, whatever it was they were saying seemed completely irrelevant. It was the end of the world.
I was in the 9th grade. At the time it happened an annoucnement went out over our school system letting us know what happened. I didn’t realize the magnitude until I arrived at home and was able to watch some of the footage. Though I am of the lucky who did not feel a personal loss at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, or on Flight 93 this has profoundly affected my life. My fiance is in the Air Force. He joined because of what happened on 9/11. We were in the same high school when the announcement was made about the attack. While we have been together he has been deployed twice. I am so proud of him and to be able to support him in his efforts to keep us free. I keep the spotlight on 9/11 by being proud of my country. I teach high school and I have a 3 by 5 American Flag above my desk. All my students say the pledge in the morning and are respectful to those who lost their lives for that flag. May we all keep the memory of this day alive in our own ways.
i was in my eighth grade english class, surrounded by kids just as clueless as i was when it came to the nyc trade center, terrorism, osama bin laden or oil prices. the teachers got an email to turn on the news, and they did. i don’t remember if there was an explanation of what was going on before or not, i just remember turning on the tv to a burning building i had never seen before, and then watching another one that looked just like it get hit by a plane.
my mom had one of her friends come get us from school, we went to her house & turned on the tv, watching the looped footage & repeated stories over and over again. i was the oldest of the group of kids, but we were all equally confused. they were talking about a terrorist attack that had happened in the underground parking garage the week before that no one had really talked about, this was my first clue that we weren’t being told everything that happened in our country. i’m lucky that i live far enough away i didn’t lose a loved one, but i get chills every time i think of this day. how scary it must have been to experience it inside & out of the towers, and how frustrating it must have been to be an adult at that time. now, i’m 22, i don’t know how i would react to an attack on what i consider my homeland. its a scary thought, i hope we never have to face it again.. and i hope as a nation we can help other countries who face brutal attacks such as this one.
http://twirb.wordpress.com/
i was going to class, at CSU Stanislaus in California. i think i was the first to get out the door that morning; the tv in the living room was off and my roommates didn’t say anything about it til later. i remember an odd sensation as i walked toward class… a combination of “man, it’s such a beautiful, bright day today” and the hairs standing up on the back of my neck like i somehow knew that something was wrong. it was eerily quiet on campus; the usual business of getting breakfast and going to class was absent.
i happened to walk through the RA’s office on the way out of the dorms, and that’s when i saw the news playing. four or five dormmates were in the room, watching in stunned silence. we glanced at each other, eyes pleading for reassurance. that day, it didn’t matter who was friends with who. it didn’t matter that we were 3000 miles away… we were all at ground zero that morning. we were all simply humans, alone together.
as a community, i believe most of us students had already decided to skip classes that day, before the official announcement came that classes were cancelled for the day.
all day, people who’d never spoken to me asked me if i knew anybody in NY. and i did the same… i shared more meaningful conversations and touches on that day than in the remainder of my four years at Stanislaus. we had a candlelight vigil, and to hear and feel the memories and prayers being shared was to experience the height of humanity.
years later, and in spite of being one of the lucky few who didn’t lose any friends or family members that day, i still remember that day as if it was yesterday. i still feel stunned, and profoundly saddened by the mindset/culture (nothing ethnic about it) that planned this crime.
I was at my Father’s office in Warsaw, Poland.
9 am, before the second plane struck–..I saw a traffic jam ahead of me. I turned on my favorite talk radio station expecting a report, but heard some commentator talking excitedly about how “the plane hit the World Trade Center”. I thought of a TV show I’d seen which talked about how a propeller plane had hit the Empire State building in the 1930s, and then wondered when this report would be over so I could get the traffic. Then he said that another airplane had struck the other World Trade Center tower, and with chilling certainty I knew that it had been an attack.
(Link: more of the story, which would make too long an entry on Mike’s blog, plus why 9/14/2001 is so important to me….) http://bruteforcemanor.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/rededication-day-part-i-911/
I was at work when I first heard about the first plane. I saw the second plane hit on live television in the surveillance room of our telecom company.
Today I cheered on participants at a Patriot Run. The race offers 9 hrs and 11 mins of running. There were troops there. But I was there to see my friend Stasi walk. Stasi has Cerebral Palsy and has recently learned to walk for the first time. Her record before today was 190 ft. Today she walked 300 ft.
Resolve. Commitment to peace. Community. That is what today should be about.
I had come into New York exactly a couple of days earlier for my orientation at school. It has been a long cherished dream of mine to study in the US and I was more than eager to leave a terror stricken life in India ever since my Dad retired from the Indian Army. Little did I know how all this would follow me wherever I went. I have learned one thing since then, this and war, will never stop till each of us simply decides not to participate in it. And I know how much ever life may require me to change, what ever it may throw at me, this is where I can rise, reinvent, reinvigorate, its in the character of this city and its in the character of anyone who flocks here. It is sad today that over the last few weeks religion was brought into the mix, whether it is a mosque, a temple or a church, by people who don’t even live here. This city is not about religion, it is about life.
I am from Romania and i was at home thinking if this will be transformed into an war.I saw live on TV when the second plain hit.A terrible day!
I was seeing tv in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and I will never never forget the strong images of the Twin Towers, in real time. It let us terrified in seeing what was happed in the north of the world.
My sorry, my forgiveness, my thank and my love for everybody!
I was working for an American company in La Paz, Bolivia, staying at a friend’s house in the south end of the city. Turned on the TV and watched the second plane hit.
News travelled fast. The local military used the event as an excuse to fly a couple of fighter jets up and down the valley cracking the sound barrier. Crowds of people converged on the Prado, the main boulevard in the center of town. Newspapers ran evening editions with sensational headlines (I still have one).
I’m a Canadian, but being pretty white I was mistaken for a US citizen. Lots of back-slapping and heartfelt statements of support. There was also a lot of “we knew this day would come, America must learn a lesson”.
That day seems only a short time ago, 9 years I was working on a roof in the Welsh hills got a phone call get to a TV you will not believe what is happening.Got to TV what a shocking scene,
I was at home writing, got a call from my mom saying turn on the television. I was watching it after the planes hit, but before the towers came down.
Reading this post and a few others made me realize how very fortunate I was to actually be at home when this happened. Driving around upsate New York, I think I would have lost it.
http://futuretom.wordpress.com/2010/09/11/i-was-lying-about-monsters/
I was living in a tiny town in northern Wisconsin, in a house I’d rented while in the process of a divorce. I was driving to the post office to get my mail when I turned on the radio and heard the woman on PBS say something about possibly 30,000 people being killed. I went home and turned on the TV and watched it, alone, non-stop, for about a week. Stunned. Sickened.
I grew up practicing and believing in non-violence, reading Gandhi and ML King. But now I wanted to enlist, I wanted to do something, I was so angry at what had happened. I finally understood what my dad and uncle meant about wanting to be in action during the second world war. My dad had been made a flight instructor and wasn’t allowed to see combat, which made him frustrated–he wanted to go out and fight. I never really understood that until 9/11.
I used to live in NYC, and could see the twin towers from my apartment. I can’t say I really liked them then–not that that’s of any relevance now. I’d been up them a time or two. I now live not far away, but still haven’t brought myself to visit the site.
I was in 8th grade I don’t remember who the teacher was but I remember hearing that we would end up with detention if we told the 6th graders what was going on. I walked home and found it very eerie to be walking with my friend as there were pretty much no cars on the road. When I got home my sister went to turn on the tv and I tried to stop her, because I had seen it all day, but she wanted to watch cartoons that would never come on.
Watching live…the second plane from a break room. I couldn’t believe it as it happened unexpectedly.
The morning of 9/11 I was actually still in 8th grade; we were in recess, and we heard our teachers whispering to one another, seemingly in a panic. We had heard so many things, that it was a bomb, that it was some kind of assassination attempt, that it was a plane that hit the towers. Of all the possibilities, we (the students) actually believed the latter to be the least valid of the options, and then to go home and find out that thus was the case…it was eye-opening. We’d lived very mundane lives before that day. Our greatest care was the boy or girl we had a crush on, or helping direct traffic on our corner as a volunteer service to the school. To suddenly feel that we were possibly not safe in our powerful country was a lash of vulnerability on all of us. Terrifying. It was terrifying.
And to come home and wonder when the Simpsons would return to its normal airing time, when all this sadness would just stop, showed how affected we were by this. It made going to school harder, it made all of us clench our stomachs in constant worry. Hearing planes pass over made us alert instead of ignorant. We talked every Friday of what happened for the rest of the year, and all began to open up, apologizing to those we had hurt by making fun of them, fighting with them. We realized just how small and precious we all were and how instantly our lives became so much more important to live without regret, without callous to others.
The entire day was an enormous shock, but the following days, weeks, years, have been one huge epiphany to many, to live, love, and give to others.
I was at Orange Beach, with my family and grandparents. All of a sudden, my grandfather came out, saying something, and my mom and grandma started freaking out. We rushed inside and they turned on the TV. I was about 6 at the time, and didn’t understand. I thought it was maybe a movie, and kept asking if we could go out and play. They said no, and when I looked out the window, I remember seeing the beach absolutely empty. It really scared me.
it’s been quite long time ago. I was back home in South Korea, probably it was 4 or 5 in the morning there in local time. My dad woke me up bluntly, brought me to the living room where my mom and my brother had been already watching tv. It took me some time to realize what was going on since I had just woke up. I just can’t forget that night.
At times it seems like it was just yesterday that I woke up to a beautiful September morning in New York City. I remember that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky that morning–it was as if the humidity had just disappeared. I dressed for school (I can remember exactly what I wore that day), and I got on the A Train to Beach Channel, where I was a sophomore in high school. I remember staring out the window of the train and seeing the New York City skyline, and thinking that it looked so pretty, despite the fact that I had seen it almost every day of my life.
My first class that day was gym, so nobody knew that anything had happened until after we left the locker room at the end of the period. I don’t know how many student actually knew what was happening, but as I walked the halls, i realized that it was silent. When I got to my next class, the guy in front of me told me that the Twin Towers had been hit by a plane. I didn’t believe him, thinking that he was playing a joke on me because I was the only new kid in the class; I had transferred from a Catholic school the week before. Then, I realized that most of my classmates were trying to see out of the window, which overlooked Manhattan. I thought this was odd, but figured that they were all in on the joke. It wasn’t until a couple of other teachers came in to talk to my Italian teacher that I realized it wasn’t a joke. I started to freak because my aunt worked a couple of blocks from the Towers on Pine Street, and they were saying that people couldn’t get out of the city unless they walked over the Brooklyn Bridge (which is what my aunt and a cousin, who worked for HBO at the time did). Within an hour people starting being called into the auditorium where parents were coming to pick up their kids. I remember being told that the only kids going home were the ones who had relatives in the Towers at the time, so I figured I was stuck at school until the trains started running again. Then, just as my 7th period global history class started, my name was called. My teacher told me that I had to go, but I didn’t want to–I was sure that this meant that my aunt was dead. My mom assured me that she was okay, and that she was on her way home–my other aunt headed to Queens BLVD to pick her up. I was surprised that she was able to get to me because she didn’t drive and I knew that the trains and the buses had stopped running, but apparently one of my cousins had been able to get her to my school. We ended up being the only car on the Crossbay Bridge because it was technically closed. Up until the moment I got into the car, I hadn’t heard about the attack on the Pentagon or about the plane that crashed into the field in PA. It was so surreal.
When I got home, I found out that my uncle, who worked for the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) was being called into the city to help with the recovery effort. My grandmother didn’t want him to go, but he told her that he had to, so he headed into the city. People forget that the Housing Authority was there too. He ended up being at Ground Zero for weeks afterward, and he when he would come home all he could talk about were the things that he found there–i distinctly remember him telling me about a sneaker with a foot still inside it.
I was in London at the time for a university open day with some friends from school. I got a call from a friend incoherantly shouting “someones blown up america, get out of there”. We ended up sat across the river from charing cross station waiting for a train, all we could hear was planes circling overhead and some guy playing a steel drum. I was convinced there would be an attack on london too.
It was my first day of college. I woke up and at my feet was what could only be some crazy Die Hard-esque movie I had never seen. Then I heard weeping in the dorm hallways, and slowly it started to sink in that this was my Pearl Harbor.
I was there. About this time on that day I was walking across the Williamsburg Bridge to get back to my apartment in Brooklyn Heights. I remember reams of paper falling all around me. Pure, white sheets of paper. Later I stood on the promenade and watched the smoke for hours. I stood with people of all races and all religions and we all cried and prayed together. The city was quiet except for the sirens.
I’m glad this blog is here. This is a day of remembrance – and renewal.
I was getting ready for classes (in college in Alaska). My then-girlfriend/now-wife called me and told me to turn on the TV. It was complete confusion. We just sat watching TV while on the phone not talking. It was horrible.
We walked to class and there were TVs set up across the campus with groups students and faculty crowded around. Classes were still being held, but they were shortened and tests were postponed.
I remember the news commentators trying to make sense of the information they were receiving. In an age of information, nobody could seem to understand what was happening.
Living in Alaska there was a terrible sense of isolation in the following days. The grounding of all air traffic left us cutoff from the rest of the nation (temporarily). We seemed so far away and completely unable to help those who were suffering…
Wonderful story !!! This is a good for my experience ,thank you for your sharing.
I was in Orange New Jersey, My first day of Middle school.
This what my day was like on Sept 11th.
http://kenniem.wordpress.com/2010/09/11/the-poem-of-911/
I wasn’t born yet.
In a bagel shop, near the U.S. Capitol.
http://notionscapital.wordpress.com/2010/09/11/bagel-day-4/
I was in my homeroom class, in 6th grade. The teacher turned on Channel 1 and it showed the twin towers burning and in ashes, on the sides of the buildings. Everyone, in my class, was silent and we were all devastated.
This is a wonderful blog for all of us who remember that day – It is a day that we have a clear recollection of in a very personal way. I was driving to work in Boise, Idaho when I heard about the first plane. As I write this, I’m in tears. I remember sitting in my car in front of the office and crying, sobbing, and then hearing about the second plane just when it hit. I could barely compose myself after several minutes sitting there in shock and utter disbelief – just to get out of the car and into the office to face televisions on everywhere and a stunned silence of everyone in the office.
As the days and weeks unfolded I was truly inspired by the people of New York City. I cried as I watched the nightmare unfold. I prayed for those people and waited along with everyone else in the country to see what the outcome was. As I write this now, I can’t stop crying. What a horrifying nightmare to have experienced first hand.
And now here we are all these years later and recollections of that time feel as fresh and raw as they did then. Reflecting on everything, if only once a year on 9/11, reminds of me that we care about each other. This is such a large and spread out land, but on 9/11 we are all in this together as if we were in the same city, on the same street, or at ground zero. There is something oddly precious about that.
9/11 showed me how much we really care about each other, period. I will never forget this most important realization.
I worked for Hancock Fabrics and a vast majority of the store, district and senior management gathered every September in Tupelo, MS for the Semi-Annual meeting and Fabric Show. Tuesday mornings were always the final chance to complete our purchases for the upcoming season and get ready to leave in the afternoon.
My boss, Sally, and I were sitting with a California vendor with another gal who was the CEO of her company in NYC over my right shoulder. I can close my eyes and still see her face as she screamed.. Her office was one block away from Ground Zero and her entire family all worked in one office. Someone called from the hotel to tell her what was going on just as the Event Hall staff started rolling in TV’s for us to see what was taking place.
There were over 300 members of our fabric family there, hundreds of miles from home, watching TV and holding each others hands. Our CEO’s Exec Assistant made calls to our rental companies after it was announced that air traffic had been halted for the unforeseeable future. We held a prayer meeting at the warehouse with as many of us that were still in the area then checked out of our hotels to begin the 1300+ mile drive back to New England and other parts of the country.
As you drove the roads were almost deserted. Every church yard you passed was packed with cars and you could hear the singing through the open doors as they prayed for our safety as a nation. It took us almost 3 days to reach Massachusetts and our families.
That week will be etched in my mind like the JFK assassination in Dallas. I was reading the accounts from young adults that were my age when Dallas happened. Their accounts of what went in their classrooms reminded me of that time in my life. 9/11 changed the world we live in, and most not for the better. If we could go back to the kindness and caring we had back in the weeks and months that followed the attacks, what a different world it would be. HOW WE GO FORWARD SHAPES THE WORLD OUR GRANDCHILDREN LIVE IN. BE MINDFUL AND TAKE CARE OR YOUR LEGACY.
I remember. Back then I used to sleep with my radio on all night, and when I awoke that morning, the very first thing I heard was an announcer saying, “I just can’t believe it.”
On 9 – 11 I was having a nervous breakdown. It was in it´s earliest stages. At the same time I was put on an operation in my country. A few years later , in 2005 , the nervous breakdown reached it´s full manifestation. The official explanation for 9 – 11 that it was done in a cave by homo habilis , homo erectus and homo hubris , is nonsense – maybe in homo hubris´case that may not be so. On 9 – 11 , I believed in Al Quaeda. Today I do not. Instead I believe in , honour and respect those who are true to their fight in those Islamist countries and who have sometimes called themselves Taleban (there are of course many others such as the now deceased William Cooper who stood alone and faced the might of their adversary without any desire to flee in the midst of battle) , as opposed to those who may call themselves Taleban , but who may not really be who they are.
I support that which the United States Federal Government terms openly terrorism which persons such as myself have often pondered is humankind as a whole.
Because of such a support , I´d naturally be assumed to be an evil and truly sinister man – or at least , a sinister man on some level. This does not mean that I consider myself to be sinister par excellence , or someone who is an examplar of what to be. I only see myself as a man. To put it in the brilliant and vastly important script of the now cult classic Deadspace;Downfall – ´I´m not a hero , I´m just a man´. Yet , every man and woman and a child has a potential to be a hero. This is particularly true for those who stood in the way of those who wanted to orchestrate 9 – 11 and had all the decades , means and technology to do it and yet chose to blame it on somebody or something ´else´than themselves. In particular , on moslems , on arabs , and sometimes , worse still , on those someone like me tries to understand and are often called Taleban in the media.
I am not saying that I honour or respect pointless violence – either against men , women or children. What I respect , is the war against what has for a long time now been called the New World Order. If it is a creation of 1776 , it may be termed to day the New New World Order. I was in Iceland. I am sorry I behaved in the manner I did , due to my nervous breakdown – that I used the language I used , that I expressed myself in the myoptic and low ways that I did – that is , that I tried to express the truth , but appearently in terms of swine – like behavior – in terms of behavior which was detrimental to my reputation , and perhaps even to my country´s peoples´image. But I learnt a great deal from that. I support those that Homeland Security and such abstractions have termed ´domestic terrorists´- like some of the militia who have been fighting to preserve civil liberties , especially those which are guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
I support wholeheartedly a counterstrike against those who orchestrated 9 – 11 – since they were and may still be as of today residing in many of the capital cities of the United States. Such a strike would have to come from a genuine and sincere friend and ally of the people of the United States. What I find to be admireable in some Taleban and many other fighters who have fought against enemy occupation of their country´s territories , is that they do not flee in the midst of battle , even if they know that their resources are scarce and that the enemies are greater in number. I believe in and support a community – based representative republic. That is why I guess I´d probably be termed a terrorist according to such organizations´as Homeland Security´s definition of terrorism.
I am truly sorry that I did not have the understanding or spiritual discernment required to conduct proper research or express myself properly on this important issue. I do admit , however , that I have a few books about 9 – 11 , most of which are works of serious scholarship and some of which have now become classic works of world litterature such as the New Pearl Harbour and Crossing the Rubicon. After having seen the film Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden , I now doupt that there may be such a person – perhaps , perhaps not. Since I do not know him personally I do not have any right to consider the possibility that he may be involved with those attacks.
Nice Post! Although this tragedy is something we try to forget and bury, one can’t help but think about what happened on this said day.
My husband and I live in Seattle but were in Las Vegas for my work, and were scheduled to fly home that afternoon. Our phone rang early in the morning and one of my co-workers was screaming “you’re not going anywhere today, we’re under attack”. We had no clue what she was talking about as we didn’t have the TV on. We went from bewilderment and shock, to planning our own evacuation. Ultimately we rented one of the last vehicles in Las Vegas and drove back to Seattle. Las Vegas being populated with transient people, created scores of people looking to leave. I later learned about people buying cars, trucks, or even motor homes and driving home. People also rented moving vans, u-hauls, whatever from of mobility they could to get closer to home. It was surreal.
Although we were having our own mini crisis, we knew it was nothing compared to what we had been watching and seeing on the radio or TV.
The Casino’s still had a few customers but for the most part, people were scrambling to leave. The Aladdin actually closed for a while, for fear of it being a target. Las Vegas was a very odd place to be on 9/11.
You have the Lord to thank that you are alive. I commend your brother for helping, too. My heart goes out to everyone that lost someone that day. Bless you and all that were effected by 911. I will never forget it.
I was actually flying to one of northern Canada’s Diamond Mines. It was supposed to be a day trip, just for business meetings. Of course, all North American air traffic was shutdown so we landed and spent the next few days watching and waiting as most of the world had done. I won’t forget the experience, we were in a small aircraft and I knew the pilot. I was sitting just behind the open cockpit, as the first plane hit the WTC the pilot on my flight gives me the news. We landed just after the second plane hit. Scary times.
Thank you for your thoughtful post. I still get sad thinking about that day. I wrote up my experiences on 9/11 and after on my blog: http://leahsthoughts.wordpress.com/. It’s taken me nine years to write it.
I was in Germany, driving on the motorway A 60 Mainz and Alzey back to the office, I came from the bank in Mainz. I did hear it in the radio and I did not believe it. I thought I understood it wrong.
Later, back in the office (technical illustration) all the guys were in front of the TV, watching the news and couldn´t say a word …
Now: I `m living in the UK . Today I watched Sky news and few min ago I asked my partner if he can remember the day when I saw him with all the guys from the office watching TV, when the second plane hit the tower.
I said nobody, who is just a little bit normal in this world whould have such an evil idea. They are lunatic.
I was in 7th grade. It was a week to the day that classes had started at our brand-new middle school – Jolliff Middle School in Chesapeake, VA. No one had said a word to the students all day, for protection I’m assuming.
At the beginning of our last bell, our principal, Mr. Glisson, was standing outside our classroom handing each student a little pink piece of paper. My recollection was that it was for the parents, but it said something to the effect of, “Due to today’s tragic events, the meeting scheduled for tonight in the auditorium has been cancelled. Today is a day to be with your families. The meeting will be rescheduled.”
I looked at the paper, then saw my best friend, Melissa. “What tragic events?” I remember asking her. I don’t remember her words exactly, but she said, “My mom told me that two planes hit the World Trade Center in New York. Another hit the Pentagon, and I think a fourth crashed in Pennsylvania.”
I instantly got chills, since I was born in Manhattan in Mt. Sinai Medical Center. My mom used to tell me stories of how she pushed my jogging stroller under the WTC for the two years we lived there (1988-1990).
The next thing I know, I was in Mrs. Rouquie’s gold van to go to church for the Tuesday after-school day. No one spoke the whole ride. When we got to church, we found about five other kids and our associate pastor glued to the tiny TV, watching Andy Fox from WAVY-TV 10 report live from the Pentagon. Everyone was crying.
That night, when I got home, I climbed the stairs to put my things in my bedroom. We have a split staircase that leads to our room over the garage, where our main TV is. The TV was on, and all I saw was my mother on the love-seat, sobbing her eyes out. I started crying and we stayed up very late, just crying.
The next day, two things happened that I will never, ever forget. First, that morning, I remember going out to the bus stop and seeing The Virginian-Pilot newspaper on my driveway. I picked it up, and the only thing I remember is the black front page with the huge red letters “HORROR” spelled out as the headline, with the huge picture of the towers on fire.
The second thing was that we received a phone call from either my Grandma Grace (Mom’s mom) or Great-Aunt Marilyn (Mom’s dad’s sister). We learned, with sweet relief, that my mom’s cousin Sherri (Marilyn’s daughter) was safe in Florida with them. We didn’t understand until we were told that on Sunday, September 9th, she had made a last-minute decision to fly down to go visit her mom in Boca Raton, Florida on Monday, September 10th.
On Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, Sherri was supposed to be working out in the World Trade Center’s health club.
God Bless all those who perished and their families and many friends.
God Bless America.
Last year I finally sat down and wrote my experience of that day, titled “Recalling A Shared Sorrow”. I still cry every time I remember our shock, disbelief and sense of magnitude. Here’s where I was: http://blogdc.donnacarrick.com/2009/09/ Sorry for posting it as a link, but can’t bring myself to re-type it here.
The funny thing is, even though I’m a writer, I’m not sure I’ve conveyed the weight of my feelings in this piece. It’s almost as if I have to hold back the flood. It’s just far too painful. For all of us.
In September 2001, I (a German) was living in Sydney at a friend´s place. I remember checking the news online in the evening and reading about the first plane hitting one of the towers (9am in New York was 11pm Sydney time). I also remember joking about it with my friend Andrew – at that point it seemed that a small plane, maybe a Cessna, had hit the tower. I didn´t think much of it and went to bed.
I was woken up at about 3am by the voice of my dad on the answer phone who urged me to pick up the phone and switch on the TV. Still half asleep, I stumbled to the phone and told my dad that there was no use in switching on the TV – “We don´t share the same TV programme in Germany and Australia, Papa!” My dad somberly replied, “Trust me, you do.” He told me about planes hitting the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, about thousands of people dead, and about planes worldwide being grounded, but I was still sleepy and couldn´t really comprehend what he was saying. I assured him that everything would be fine, hung up, and switched on the telly. Dad was right – there was only one programme running on all of Australia´s TV stations. I sat down on the living room floor and watched in horror as the pictures of the planes hitting the towers and of the towers crumbling down were repeated again and again. At about 6am, I woke up Andrew and told him about the attacks, but just like me before, he didn´t really get what I was saying.
I spent the rest of the day more or less in front of the TV. I was scheduled to fly home about two weeks later, but my parents urged me to get an earlier flight and “just come home!” I tried to reach an agreement with Lufthansa, but they told me that everybody was put on a waiting list, and at that point they didn´t even know if I could fly as scheduled, let alone earlier. That´s when I got scared – I suddenly realized that my parents were 10,000 miles away, and right then, it looked as if World War III had started. Things calmed down after a few days, and I was able to take my original flight home. I can honestly say that I was relieved to be back in Germany. In such a crisis, you really want to be close to your loved ones.
Mike first off thank you for taking the time to remember 9/11 in such a well written way.
On September 11, 2001 I was sitting in my government class for my senior year of high school. A few minutes after the class started the teacher told everyone that one of the towers had been hit. There were chuckles in the classroom and many students didn’t believe it. Eventually a television was brought into the classroom, and then the room turned into a state of shock.
For the rest of the school day, in every class, we say the video on the planes hitting the towers over and over.
Once I got home it was more of the same except my mother and I talked to each other trying to figure out how something so horrible could happen in our country, and in our state. I am from upstate New York.
To be honest I have not attempted to keep the flame of 9/11 burning per-say.
To me 9/11 holds a bigger meaning than just that day, let me explain.
A couple years after the attack I joined the military, and am still enlisted. I have done three deployments fighting the evil that put 9/11 in motion. So to me 9/11 is a horrible day in our history, but the pain from this event is still current as we have soldiers dying in Afghanistan.
So for me that pain is more fresh. Yes we should never forget 9/11 , but please on this day also remember the soldiers who lost their lives, and may lose their life this day to make sure we never have an other 9/11 in our great country.
http://kevinwood2284.wordpress.com/
God bless you, Kevin. Thank you for your service and sacrifice.
We live in Munich, Bavaria.
In Germany the news arrived with a few minutes delay. When I first heared it, I thought it was a joke. I remeber ringing my husband telling him about this very funny thing … he had heared the news as well and we realized, it was not a joke at all. – The desaster paralyzed all of us.
Munich is a city almost free of skyscrapers.
We had just moved with a baby in a suburb full of pre-fab flats into a high-rise building.
I remeber sitting with the new-born in the dark empty place on the only furniture already set up: the couch. The TV gave flickering light and frightening sound and it felt like the end is near.
The baby was sleeping.
I was in school. 3rd grade. All the teachers were crying and the air was just heavy. At the end of the day, they piled all 120 kids in a single room and told us that our country had been attacked. No one understood it. Why would someone want to hurt us? I keep silent on 9/11. Mostly for the fact I’m close to tears the entire day. Because of this one instance, so many children are left without fathers or mothers. Not only because the towers collapsed, but because since then, soldiers have been going overseas to fight and die.
I had just gotten out of a 7:00 a.m. math class at TCC, I went to the student lounge and saw the 2nd plane hit. Now today I am sitting in a Saturday class on 9/11 working on my masters.
Thanks for sharing this post.
I was stationed in Korea.. and it was the middle of the night when the planes hit… though I had no idea what happened as I was asleep but there was pandemonium in the hallways of my dormitory as everyone off base was ordered on base…. there was a pounding on my door by the girl who lived across the hall who said, “You better get good sleep because we are going to war tomorrow.” Living in a place such as Korea as an active duty military member and having had been to the DMZ and all, I thought that meant something happened in North Korea (and being so close to the border, I just sat it quiet shock for a while)… and anyway it was all just very confusing. I didn’t have a TV so I couldn’t see what happened and there was so much chaos going on everywhere that it was impossible to talk to anyone about what had happened. I did find out the next afternoon… but it’s weird… no one would tell me; like they were all too shocked that I didn’t know (from not having a tv and being asleep in the middle of the night rather than out on the town watching it happen at bars) and also that it happened at all.
We were ordered to stay on base for a long time. No non-American contract workers were allowed on base and everything became very quiet for quite some time.
This blog was perfectly timed and titled. Thank you for rendering readers an opportunity to post. My story is posted on my WordPress Blog: http://spiritfilledpoetry.wordpress.com
John J. Rigo
Author and Publisher
“Amidst Series of Poetry Books”
non-profit books to serve the “Homeless Cause of Texas.”
http://www.lulu.com/texaspoet
I was 8, living in Australia. I dont remember much from such an age, but I do remember the blurred amateur videos on the News that afternoon. At the time I couldn’t understand why my mum suddenly dropped the iron on the floor while my dad’s shirt was still on the iron board, but I remember her running to the phone to scream “IS SHE OKAY?” through the receiver.
Luckily, my godmother was fine. She went to California and wasn’t in NY at the time. But, I’ll never forget my mum coming up to me and hugging me with shaky arms as we watched the horrific footage on the news.
I was actually in the 10th grade when the 9/11 attacks occurred, given that I was in computer apps II class that morning, yahoo instantly retrieved bin laden’s photos, pictures, and all sorts of information about his networks when this happened. 9/11 is a day that I will never forget because it was a day filled with so many unpredictable, horrific actions. 9/11 was also part of the reason I decided to learn more about the government and went on to receive a B.A. in Political Science, minor Homeland Security, and M.P.A. in Public Administration as of August 2010. What is important is to honor those firefighters, policemen, and innocent victims that died as a result of terrorism that day. Also, the results of 9/11 has caused Americans to grow closer, and honor all of the freedoms, and advantages that we have of being American.
I was about 3 years old when the plane crashes happened…
I remember sitting in the living room, watching CNN with my dad. When i saw the plane hit the North tower, i started shouting “Dad, look at the building! What happened?”
The rest… my dad turned off the TV, since it was horrifying to watch.
Nice post!!
congrats on being freshly pressed!!
love.
summer.
I arrived in LA the night of Sept 10 from Spain. I was starting my exchange programme in UCLA. Woke up next morning and it was all happening on TV.
My fifth grade class was going to the guidance councilor’s classroom when I heard about it. I remember very vividly that a friend of mine in another class walked out of the guidance councilor’s room crying. I then knew something bad had happened but not sure on what until my class went into the classroom. I cried, realizing how horrible the event was and that so many people were killed. I still get teary every year thinking of how vivid that memory is and that somehow I knew something horrible had happened at the age of 10 almost 11 years old.
And then my sophomore year in high school I went on a band trip to NY and we all went to ground zero as one of the tour spots. The emotional impact hit me hard and it was more difficult then ever to not cry. Realizing I was standing where the horrible event, that I watched on TV in the fifth grade, took place.
Hey all, i really enjoyed reading all of your stories, they were heart felt and brought me right back to my memory. I was in 7th grade, and i remember my dad waking me up before school, saying “sweetie, you need to wake up i have to show you something.” I was walking down the hallway, barely awake. I turned the corner that led into the tv room, and I saw the two towers in flames on our tv. At first, i htought my parents were watching a movie and that they wanted to talk to me before school. I was wrong.
I realized that what was on the TV was not a movie, but in fact the news. I was glued to the t.v., i had never seen anything like it. i remember being so sad, filled with fear, confusion, i started crying…… i didnt understand. i remember saying, “daddy, why would this happen? daddy why did this happen, i don’t understand …” terrorist, hijacking…. they were all new words to me. That wass one of the most remembered days in my life thus far.
Since then, my eyes were opened to caring more for other cultures , learning about them. staying up on current events, on tradgedies, on triumphs, people etc.
this day will live on forever, and will never be forgotten in the hearts of all those that were affected by this tragedy.
😦
I can’t imagine being a parent and having to tell your child about this…
I was on my way to a town near a military base. I was running late that morning. I listened to the radio while driving and heard the news of the towers. I couldn’t believe my ears. I made it about half way when I decided to turn back. I was afraid the entire area of where I’d be would come under marshal law; I might not be able to leave.
As I exited my offramp and headed across the overpass bridge, I noticed a flabby looking middle eastern man trudging across the bridge. His bright green shirt stood out on top of his khaki pants. I rolled slowly past him. His facial expression was one of “no one is home.” My mind wondered. Why was he walking? Why the expression? Had he just been assaulted and lost his vehicle? This particular area had become a haven for such attacks.
I rolled up to the stop sign. To my right I saw a car sitting in the approach of the DOT. Instead of going home, I circled the block to get a closer look at the car. In it was a middle eastern woman. Perhaps this was his ride; this was his car?
The building was empty as the gates were closed and chained (I think) locked. He had managed to enter the premises somehow, because by this time he had his hand on the doorknob of the main building that maintained heavy equipment in the area. I had had my hand on the same doorknob some three years and three months prior ( I had run out of gas right before the exit on the Interstate-it had been a turbulent preceding month, and I was moving into a home in the area at the time).
As he realized he couldn’t enter, he searched for other entry points. His companion, I assume, left. Though he never seemed to notice me, she did. He walked around the back of the building.
I called 9-1-1 and circled the area a few times to see if anyone else was around. Cars were exiting the off ramp. No one seemed to notice. No police arrived. I went home.
Excited over what may be about to happen, I called a loved one to make sure they were safe, and I headed back out to get supplies in case things started to get ugly where I live, which is miles and miles from NY.
I went back to the same area. By this time, at least fifteen minutes, the man was standing under a sign alongside the bypass road, as if he were waiting for a bus (or the middle eastern woman that once sat in the drive of the building this guy had just entered). No sign of that golden Taurus in sight. No sign of any police activity either.
I continued to the store and bought supplies. After what I had been through some three years prior, I knew I didn’t want to wait for help from anyone else.
I had just started a new job and was in training class. We had heard a buzz around the building something was going on but we were kind of locked away from everyone so we didn’t know what was going on until it was break time. At that time no one really knew what was going on except a plane had hit the World Trade Center. After we got back from break our company had sent out a company wide email explaining what was being reported. I was the first to see it so my instructor asked me to read it out loud. As I did I started to cry.
I didn’t get to see much of the news that day until I got home. All day I sat there in training thinking; How can we just sit here when something horrific is going on. I felt like it was wrong to be sitting there doing nothing. There were rumors that there were bombs in our area because in Iowa we have a nuclear power plant and Rockwell Collins, who makes a lot of government/military items. So a lot of people were worried all day.
When I went home that night I was glued to the TV, I was in shock and so worried about what was going on in our own country. I was worried for the baby I due to have in 4 months and what the world was going to be like for him.
I was still in elementary school at the time. I had just gotten to my 5th grade class a little over an hour earlier when the main office called and said I was dismissed for the day. I was confused, wondering whether anyone in my family had been hurt, hoping that I had just been mistaken on the day of my dentist appointment. When I got to the office my mom took us to the car without saying much. I think she might have assured me that my family was okay. Once the doors to the car were closed, she told us that terrorists had run a plane into the World Trade Center in NYC. I didn’t even know the towers existed before that day, but I knew it was serious, and I was scared. We drove straight to my grandparent’s house where the whole family was gathered and watched the news footage. Everyone was simply in a state of shock. My mom kept us home from school for a few days, too scared to venture out much. Many of my friend’s parents did the same thing. In the years prior to that my cousins and I would wave frantically as we played outside to any passing planes, hoping that just maybe they could see us. After that day we never did again, as the planes would remind us of that day.
I actually was at home on annual leave from my job. I had applied for a better paying job and on that same day I received the job offer for that job. Very strange day to call me and make a job offer I thought. I took it, I ended up fired 2 years later with hundreds of other people there because this particular mortgage company was run by monkeys who weren’t in business for the long run but just to make a fast buck. I woke up late that day, 11am Central time. I flipped on my computer and saw the yahoo headline, I instantly clicked the story and then ran into the tv room and pretty much was glued to the news channels most of the day.
I was far away – in Copenhagen, Denmark where I lived. I, my wife and our 3 month old first born daughter was at our priest to arrange the baptism of our daughter, which should take place a week later. We talked about me and Hannes wedding two years earlier (it was the same priest and church) and the future and hope connected to a newborn child. When we came out of the priest house we meet a friend Rosan who was picking her child up at the nearby kindergarden. Rosans husband was working at a newspaper and called and said he would be a bit late because “something has happened in the States”. Rosan was a bit irritated, there is always something happening. We went with Rosan inside the kindergarden and hang a bit out with her and hers son. Rosans husband called again saying a plane has crashed into WTC and the he defiantly not was coming home soon. We looked at each other and at our small children. What was going on?
We better go home to watch the news. On the way though Copenhagen by bike we could hear the tele and radio everywhere and saw the plane crashing again and again inn televisions on café’s. When we got home plane no. 2 hit the other tower. We have planned the day should be focused on little Astrid’ baptism and the planning of that – but suddenly we became insecure of our own and the worlds future. We called, talked with family and friends. Later that day my American friend Seth also phoned me. The world was suddenly becoming a more frightening, but also a smaller place and we remembered that day to care about our friends.
I was visiting my sister in Turin, Italy where we live. I drove there just in time to watch the second plane hit the Tower. We spent the rest of the day (and the next days) in front of the TV.
I was in West Columbia Texas and I have never cried so much in my entire life.
I was in my office when I got a call from one of my associates to get up to the conference room, where we had a TV set, because just a plane had slammed into on the Twin Towers. We thought it was some kind of horrible accident until the second plane appeared. I don’t think anyone will ever forget it. I think we were all completely dismayed that someone would do such a thing to, “US.” We found out quickly how horrific terrorism is and that it has no boundaries.
I met my husband for the first time on September 11, 2001, so the day has happy connotations for me, as well as sad ones. I live in the UK. We went to the pub after our training session (where I’d me the man who was going to be my husband) and watched the news on repeat on the TV there. I remember saying to my mum later that I never thought I would live to see such a thing happen.
Thinking of all those affected by the events of 9/11 today.
I remember exactly where I was 9 years ago today. I was at the 2001 Graph Expo in Chicago. I was staying on the 30th floor of the Hotel Intercontinental on Michigan Avenue. I was staying there with my boss as we were sharing a room. He had just come out of the shower when his wife called. We were both watching TV when the coverage switched to the World Trade Center Fire. We watched in awe as all the NY affiliates on national news broadcasting up to the minute accounts of what was happening. I still remember watching one reporter talk as the second plane slammed into the WTC, live on TV. Both Rick and I were stunned as we watched and listened to it unfold. SO much info, wo many reports, so much panic in my heart. I called my sweetie to tell her that I was okay and that I knew what was going on. She had not yet seen the news so I made her turn to CNN to watch. As all the reports started coming in there was talk of a jet en route to Chicago and the Sears Tower. SEARS TOWER?? That was right down the street from us and we are on the 30th floor. We quickly finished getting ready and told ourselves we are not going to Graph Expo but we are going back to Appleton. I was 100% fine with that, all I wanted to do is be back with my family. I immediately started paging my co-worker, Alex. He was a tech head like myself and on an assignment in Atlanta. He should be home by now so I wanted to see where he was. Our pagers were those small Barbie laptop style Skytel/Motorola pagers so we could text with the best of em on that.
So we take the stairs down 30 floors to the lobby. It was a mad house of activity. People asking questions, people checking out. I recall one hotel employee crying saying “my uncle works in the World Trade Center.” Emotions were high. By this time we get checked out and the valet to get our rental. Ford Taurus, Silver. Alex has been text’ing me telling me he is in Detroit. On a runway stranded with no 411. I’m frantically text’ing while listening to the radio all at the same time. We are driving south on Michigan Ave with our windows down. Everyone is outside looking up at the Sears Tower, looking for something to happen. We are all tuned into Dan Rather of CBS news play by play of the action. As we drive down Michigan, it seemed as if everyone was listening to the same thing. I could hear Dan’s voice outside the car from others cars. Pedestrians were gathering around taxi’s and other cars to listen to the news. Now we hear that something hit the Pentagon in Washington, DC. Oh boy this was the real deal.
My fingers were text’ing as fast as they could to Alex giving him all the info I knew. he was the only person on the plane getting info so he was reading aloud everything I was sending him. We didn’t yet know that the FAA had grounded all flights in and out. The friendly skies were not so friendly that day. The cell phone and pager network was taxed beyond its limits and many of my pages never made it through. Everyone was calling home to check in on loved ones and I was no exception.
I remember driving on the Chicago loop just watching out the window at all the high rises in downtown Chicago expecting to see a plane fly in and hit one of them. It was so surreal. By this time one of the towers had already fallen and the other was not too far behind. How could this happen? WOW, WOW, WOW!!
Alex ended up driving home from Detroit to Appleton. Due to the possibility of trouble in Chicago, he decided to drive home through upper Michigan and down to Wisconsin. A much longer, but certainly safer trip.
We drove to Gurnee Mills and had lunch. Rick and I sat at the bar watching the events unfold. Not a word was spoken besides ordering our meal. We just stared and watched.
2001 was the Graph Expo year that just really wasn’t and the year the world will never forget.
I was walking around Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in Florida when we were all suddenly evacuated at about 11am. For that brief moment in the morning before I found out – all seemed right with the world. I was in a magical place where nothing else seemed to matter. Watching the tv non-stop from my hotel room in Kissimmee I just cried all night. Gangs of tough young guys with hoodies were on street corners with candles. Just stood there. Saying nothing. The day before – I would have guessed they were up to no good. 9/11 changed everything. And it changed the way I looked at other people.
Every car had a flag on it. It still blows me away. Words just can’t explain can they? I just remember the images. NYPD. NYFD. Everyday heroes. Absolutely ordinary guys going extra-ordinary things.
Despite the terrible losses – seeing America become so united in the face of such tragedy restored my faith in mankind. We’re all not so different after all and seeing people across all cultures working together to help and support each other was amazing. It’s a shame that it usually takes such terrible events to bring us all together and to remember what matters most. God Bless America. x
I was home with my mother, in a small corner of southeastern CT. I was 12, and she was 9 months pregnant. We watched the TV all morning in shock, waiting for my dad to try and make his way home from Boston. I answered the countless phone calls of nervous friends, assuring them that we were fine and dad was safe (he traveled a lot at the time). My mom started counting contractions.
My youngest sister was born that night… she’s 9 years old today.
She is indeed a very special little girl- just ran in my room and wrapped her not-quite-so-little-anymore arms around my neck with a cheerful ‘good morning!’ kiss. She has brought so much joy and giggles into so many lives. What a beautiful blessing of love, were all the little ones born during so much pain and sorrow. ❤ Happy birthday, and blessings to them all. ❤
I was at work when someone heard that a plane hit the first tower, we had a TV at work and we all rushed to it and saw the second plane go in. Most of the workforce that afternoon just sat on the floor around the TV watching events unfold. I remember driving home later that day and you could sense the somber atmosphere all around. I can honestly say that was the first time in my life I had felt really frightened. I live in the UK and for the next few weeks the amount of people who drove their cars around with little American flags fluttering from their windows was quite overwhelming. I wonder if we will see those flags today – 11/9/10.
10 minutes late for a meeting on the 97th Flr.
Garbage saved my life, yes the garbage.
I was living in Secaucus,NJ with my 2 daughters and my niece named ” ANGEL” A very lazy teenager at the time, her job ,, take the garbage cans to the street the night before. Tuesday was Garbage day.
I woke up at the usual 5am to go for my morning run. Down my street was the view of the empire state building. a few streets to my right and down to the main street, the WTC> Where i spent 9 years as a network engineer and project manager. i had a hand in building almost every large database network system in those buildings over the years.
I ran , then home to get my kids up for school. And my niece.
Hurrying them along as I got myself ready for a meeting at 9 am.
Piled the kids in the car, only to notice the trash cans still in the driveway in front of my SUV… Oh hell, i thought, my lazy teenage niece,
I did not ask much from her ever, but take out the cans. i was furious with her, as i raced off to drop my girls at the elementary school, they were in 5th and 6th grades. My niece was a sophomore in HS. I was fighting within side myself, my gut was screaming at me to drop them and take the short 6 blocks back to the house and pull out the cans. Shoot I thought, then i will hit traffic threw the tunnel.. which will make me at least 10 minutes late.
I was never late not once in my life, i couldn’t stand being late and I couldn’t stand anyone else being late either……
I was having a terribly bottle within, I am a bit of a neat freak, can;t have the cans full in the driveway. But i cannot be late either.
So i jumped on the Phone with my dear freind, Shell whom was not only my favorite head hunter but dear freind, She was meeting me at The WTC for this meeting to help negotiate my contract . I called her, shoot it’s already 8:35 i will for sure be late,
She answered her cell, where are you I asked her? getting towards the lobby mezzanine.
I will be a little late can;t help it, As the battle of the cans won out.
Wait for me there, I should not be more then 10 to 15 minutes late.
No that’s OK she replied, no worries. I will go up and let them know your almost here.
No No I kept insisting she wait for me in the lobby, as I was racing for the Holland Tunnel , figured I would have better luck at that time then the Lincoln.
I was practically begging her to wait for me which is so unlike my character, i would have normally said, go on up be there in a few if she ever arrived somewhere before me.
We got off the cell, I had no clue that would be our last conversation ever.
I raced threw the Holland tunnel and straight for the Marriott. Figured I had a better chance of making It close to time then trying for the garage,
The valet guys at the Marriott were always so great to me. i would fly up toss keys and my last name and book it to the tower.
I was in a sprint, when I got a real glimpse of the North tower on fire,
I slowed down looking up and said, what the hell happened there. A man standing there told me a small plane hit the building.
Shit that’s gonna take at least six months to fix as I started sprinting again. Knowing the time was passing quickly and I still had to pass threw the mezzanine to the elevators and up to 97…
I was somewhat jogging in high heels and a suit. as i was approaching the doors, I heard a loud roar of like an engine. Not sure what I heard,
Everyone stopped and looked up . At that very instant I was in shock as the Plane went thew the South Tower, I knew this was no accident.
Your mind cannot comprehend what your re seeing, you have no rel thoughts. people started running away from the building the fireman were yelling run, run. Why, why were they running away , i really didn’t get what was coming next, I started to run away with them.
There were people in the lobby that didn’t see the plane only heard the explosion. But they saw everyone running away and they started running for the doors.
The explosion of the airplane was with such force, I know that we got hit from both above us and from inside the lobby. The force coming down the building and the force that came from inside the elevator shafts and stairwells. There were people blown threw the glass of the lobby. Just literally picked up and blown threw.
We were knocked to the ground from above and blown from the inside.
I hit the ground so hard. Knocked the wind right out of me. I collected myself for only a moment when I saw there were people on fire. running around on fire. No one can imagine or even try to comprehend what was really taking place, it was all happening so fast.
I got up and looked straight up and there he was.. A man , a real live man, falling, he was clawing at the air, i knew he did not want to die, i knew it, the way he was clawing at the air, trying to find someway to keep from falling. I didn’t even have a moment to think I just reacted out of instinct.
You catch someone if they are falling, you catch them. Thats what we do. I started to run for him. My arms straight out in front of me.
My mind was just saying catch him, don’t let him go like this catch him.
I was running for him, I didn’t even think twice i was going to catch him.
A fireman saw me, thank God, he ran and tackled me to the ground. I was screaming no i have to catch him no no no no. the man hit the ground only a few feet from where we lay on the ground, I was in shock, a complete state of shock… I could only say No no no no.
No god he did not want to die.
the fireman got up and grabbed me up and said , you would have died too…. then he left me to go into the building. I am sure he never came out again….
my children, that was my thought I have to get to my children, I took of he heels and I started running for the Marriott, fire trucks sirens, police, they were every where. I don;t even want to go into the gruesome details of what I saw on the ground while i was running.
there were many others that had been blown out of the building, many fell from the top of he building and many were blown out of the lobby glass… there were parts, pieces and parts…
I had to get to my vehicle and get the F@&K out of there.
I was confused and not sure were exactly I was so I was making my way back to the Marriott Valet Parking…
Not sure what to think or feel , just numb, staying focused on my children not so much on what was going on around me. Then I started hearing popping sounds. Like water balloons hitting the ground. It was people, they were jumping or something, i didn’t want to see them. i heard the glass shattering as I was making my way threw.
i got to the Marriott as fast as I could I don’t even know how much time had lapsed, i was in shock. Sprinting to the valet . Oh my god, my red Sequoia, was still there in front. everyone was running . every direction, it was complete chaos.
I ran to the valet stand, there were no valet parkers in sight. My keys made it to the box and the box was open, thank god , i kept saying god help us god help us now..
I passed a whole lot of the fireman and emergency workers going into the buildings.
i jumped in my Sequoia, dodging emergency vehicles and headed straight for the Holland Tunnel, i knew they would close off the tunnels I had to get to my children. They knew I was going to be at the WTC by 9..
My niece had a great view of the towers from her High School. i was sure she was in shock at what was going on..
I raced threw the tunnel just as they were closing it down, I punched the gas not thinking i may hit someone, this is war man everyone for themselves. thank God that dude jumped out of the way…. I was without a doubt in a state of shock. I got to my girls elementary school, they had no idea what was going on. Just that kids were disappearing out of class..the halls of the school were chaotic. My daughter tells me I didn’t say a word, just tears streaming down my face. I grabbed the both of them hurried them to the SUV and off to collect my niece.
As i got to the high school and came threw the doors we ran down the hall to my nieces first period class, there she was plastered to her desk. the towers burning like inferno’s outside her window. She saw me and her face lite up. Oh my God Auntie I was sure you were up there. She got up and grabbed me so tight.
We raced the 6 blks to our little house, and I planted the kids in the living room.
Finally i had to say something my girls were stunned from all this action. i sat them down and said, something terrible has happened. i can’t explain right now but it’s really awful… they said, yeah we could see al the smoke rising up in the air.
The WTC has been attacked by airplanes and lots of people need my help..
I had to go back, my freinds were in those buildings, My girls were safe and out of harms way. My phone started to ring. we had gotten cell phone service back for a bit. My Sister In law said she watched it on TV. Wanted to make sure we where OK. I said we a re all fine, but the others, i cannot speak for .
I turned on the TV as I did’nt want to go outside and watch anything more in person for a moment. i had to gather my thoughts. Not sure what was going threw my head truthfully.
AS I turned on the TV ,a few minutes later, my building fell i was in shock… Like everyone else I am sure that witnessed the events of that day. The second tower fell as i was making my way to the ferries on the Jersey shore. The tunnels were all closed there was no way on or off the island. i was trying to reach my freinds, nothing. I got nothing. Just as I got to were the ferries run, my phone rang, it was my freind Nick. I am stuck on the island, he told me. are you OK I said, yeah just can;t breath very good. he had gotten stuck in the dust cloud. His father was a firefighter. I am at the ferry Nick get to the ferry.
I was at the ferries, and i was screaming at them go over there and get people they need out, they have to get out. I was standing watching as the dust came across the water like a blanket. Horrified, everyone was traumatized, at the sites we all had been witnessing.
The dust started to lift a bit and the ferries got permission to run to the island finally. I jumped on the ferry, a man was telling i couldn’t go back over there. i just looked him in the eyes and said, my friends are over there. i am not leaving them.
How stupid, like what was I going to be able to do to save them now. nothing, absolutely nothing.
AS the ferry made it’s way across the Hudson, i just stared at the smoke.
I called Nick to make sure he was there. Yeah I am here. i am on my way.i said.
That was the longest ferry ride I had ever taken seemed like it took hours to get to the island..
I met up with Nick he was OK thank God,
We have to go help.Follow me he said, he was so brave, just like his father.. We ran back towards the WTC. blocks before we got there , the soot was so thick and debris everywhere, nothing looked familiar, it all seemed so different to me know.
Burnt cars, people coughing and choking, Nick asked a policeman , what can we do, they said, find people, under cars in stairways, anywhere. just look for people. The air was disgusting, it was hard to breath, you had to put your shirt over your mouth.
We searched up streets, stairways, in shops were the windows were blown out. Ever few minutes you could hear someone call out , over here over here. They had found someone alive, under a car or in a shop… the rescue workers would come running with oxygen and wound care stuff.
it was without a doubt a war zone.
The thing i remember most, is the smell, we all knew when the smell would change. The rescue working digging around the building site would run back when there was a flare up. The smell. It was people burning. The smell was worse then anything you have ever smelled.
We were there for hours and hours trying to find people. Hoping to find someone alive. And yes there where many civilians helping, many many.. I asked Nick to come back to Jersey withe me, we’ll go get supplies and I have to check on my girls.
We need gloves and mask’s if we are to do any good. he said you go I am going to stay . Ok i will be back with supplies..
i went back to Jersey, got in my SUV and headed to the house.
My girls were fine, not asking to many questions as they could see i wasn’t quite right,
What can we do to help mom, there little faces looking so concerned.
Well i will think of something . i had to think of something, they were just like there mom, wanting to do something verses do nothing.
I told them, we have to go to home depot, the guys over there need stuff. So we all went to the Home Depot, we got 2 shopping carts and filled them with every mask, gloves and flashlight they had…
we drove the supplies to the ferries. What a site, so many people bring things to help the rescue workers, one guy had his entire back of his SUV full of bottled water. and so many others had so many much needed things.
i dropped off the supplies and took the girls back home.
The kids picked out spray paint and we got two long wooden sticks and nail tacks.
Ok girls here’s your project to help. we need moral support. i want you to take a bed sheet and write a message of support for all the rescue workers. i gave my niece some ideas and showed her what to do. She was great , the girls worked on tit all evening and into the night.
I jumped back to the ferry and went back over with the supplies.
You never saw so many people working together and nothing was orchestrated, there wasn’t time for that. they loaded that ferry in chain gang mode…. everyone was working together.
For a city that has just been torn apart, everyone was working together fro the better of our fellow Nyer’s..
I got off the ferry with gloves flashlights and masks for those that were with nick. i called him to get his location. I made my way threw the chaos to were he was. he was so close to were the towers used to stand it was unnerving.
Whats the plane, find anyone in the rubble, No he replied, nobody.
They where digging and shoveling shit everywhere, it was starting to look hopeless…. no one had been found. Just parts.
Nick and i where working side by side sifting threw stuff. can’t even make out was some of it was.
Nick picked up something and said, what is this, is it a ball…
he handed it to me. it was squishy and soft. i poured water over it from my water bottle, Oh my God, i thought i was going to be sick. It was a heart, it was someone’s heart. I was holding it in my hand. Nick called to the chief, what are we supposed to do with things like this. get a body bag, we will need everything for DNA testing… i just stared at it, i couldn’t believe the events of that day. I was wearing down, Nick too. It must be already 2 or 3 in the morning. And there was no one being found alive..
I am going home for a bit, i can’t take much more of this….
My girls made a wonderful sign, they where sleeping sound. I took a shower to wash off the smell….the dirt and ashes…
i laid in bed for a short time, I guess i dozed off for a few minutes and i don; know what I was dreaming but i woke up suddenly sick as a dog, i ran to the bathroom and just purged, My body could not contain all the things It was feeling.
traumatized, absolutely. i couldn’t stop, i had to help i had to try to help my freinds. Like so many others with me.
Morning came quickly I watched the news for a few, saw how there were rescue workers coming from every where to aid, in the recovery efforts.
the rescue had now turned to a recovery…We all knew that it would be a great huge miracle if they were to find anyone alive.
The rescue vehicles were being lined up at the Holland Tunnel before being sent to ground zero. So I strategically placed my daughters and my niece there with their big beautiful sign of support. it said in big bubble letter, THANK YOU firefighters, emt’s rescuers and police for your brave support. This was how they could help, moral support… And I know it was appreciated to and so did my girls, as the emergency vehicles would pass them to go threw the tunnel they would honk and honk.. It made them feel good that they got to be a part of the solution and not the problem….
I know now that i protected them from the gruesome details of that day and the days following. the minute they turned the Jersey shore from a triage to a morgue, i wouldn’t let them near it. I took them to see my freinds at the Hoboken fire dept, And the guys were so great. even thou they had lost so many that day, they reassured my girls , everything’s going to be OK..
4 days after . i sat in hobson’s bar in Hoboken with a whole bunch of firemen that had been there the past three days, So proud to be amongst some of he bravest men i have ever had the pleasure of knowing.
We got completely shitfaced… We cried and cried. I never hugged so many people in my lie. And yes I needed them every bit as much as they needed me and each other..
The events still haunt me to this very day, i found out with the first week I has lost 6 of my very dearest freinds in the WTC. that day. And three months later another friend of mine that watched from his roof, the people jumping and the whole deal, he committed suicide…
I live my life triple now, i live every day to the fullest not just for me but for my freinds and all the others that lost there life that day.
And especially for the Falling man, that i couldn’t catch… i pray they are in a better place and that one day we will know each other again..
9 years and these wounds won’t seem to heal, the pain is just to real..
i still cry for almost a week leading up to 9/11.. I try to contain it, but it is still to overwhelming.. i have only shared my story with one other person since then, a grief councilor in California, I moved five months after 9/11.. No one can handle the gruesome details of the events. Not even me… i will take those pictures in my head to my grave.
Please. please never forget. For all of those that had no choice but to die that day.
For our loved ones, fro our children…. We will never forget….
Thanks for giving me at least one out let it helps to ease the pain even if no one reads it…. i am grateful…
Thank you for sharing this amazing stories with us…
*hug hug hug* I’m so sorry, sweetie.
Wow, thank you for sharing your story x
Oh, I cried reading your story. This is just heartbreaking. I live in Australia and when I woke up to go to school that morning, my mum was just sitting in the lounge room eyes glued to the tv, tears streaming down her face. I remember watching it in awe, crying. It was crazy. It was hard to believe what I was watching it. I was thirteen.
I thought I was watching paper flying out of the building, for a few minutes, and then I realised that it was people. And I remember they had a camera rolling…. I think maybe there was some kind of overpass, footbridge nearby? I’ve never been there, but there were some ladies standing, watching the towers, and they were caught on camera, and one of them must have thought it was paper flying out of the building too.
Then she suddenly shrieked, put her hand over her mouth and pointed and said “Oh no, it’s people… they’re people falling… jumping… oh no, no…” And she was shaking her head, and on the other side of the world, sitting in my loungeroom on a quiet morning, I was shaking my head in disbelief and horror too. It was like a reflex; you felt that if you shook your head and thought ‘don’t do it, don’t jump, don’t die!’ that it would stop happening. And yet I thought, “I’d probably jump.”
I can imagine the fear, the horror. I can imagine that man clawing at the air, and I can imagine how awful and helpless it must feel to watch somebody die and be unable to help at all. But I can only imagine.
I just watched footage for days. At school, the kids in my grade didn’t seem too fussed and I felt like a zombie all day, walking around feeling like ‘this calm day is so surreal. How can it be so calm here when there is so much chaos going on right now. Right as I am here there are people dying.’
I finally got up the courage to watch footage on YouTube last year. I don’t know anybody from New York. I didn’t personally lose anybody but I felt like I had. It is impossible to witness such tragedy and not grieve for the people who lost their lives.
Thank you for having the courage to tell your story. Many people who were there would to this day be unable to relive the horror in order to tell others what it was like for them. It takes immense strength to relive such a tragedy and share it, especially with strangers. My heart goes out to you, and everybody who was there or who was affected by these events.
It also takes a lot of courage to leave a scene of horror and destruction and then turn around and throw yourself back there, even to help. I am so sorry you had to see the things you saw, but I am glad you have the strength to cope. What a wonderful human being you must be.
Your story is incredible. Thank you for sharing it with us. I pray that healing comes from the sharing. We will never forget. I will encourage my adult children and everyone I know to read this…
I was at work – our publicist told me about the first plane. Then my colleagues and I watched the events unfold on a small television in one of the meeting rooms. It is amazing how I remember everything from that morning – I remember exactly who I told about the news and I remember their reactions. My mother says it was similar to the day that JFK was shot – everything else just stopped.
http://tinamcfadden.wordpress.com/
I live in a small Tennessee town… got the news over the radio while working for a large corp, HQ outside the City. I called a friend whose only comment was,”the girls…they’re gone.” I sat in our conference room all morning with a lady from our accounting office… she cried all morning. I cancelled meetings that day and went home to sit in the yard with my two very small children. This morning, I’m sitting across the table having breakfast with my, now, 12 yr old son… Talking about what happened and how terribly ignorant the world has become. I fully supported retaliation, however, we’ve seem to have lost our way…. a squabble over a mosque…. burning the Koran… Since 9/11, I’ve become self-employed to be home with my kids more…I’ve read the Koran and discovered a beautiful, peaceful work…. I’m marrying a beautiful Muslim woman in a matter of months…. I attend mass when I am able… yet I am going to ensure these kids understand that harmful things are done everyday in the name of God… in the name of Allah… the Name is no more than a tool to build steam behind mindless behavior by groups that would otherwise be nonexistent.
I was in college, first class of the morning. The professor came in and announced that there was a news report of a plane hitting a building. I don’t recall if he’d mentioned or knew whether it was the WTC or not.
He then proceeded with class and instruction. All I recall of that hour in that class was doodling in my notebook a picture of a plane hitting the Twin Towers. I don’t know if I even have that notebook anymore.
I then went to my local hangout, the Baptist Collegiate Ministry, and I probably didn’t go to another class that day, instead being glued to the TV and calling my father in NY.
I knew an aquaintance that died that day. Jack Fanning. And I’ve written a small memorial for him. http://wadingacross.wordpress.com/2010/09/11/the-new-day-that-lives-in-infamy/
I recall a couple of years later our city (Lafayette, LA) put up a Sept. 11th memorial using two steel beams and some concrete from the Pentagon and World Trade Center. On the day of the commemoration small photocopied pictures of every firefighter and policeman that died on Sept. 11th, 2001 were laid around the base. That evening, a friend and I walked by the memorial, and finding Jack’s photo, I proceeded to tell my friend about Jack.
That is what I do every Sept. 11th. Tell people what I remember about Jack and what he did on that day.
I was working in my school library in Newcastle, England. I was 17 at the time and to be honest, I didn’t even know what the twin towers were. So when I heard it on the radio I couldn’t picture in my head what was happening. It was only when I got home and turned on the tv that I saw the horror that was unfolding. I’ve visited Ground Zero 3 times since then and each time I’m dumbfounded by the sheer size of the the site.
Never forget.
I was taking some sun in the Tuileries Garden (French: Jardin des Tuileries) in Paris, right close to the palace’s site , the Palais du Louvre then I received a phone call from my friend that used to work at the GAP shop in one of the tower. Since she was working during the evening she was fine but still she was worried of the people that were possibly working in the shop during the morning. I dont think anybody was injurred and were able to leave the shop before the towers collapsed.
then I went to a Bar that was close to the Tuileries Garden to watch on TV and live from our french channel the second building collapsing. It’s was a very scary moment for everybody in the Bar.
I was at home, back in the Basque Country (North of Spain), calling my aunt because of her birthday, when I saw the image of the first plane crashing against the tower. Inmediately I thought: Oh, c’mon what kind of movie is this? this is just too much!! and then the second plane crashed and I saw ‘live’ in one of the corners… I dropped the phone, start calling my mom and we sat there in silence watching everything… It was so shocking I’m sure I will never be able to forget that moment of impotence… and at the same time I was trying to remember where all my friends around the world were at that moment, praying nobody would be there…
I was in school. Think it happened about lunchtime in England, but the teachers wouldn’t tell us because they didn’t want to upset us apparently.
Someone managed to get it out of our teacher and she finally told us, we all sat in shock for the rest of the afternoon.
I was in horrified confusion.
Me, I was in the “Golden Thirteen” building on the NTC side of the road, waiting with the rest of my bootcamp division to get our second haircuts, 4 weeks into basic training. That was a very surreal day in basic training. It was also rather sad, that even after we found out what had happened many hours later, that most of the other recruits in division 431 did not seem to understand that the tone and reality of our new lives in the Navy would never return to what they would have been, had that day never happened as it did.
I was at work, my mom telling me about the towers… all I remember was when she told me I said… what do you mean the other tower… at the point Iw as still naive in thinking it was some freak accident… and when pentagon hit… that’s when it all felt like science fiction or Independence Day (movie) come to life.
we were on a plane http://wortundbild.wordpress.com/2010/09/11/9-11/
I sat in front of the TV, when the news came from the first impact. The second strike I saw in real time. From that moment on I knew that from now on everything would be different. I am German in Germany and in our neighborhood is an American barracks. I had as a child almost daily contact with American soldiers and their families. However, the only thing I could do now to the thousands of flowers, lying before the entrance to the U.S. residential district, to lay one more and let my tears run free.
Cant forget that tragical attacks. People have started using religion as politics, this will bring some more tragic results.
I was at work that morning. After the shock of hearing about what had happened, I voiced my angry thoughts to co-workers and customers. The rest of the day was a nightmare, as I was manager of a gas station/store. People went crazy buying gas, lines all around the store, up and down all the connecting streets. We are half way across the states and in middle of USA. The fear for the whole country was felt that day. I remember watching the sky for signs of impending disaster for our own area, everytime I stepped outside.
We shed tears as one that day, the whole country, and God protect us please, that we don’t have to shed more in the future. That day will never be forgotten, nor will thoughts of those who’s lives were lost and the families who lived the nightmare of getting the word their loved one perished that day at the hands of the devils work. God Bless America.
I remember it as if it were yesterday. I had just woken up and I was in the 2nd grade. My parents eyes were glued to the TV. I can remember when I went to school how all the teachers seemed to devastated and the Principal came over the intercom and gave his condolences…. what a horrific day for ALL American’s
-God Bless
September 11, 2001
I was an 11 year old boy, in the 6th grade. That recent summer I had attended a safety guard trip to D.C. with my elementary school. This trip was going to be the thing I was to remember when I was older. I had went to D.C. that summer and nobody else in my class had. However, I was a kid. I did not know that natural disasters and warfare marked history better than a school trip to D.C.
Where was I on 9-11? I was sitting in a classroom, doing god knows what kind of class work. The years have obscured the specific subject being taught. I do remember my principle coming into my classroom and instructing the teacher to turn on the television. He said, “This is history in the making folks.”
We watched this newscast for what seemed like ten minutes before any of us figured out what happened. I remember a girl named Natalie asked if all of the people were dead. At that very moment, my teacher swiveled in her chair and began to cry.
The news channel kept urging everyone to call their family members if they lived in NYC or were visiting NYC. And slowly, we all began to want to call our mothers, fathers, grandmothers, big sisters and brothers to see if they were okay. By that time, my teacher had gotten ahold of herself enough to tell us they would be alright. WE would be alright. After all, who’d wanna run a plane into a school?
The rest of that week, we did nothing but talk, write or even learn more about the tragedy of Sept. 11th or 9/11. The principle had allowed the teachers to keep the TV’s on all day on the news channels to keep updated.
That was my 6th Grade 9/11 experience.
At 18 years old, I woke up just after it happened, overhearing my dad explain to my grandma in our native langauge about what happened-I was really confused. Normally I ask a billion questions, but this time I just walked over to the couch and stared at the TV like a zombie. I was born in the US and parents had lived more than half of their life here. My grandparents who have always been proud American citizens, seemed more American to me on that day more than ever. I no longer saw them as Indian immigrants…. A few weeks later my parents dropped me off 400 miles away for my first year in college. Really close to campus is a federal reserve building and all we saw were military helicopters protecting the building. I can only now imagine the fear that my parents had…
Thank you Mike for sharing your touching story.
On 9/11 I and my family were on the other side of the world, in our little farm house in Central Victoria, Australia. I was getting up to head off for a day doing my SW degree, when I decided to flick on tv. All the channels were covered with fire – Afghanistan. And then the revelation that the first building had hit. I sat mesmerised and then the 2nd plane hit. My wife awoke and had the dreamy look on her face – like she knew all about it. Which I later discovered she did.
The next 3 weeks unfolded like a scene from the twilight zone. My wife Bella is that kind of clairevoyant who can’t shut any of it out – it all just happens, including seeing dead people.
For 3 weeks we were visited by passengers and crew from all 3 planes and people who were in the WTC. Many of them looked as they did when they died. Although it would be beyond most people’s capacity to believe, our home became like a cross roads for the dead. Most of them drawn to my wife – without any knowledge of why. And often their long dead relatives came to receive them, to comfort them, to tend their wounded hearts. And with their presence came the smell of death. Try to imagine that – smelling decay in your own house, thousands of km from where this happened.
That first day, I remember seeing 3 people standing in my living room, as glued to the television as I was. They could not believe what they were seeing. They looked like zombies – paralysed by the reality that they had died in what they were seeing. One of them was a pilot who’s neck had been almost completely severed. He was badly burned and crying. Then there was a black man, who’s legs were almost torn in half and a white lady, with her hair completely scorched. They were standing there in burnt, torn rags, almost unable to move. I watched my wife as she talked to them and talked to me about them, crying. We later learned that a well known American – the one who helped free the slaves – helped bring down the plane that crashed in Pittsburgh – a dead man who cared enough to stop the plane before it reached it’s real target and claimed more lives. This man, even in death, loved his fellow country men.
Years later, we still talk about that day. I’ve never told anyone about this experience, because ordinary people have a hard enough time coping with the living, let alone the dead. The greatest sadness really, is that people died needlessly because of differences in perception of a 3 letter word – GOD.
It was the beginning of my senior year of college. I’d pulled an all-nighter and had been on the phone with my mom for a while when she got a call from my dad and told me to turn on the news.
I found the first news channel I could find and the TV stayed on that station for two weeks.
I saw the first tower burning, and told my mom, “It looks like a plane hit the top of one of the World Trade Center towers.” I woke up my roommate and right when she came into the living room, we saw the second plane hit–we thought at first that they were replaying tape of the first hit.
We heard John McWethy reporting from the Pentagon, and then heard the Pentagon get hit–I was from northern Virginia, and that’s when I really started falling to pieces. I sat in my pj’s, staring at the television and crying into a handtowel, until I had to go to class.
On campus, it was easy to tell who’d had 8 a.m. classes–they were the ones walking around with a “WTF is wrong with everyone?” expression. The rest of us were exactly like everyone else all around the country: glassy-eyed and subdued, and kinder than usual to strangers.
In November, my father and I stood on the grass and stared at the hole in the Pentagon.
A year later, I was working in northern VA and I went to the ceremony at the Pentagon. I was too far away to hear the speakers, so all I remember is that it was another gorgeous, blue-sky September day.
I never watch the footage of the attacks.
I was just 4 city blocks north in ps 89 when the planes hit. I would later see the second tower collapse from pier 25. As both my school and apartment were below 14th street we could not go home. We got 3 weeks off of school after the event and we had to stay at a friends house for 6 months. When school began again we were sent to a total of 5 Other schools and it was spring by the time I got to go home
I remember everything from that day, the shirt I wore what I ate the book I brought to school exactly what I said heard and saw it is by far my clearest memory, I at times remember 911 better than yesterday
You’ve got lots to be thankful for. I think that day changed everything for many of us. Keep smil’n.
I was sitting on the couch watching TV. Hubby was in the shower and it was about 10pm. Whatever I was watching was interrupted & live coverage of the plane heading into the first tower Was suddenly on.
At first I couldnt figure out what was happening because no one really understood at that stage. The announcers where saying it was an accident and a plane had flown into the WTC. Then the second plane came into view.
I was yelling for my hubby to come & see what was going on & when he arrived I dont thing he believed me. We watched for several hours before going to bed.
The next morning we heard all the rest of the news and where just stunned. My daughter was due to go to daycare that day & I got ready & took her down. The daycare centre is on a RAAF Base & it was alive with people & vehicles. As I pulled into the daycare centre & was getting my daughter out of the car I could see a soldier in full gear with an attack dog and a (machine?) gun walking the perimiter. That was it as far as I was concerned. I wasnt leaving my child on an airforce base with this going on so we got back into the car & went home.
I think the hardest thing was trying to explain it all to my 6yr old. There was so much on the TV and so graphic that it scared the hell out of her. How do you explain it to a 6yr old that the world has gone crazy – but dont panic – we’ll be all right?
I shed many tears & cried on and off for days. All those people who lost their lives and in such circumstances.
I was in California. My then husband, now ex, was in the shower. He came out and told me that he had heard on the radio that a plane had hit one of the towers. I turned on the television, sat down on the couch and watched the news for the rest of the day. I kept thinking that day and days later, that they have to find the little black box which would tell us what happened.
After that, whenever I saw a plane in the sky, I always prayed that it would arrive safely to the destination.
I was living in Dublin Ireland and was on my way to lawn bowling practice. The first vague reports were coming through on the radio. It seemed like a rumour. Bowling practice lasted about 2 hours. When I returned home I found that the horror of it all was unfolding and we watched on television. It was just unbelievable.
Speechless
I was 7. My little private catholic school decided that they shouldn’t be the ones to tell the kids younger than 10 about what happened. But we found out because my 2nd grade teacher came into the classroom crying and saying “the world is going nuts” … we turned on the tv and all I remember was watching it and not fully comprehending. I didn’t think anybody could possibly have it in their hearts to do something to that extent. My mom was supposed to be on that 2nd plane that hit. She found out 3 days before that she had to have an emergency appendectomy, and couldn’t travel.
Right now I’m sitting in my dorm room at Fordham University in the Bronx, crying as I read these incredible stories. One of our lounges faces Manhattan, and on clear days and nights, you can see the skyline- without the Twin Towers. I can only imagine how we would react if- God forbid- something similar happened today. I would probably find out via Twitter or text. How’s that for a story?
What has really stood out to me in these comments are the words of the mothers, terrified to bring their children into this world. I was two days shy of 11 when the attacks happened, but I know that the younger kids have no recollection of that day. They have always lived in this crazy world of ours.
http://shadesofsarah.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/remember-september/
dats why i think foreign soldiers in Iraq, afghanistan and palestine need to be pulled away from the land. Be home soldiers.
Sometimes i think they are doing the exact same thing that the terrorist did on wtc..war, bombs, explosion, tears..and not many american care about that..
I was in tenth grade. Since I live about 15 to 30 minutes from Manhattan, depending on traffic, we could see the smoke and debris from the second floor of my high school. I was in math class and someone went running down the hall screaming that the towers had been attacked, my teacher didn’t believe it so she turned on the news and we all fell into a stunned silence. None of us did anything but watch the news in all our classes and then we found out that both parents of a freshman were missing in the towers. My school was already mourning the one year anniversary of a students death and then the trade center, we all just shut down. My fiance’s father was very involved with the rescue efforts, but to this day he refuses to talk about it. Never Forget. 9.11.01
I was in fifth grade in my classroom, probably learning something. All I remember was an announcement from the principal telling all the teachers to turn on the news. My teacher did, and I remember him gasping and we all sat there and watched.
I remember getting home from school and I didn’t really understand what was going on. After watching the coverage on the news that night and doing a tribute to those who died/were missing in my classroom, it really hit me.
I also remember the first game at the Metrodome after 9/11… and I remember seeing the first airplanes flying out of the St. Paul airport. It was all really surreal, and yet… all too real.
Um…. Where was I you ask? My answer is…………. I wasn’t anywhere cause i wasnt born… lucky me.
I was working as a staff designer in Nashville, TN. We had TV in our lunch area, it was on and I remember I was walking toward the men’s room as I heard what sounded like, “it appears the US may be under attack” come from the unseen TV and being ex-military, I froze in an attempt to tune my hearing for additional words as I shuffled around the wall and into the lunch area to gaze at the screen. That chill hit me immediately. My America? They choose to attack us here? What bloody fucking fools?
I then convert to guardian and protector mode; gotta call mom, sisters, close friends, not-so-close friends. I battled disbelief for about an hour and then curiosity as to what our President would now do…
My mom passed the following October – just a little less than 2 months after the attack and murder of 9/11…
she went into shock on 9/11 and never recovered.
I must include my comment regarding possible placement of a mosque near Ground Zero in NYC – the entire world should know that this is our hollowed ground; consider this as spiritual a place as Mecca or The Temple Mount to us. As such, it would be desecration to build anything nearby! Just DON’T DO IT and show US SOME RESPECT!
In bed. Time difference in Australia meant that it was the following late night / early morning. Phone rang and we were told to get to the TV. Watching the second plane hit half asleep was surreal. Everybody got to school the next morning wondering if it really happened.
http://seanjhross.wordpress.com/
The memories still rattle my cage.
I remember fighting so hard to not cry, but the tears made tracks through the toxic dust on my face..
I will never forget the outpouring of love and resources that poured into downtown NYC.
The streets were lined with what seemed like endless truckloads of water, tools, and other resources.
I keep the light burning by reaching out. I volunteer for East Coast Assistance Dogs in Dobbs Ferry, NY. They educate dogs to help people with disabilites. They have started “Project Heal”…service dogs for wounded veterans…
I would share so much more, put the pain is just too great. So many firefighters ran into those towers, while everyones instinct was to flee.
Those men will forever live in my heart. As will all those who perished on that dreadful day.
I pray that you all “Shine Until Tomorrow!”..
Matthew LaMonica
It means so much to me to have you speak here.
Everyone, this is my brother the firefighter in NY. When the lord went around and was passing out good guy pills, he must have got stuck and spent extra time with him.
You are my hero and one of the heroes that has kept the spotlight burning.
I love you my brother.
Not only people in the USA are marked forever. I’m from Mexico but that day I was near Copenhagen, Danmark visiting some friends. It was around 4:00 when our friend turn on the TV to watch Beverly Hills 90210 (yes, on Danish TV) and in every channel the images of the towers were shown.
It was shocking to see them turn into rubble and leave that huge cloud of smoke and dust. Days later we continued our tour around Europe and saw some demonstrations against terror, the largest in Prague. Our flight to Mexico City left from Barajas in Madrid and that was the first time we experienced one of the most annoying results from that dark day: the endless luggage inspection.
The world changed forever that. My deepest sympathy for all the people in the USA.
Sincerely, Gisela.
I was sleeping ’cause was night in the other side of the atlantic ocean, first I thought was that yankees have pissed off the moors for many time and they are now very angry, second they asked for it, third poor people dying there and poor people dying in wars, hungry, disisead… all over this big huge world, third didn’t care much, in my country every year dies people because of terrorism and we don’t stop our lives, living in fear and cry over and over again ’bout people that even’t knew and never would met. This is just a different point of view, of course from respect.
I totally agree. It was very unsettling.
… I was a very long way away, in Vancouver, Canada ~ but it was very real; very surreal. I was working in a very well known coffee shop that can be found in many neighborhoods, including Manhattan. It was also a bright crisp, clear morning. It was my customers that told me what was happening, all second hand news from watching the reports that were flooding the airwaves.
There was a feeling of helplessness for me, because I was not able to stand as a witness to what was going on [if only over the TV]. The morning rush did not arrive in my store; only progressive updates of the terrible event as it unfolded.
Being an American company, there was an immediate concern that we also might be a target ~ no one knew who was responsible or what was possible [ I think this is still true]. And then we got a call that we were to close the store, NOW, my mind ran with its fears of what might be unfolding; that it was now reaching beyond our friends to the South, that it would somehow reach us all, even those across the continent…
Until I began to watch the news myself, I was left with edited, sanitized versions of what was happening that morning. None of those edited, sanitized versions of reality then or now, will ever touch the pain and suffering for those who were there, for those who were directly involved and affected by this tragedy.
Be well, may you be in peace…
I was in bed (live on the west coast). When I got up to go to school, my mom had the TV on and the news kept replaying the clips. My middle school math teacher cried during class and had a moment of silence for the lost and their families.
http://myperfectgovernment.wordpress.com
I remember driving in a work truck on 95 North from baltimore to pennsylvania when i remarked how beautiful the morning was. i never do that.
turned the radio on and heard about the first airplane. i said, shit that is bad. than the next one. not immediately realizing what was going on i told my friend that that had to be the worst case of coincidence.
my parents where flying in a plane on 9/11 above new york. didn’t hear from them for 3 days.
they made it, they were redirected to canada.
we will never forget!
Morning, Wednesday, 12 September 2001.
At that time, I didn’t have internet access at home, and I didn’t watch TV or listen to the radio.
While I was having a shower, my mother rang and left a brief message for me to check the news about “terrorist attacks in America last night” (Sydney time). That message intrigued me, but I wouldn’t be able to check the news until I got to my PC at work.
I got dressed and headed off to work. It was a 30-minute walk that took me through the Sydney CBD.
Not far from my office, there used to be a shopping centre with a food court that I used as a shortcut. That morning, a large crowd was gathered before the public TVs that were showing startling footage of a burning Pentagon.
Ten minutes later at my desk, I was truly stunned as I read that the night before (Sydney time) the US had been attacked, the World Trade Centre was gone, the Pentagon had also been struck by another hijacked airliner, and a fourth airliner had gone down near Pittsburgh and had perhaps been shot down by the USAF (fortunately, the true story of Flight 93 soon emerged).
I called my mother and we talked about it.
I later worked out that when the attacks had begun late the night before, I had been walking home past Sydney Town Hall on my way home from my regular Tuesday-night pub-trivia game.
To this day, and as I write this, it’s still very sad and unsettling to think that while I was walking home that night and thinking of a nice shower, an hour or two of the computer game ‘Diablo II’ and then bed, on the other side of the world an awful moment in history was taking place.
I was in school when one of my teachers came running in a spilled the news.
http://ivegotablog.wordpress.com/
I was freelance and between jobs. My mom had died six months before and my father was a raving lunatic and a nasty bit to live with, crying and cursing at the same time. Didn’t give a fig that 3000 people just perished on the world stage just minutes after arriving to their jobs.
I woke up to it by a phone call at 10am. I called the interviewer with whom I had an interview with later that day and they told me bits and pieces of what happened. It was surreal as if I was watching a film instead of a reality much too horrible to fathom.
I was glad my mom was passed so she didn’t have to psychically see this tragedy. She had lived through the bombing of Pearl Harbor; she didn’t need to see this, too. Plus she was a real American and remembered D-Day which in her day was the most infamous day of the year.
I knew of several people who perished that day. I only met this one kid who was on his first day as a laborer for a construction company. His first and last job. He got out of the first hit tower but he and his crew decided to go to the other to ‘save’ others. They never came out alive. He was 21 years old. The only son in his family. Months later they found his tattoo’d arm which they buried. It was horrific and continues to this day to be with the proposed building of this disgusting mosque for Muslims to gather and laugh at the building they helped destroy that day 9 years ago.
I do not mean to be disrespectful to the memory of the fallen but I loathe the idea of a mosque anywhere in the world. Religious cults such as Islam must be eliminated from the face of the earth. No religion is good and most cause the deaths of millions of people yearly; their followers blinded by undying faith that causes death to others. Religions such as these do not make me want to follow them.
In my religion – I can do whatever I wish but I cannot harm anyone. Simple rules that are hard to do but I strive to perform that very rule to its fullest every day.
I am a computer warrior holding my keyboard like a sword I wage a verbal war with others hiding behind their monitors and screen names, trying to make sense of this most confusing world we live in.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to post on your site. Blessed be for the remainder of good people of sound mind and patriotic heart.
Flags unfurled and lowered in the memory of the fallen of 911.
—– Bonju Patten
I was in my apartment 2 blocks from the WTC, as I had been 8 years before when the WTC was bombed, 6 people were killed and years of word were needed to complete rehab with it finishing with a street widening and landscaping on 9/10/01, began with that bombing. My apartment faced away from the towers and when I heard the first plane hit, I thought it was normal construction noise until someone on the street shrieked and, looking out, I saw a line-up of folks staring at the towers which were out of my view, and a bus swooping off it’s route, speeding to a safer area. Not having TV, I switched on the radio and heard the news, then spoke with my assistant about whether she would come in to walk clients’ dogs with me or not, with her 3-year-old in tow. Because she’d been warned people were leaping from the towers, and she had clients not far from that side, she decided to stay home, which meant I had more walks and an earlier day, to cover everything (I thought). I nonchalantly got dressed, grabbed my small dog and went out towards my first client’s apartment building. As we walked to the Hudson from my building, I heard the first tower start to implode and, looking back, saw it crumbling and got us indoors immediately, avoiding the black cloud by 2 seconds. I never made it to any of those dogs for their walks that day since as as soon as possible we were all evacuated on boats to NJ; building employees and other people coming back to rescuing pets over the next day or two. I’m not going to every forget where I was that day or for the next year while the neighborhood dug itself out of the resulting chaos.
we are neighbors..my husband and i live in wurtsboro!!..we were stuck in a hotel in chicago. sept 11 we were flying back from san antonio after seeing my stepson graduate from lackland airforce base. we were suppose to be home on the 10th but TWO planes we boarded had problems and we wound up in chicago. needless to say our flight was cancelled..when we finally got a flight a few days later.. we were told it was the first flight out of ohare and it flew into westchester..our car was at albany airport ..a minor detail ..the whole thing just seems surreal..but it really did happen 😦
I was falling behind in reading for my classes that semester. So I decided I would isolate myself in my room and read for hours. So I woke up, skipped breakfeast, kept my computer off, and read till it was time for class. Then I checked my email briefly and found out everything. I was shocked. I had to run to class, which happened to be a very interesting and appropriate religion class. Went to all my classes that day. Spent the rest of the day surfing the web for news.
I was on a break on an oil platform se Oz watching the 11pm(?) news by myself in the TV lounge. I was gob smacked, and wondering what was going to happen the next day. Scared? No. But the news was comforting later on, as the US did not hit the Big Red Button straight-away; but sensibly waited
i was teen when i read the headline of newspaper n watching the news. i was crying hear the stories of the firemans n some brave people in a plane who fight the terorist in their plane so they save the white house, it said they were praying before.
N I REALLY HONOUR THOSE PEOPLES. They save others life! THEY DID LIKE CHRIST DO!!
What kind of Religion that teach their followers to killed christians n to destroy churches in all d world?
Talking to a friend, early in the morning, and he told me what happened and said to turn on my TV. I was working as a newspaper reporter. I was very familiar with the type of aircraft that hit the World Trade Center because I had worked for the airline industry. And I was so affected by what happened that I ended up quitting my job, getting on an Amtrak train for four days, and standing at Ground Zero, interviewing people. The things they said amazed me. Then I went to Grand Central Station and jotted down the names of people on “missing” signs. Six months later, I called the numbers on those signs. I wound up talking to seven people that had lost family members in the towers. We kept in touch for years.
The one thing that struck me from all those interviews was what people remembered about the people that died. Funny stories. Maybe it’s because I waited six months but they had so many funny stories. I heard their anger, their confusion, their frustration, how much they wanted to know exactly where somebody was when a plane hit, why it had to happen to them, etc. It made me realize how precious life is. I’ve been a freelance writer ever since.
Thanks for remembering that day.
your article was great. when this happened i was in japan at some japanese baseball game. the only reason that i am speaking in english is because i had a translator help me with this comment. i am just learning how to speak english. that is how much that i like this blog. i think that the next step would be writing a book, if you already do not. if you ever do it will be a bestseller or in japanese a kanurite.
GOOD JOB
I was at work, and my Yahoo! Messenger went nuts as I logged on.
I was sitting on the couch nursing my 2 week old baby. I was on maternity leave, but when the second plane hit I called my office-told them to put the flag at half mass and send everyone home to be with their families. My husband leaves in 2 weeks to join the War on Terrorism, leaving the kids and me for 16 months. September 11th is a day we will never forget!
Madison, WI. It was a beautiful sunny day when I left my house to bike to work. I walked in and heard someone say to someone else, “Did you hear about the Pentagon.” From the tone, I knew things were not good. Just how not good unfolded throughout the morning.
I was in grade 7 in Calgary Canada, in every class they had tvs. It was huge. I was only 12 but I couldn’t believe what was happening. All the news stations were saying it was just a plane crash and it wasn’t until George Bush made his address to the nation saying that it wasn’t an accident and that there were more attacks at the pentagon and such. It was such a huge eye opener that people would do that. I will never forget that day ever.
I was seventeen years old and two hundred miles from home for the first time in my life at College in Joplin Missouri, I remember going into the class room and people were talking, at first I thought they were talking about some movie, then my Professor came in with a tv from down the hall she plugged it in, turned it on, muted it, we could hear it though from other tv’s in the building, and passed out our first Statistic’s test. I looked up when the clip of the second plane hit the trade center. I had never been so scared or sad in my life.
I was on the Long Island rail road on the way to NYU in New York City. At Jamaica station while the train was stopped they announced that a terrorist incident had occurred and all trains to the city were cancelled and everybody had to go home. All trains were sent back in reverse. I got out at my station in my home town and a store I walked into with my mother showed the news- two planes hijacked by arab terrorists had hit the world trade center and another plane hit the pentagon. I thought it was an act of war and there was talk of it being a second pearl harbor on the television. The people with me were very quiet and sort of shocked by the enormity of what happened. I also remember the weeks after the terrorist strike when crowds of people waving american flags were everywhere and everybody put American flag stickers on their bumpers. I was happy about the new patriotism that everybody seems to have forgotten since then.
On my day off about ready to deposit my first paycheck from a new job. Was watching Fox and Friends. Rob Thomas’ wife was a guest and then I believe when the interview ended or the show was coming to a close it was announced about the first tower. Because I had not seen the video I thought a small plane had hit a building. 9:00 crew took over. Watching the video of the tower smoldering I thought it was a terrorist attack. It was confirmed by the surprised appearance of the second plane. I was terrified and angry as hell. Went to the bank to cash my check (just in case the world was going to hell). At the bank the parking lot had people parked listening to the radio stunned. One guy said, “We’ve got to kick some ass.” I went home. Put in a CD because I didn’t want to listen to the radio anymore. Kenny Rogers, Coward of the County played. It was comforting singing along to a song I knew since I was a boy. Plus the good guy wins at the end of the song. Got home the first tower fell. Went to the grocery store, listening to the radio when the second tower fell. By the end of the day I felt sick to my stomach and frankly I wasn’t certain a young man out of college should be thinking of doing. It was 3 in the morning when I asked my dad should I enlist. My dad laughed and sympathetically told me, “I wouldn’t last long in the army because I’ve never taken orders.” Seeing how we’re still in Afghanistan and never really fought the war to get Bin Laden I thank my Dad for his wisdom. Despite failed leadership, concerning capturing Bin Ladin, I thank our Troops for defending us and keeping any further attacks from occurring on our soil. God Bless America. I hope everyone (but the terrorists) have a good weekend.
i was at school. We had a lockdown for about 8 hours
I was a freshman in High school and I was just walking into my 4th period American Lit class. I remember walkking into the classroom as our teacher was turning the tv on and at that time there was only 2 clips that the media had, and they were on constant replay. We spent the first half of the period glued to the television and the second part of class writing our own piece of American Literature. My teacher at the time was big on writing what your feeling and you couldn’t get a better writing prompt than what was going on in NYC. So sad. I can’t imagine that I will ever forget that.
That day I got an ultrasound of my first daughter. For 40 minutes my husband and I escaped the horror of what we watched live on TV that morning.
I was in elementary school. My father picked me up early and we went to my aunt’s house. I remember sitting on the carpet gripping my dad’s hand in terror as I stared at the TV screen. The buildings fell and I collapsed as well.
I’m in Ontario, Canada. We were all devastated here when it happened. I was teaching Grade One at the time, our third day of the school year. I fought like hell all day to hold it together for the kids. It was indescribable. All I wanted was to get home and be with my husband and kids. Getting through the rest of that week was tougher than I can truly express. Once the weekend hit, I sat in front of the television and got caught up. Something in me needed to know all the details. Maybe I thought it would help me to understand. It didn’t. I remember crying the weekend away, after fighting through the week to hold my grief at bay. Every time I hear the song “The Prayer,” it takes me back to that time. It’s the saddest I have ever been in my 48 years.
I was at high school in Western PA. We were so confused as to what was going on. We didn’t understand it. We thought it was a horrible accident. Then it happened again, and we couldn’t comprehend who would do things, and the horrible footage that was being captured on the ground. May the creator of this world bless the people who work for healing and understanding and against extremism in this world today.
I was living in San Diego. Got into work where I found out what had happened; no one was getting anything done, just clustered around TVs. CNN’s website was completely down because it was getting so hammered, the only site that was still up was scripting.org which was showing pictures and news links.
I just drove back to my apartment and took a walk outside. Everything was absolute silence. The sky was silent, which was the most disturbing part. There was construction going on in a big lot just south of La Jolla Village Drive with a MASSIVE crane standing in the middle of it. Someone within the space of just that morning had found an equally massive flag, one of those huge jobs, and hung it off the crane. It was the only thing moving except me.
I called my family — they are in Philadelphia, and I was worried about Independence Hall. My mom was as okay as everyone else was, but nothing had happened in the city. I remember being really bothered by my older brother’s voice when I called him, because he said, “This is war,” with the juiciest tone of voice I’ve ever heard him use, as if he were looking at a porn movie.
One of the strongest, oddly positive images I remember from those next few days is when someone on scripting.org put up a Photoshopped “rebuilt WTC” photograph showing the towers in the configuration of a flipped middle finger. Yep, New York will always be New York. 🙂
I remember visiting the city when I was a freshman in high school. Frankly, I found it too big, too loud, and too dirty. The only thing I liked about the whole city was those two damn buildings. They reminded me of giraffes — how from a distance they are these spindly, graceful things, but close up they are unimaginably massive and solid. I still haven’t been to NY, and I don’t want to go back ever. I want to remember it the way it was when I saw it, not with that gaping, ugly hole in the skyline. I still feel like if I don’t actually see it with my own eyes, it won’t have happened.
I was a senior in high school and had just walked into my French class when I heard some classmates talking about what happened. A few minutes later the principal came on the loudspeaker and announced we would be having an early dismissal. I went with a friend to pick up my younger brother and we went home. I was glued to the tv all afternoon. I lived in a small town in CT. about an hour from NYC and tons of people in the area commute to the city daily so there was lots of worry and concern for loved ones. I remember that night I woke up in the middle of the night to really bad thunderstorms and at first I didn’t know what it was and got a little scared that more attacks were happening.
This post was a great idea and reading the comments has been humbling.
I had been laid off from my job that summer and I was pregnant with our first child. We lived in Ann Arbor, MI. I was at home getting ready in the bathroom and could hear the Today Show on the TV and realized something was terribly wrong. I got to the TV just a few minutes before the second plane hit on live television. Matt and Katie talked us all through it. Horror and many phone calls took over my life. I was so worried about what kind of world I was bringing my child into.
I was in the street walking for a little break as i had worked all morning when all of a sudden a young guy told me that USA had been attacked by palestinians, the world trade center had been destroyed by the hit of a suicide plane and a world war was about to start. A lunatic, i thought, and just walked away from him, promising (who knows, the guy could have been violent…) to listen to the radio as the guy was urging me to do so because obviously i was not concerned by his foolish story. A second later i had forgotten everything about the lunatic, what he said and my promise. I was aware of the event only at 8pm when i switched-on the TV. Even with the images and the comments i needed a fair amount of time to believe it was true. A few weeks later i saw a coran in a book shop and bought it. Huh ?! Then i bought books about the life of muhammad and, again, Huh ?!
I completely agree with book #24014464 in the Library of Congress !
My mother dropped me off for school, we all settled down for the morning lesson, and a teacher came rushing in, telling our teacher to turn on the television.
Twenty-three third-graders watched as the towers fell and none of us understood it was real. I thought we were watching an action movie. Not until the teacher explained it to us did we realize there were people inside those towers.
I went home and watched my father cry for the first time in my life.
I was in seventh grade, school had just started and we were all talking and goofing off like everyday when our teacher came down to our classroom and said turn the tv on. We were all confused, but we turned it on. I remember just sitting in that class for the 40 minutes we were in it and no one talked we just were in awe. The rest of the day is kind of a blur but I know the news was on in every class and we didn’t do anything but just sit and talk about it all day.
I was in a writing meeting in middle school, so I missed the morning news. I didn’t know what everyone was talking about in the halls until our principal called the whole school into the auditorium. He explained what happened and told us all to remember today and where we were because we are all a part of history and we will be telling this story for the rest of our lives.
I was in the Army at the time. On a flight to Korea, that was mid-way between Tuscon, AZ and San Jose, CA. We were re-routed back to Tuscon and didn’t find out what had happened until we landed. All they would tell us was that there was an emergency and we were turning around.
I was in seventh grade in lewes delaware. I was in social studies when the vice principal came by the class to notify the teacher of what was going on. The teacher dropped class where it was and we went next door to watch CNN. The images played all day but the governor declared a state of emergency so all businesses and schools were closed. The one thing I remember the most is that on that day people put aside their differences. Everyone I came across was overflowing with compassion. I will never forget that day.
Standing at about 17th Street and 5th Avenue with countless fellow NYC-ers starring downtown in absolute disbelief. A woman next to me was trying to reach her husband who worked in the north tower in the area she thought to be the impact zone. No idea what happened with her or her husband. I’ll never forget seeing, and feeling through the ground, the south tower falling. After a few hours my wife (then girlfriend) and I walked across the Queensborough to Astoria where she lived at the time.
I remember exactly where I was that day. I was in college and waiting for class to begin. When I first heard about it, I didn’t get the full story and thought it was an awful accident and thought, “Man, what are the odds of that happening?” Shortly afterward, our campus shut down and all classes were cancelled. I then realized the magnitude of this horrific event. I spent the rest of the day in front of the TV watching the news with a complete look and feeling of disbelief and disgust.
I don’t exactly remember. But I said to myself ‘there’s the fruit of the thing called anger and hatred’.
I was at the office (in Indonesia), where million mosleam are living here (including me). I do not know the real setting. That is not the mosleam way, we keep peace, not war. We will go to war, when we are attacked. More defensive then offensive (it is very human, as a survival). Pray to those who do not know nothing about terrorism, but died as a victim.
I remember it like it was yesterday, I was in college at the time and all of a sudden their was a big up roar in the halls and everyone was saying the world trade centers been hit, They brought in tv’s and we could not believe what we were seeing, the day was cancelled and I went home to watch it all day on cnn, I will never forget.
Jay
http://www.jbsussman.wordpress.com
I was visiting Gainesville, Florida, from my home in Seattle because my girlfriend’s father had just gone in for heart surgery. We were still asleep when her mother came into our room and said “they are bombing the Twin Towers”.
I was half-asleep and thought, “that can’t be right, she’s confused here” … but we decided to get up anyway because her mother seemed quite upset.
I came out into the living room just in time to see the second tower get hit, with live footage — people jumping out the windows and all.
That was particularly awful — seeing those human beings jump because it was their best option and watching them fall to their death. Knowing that they were real human beings who were alive in a burning building and that they had just jumped out the windows and died — right in front of me — and that no one could help them.
I tried to call my friend in New York. I was very fortunate not to know that she usually got off the PATH from Jersey City at WTC. She was very fortunate to be late to work that day. She was less fortunate to live only a few blocks from the park overlooking lower Manhattan at the end of her street. She watched the towers fall surrounded by her horrified neighbors.
I managed to reach a friend in Seattle and we just stayed on the phone together. Then it was time to go to the hospital for my girlfriend’s father. I was glad to have some distraction — the entire day was surreal.
I was lucky to have a friend in Gainesville who was a professor at UF, studying the Muslim world. We had dinner that night. I thought it was domestic — another Oklahoma City situation. No, he said. It’s definitely Al Queda. And so I learned a bit more than most people a bit faster and it helped me feel like I was doing something.
I flew back to Seattle a few days later. My plane was delayed by a hurricane coming into Tampa. It was easy to change my flight — no one was flying. I figured this was the safest time to fly — the next hit would be somewhere we did not expect it.
Back in Seattle, we were fortunate in many ways. We lived far from NYC and very few people knew someone who had died or who was missing. Also, a few days later it was the Jewish high holidays. We gathered together — the entire community — to fast and pray and think about the big issues. We felt lucky to have that formal gathering, to feel connected to each other.
The University of Washington held a lecture series that Fall on Islam, Afghanistan, terrorism, etc. They pulled it together in about a week. It was so popular it had to be moved to one of the stadiums. There, too, we gathered together, feeling again that we had a communal response to this — that we were all together, we were all still alive and we would at least learn about this new danger and try to understand it.
It was a terrible time. I wish Obama had been President then b/c Bush was so inadequate — although it is quite unfair to judge him for his behavior that day or that week — no one knew what was going to happen next.
It’s amazing to me that we haven’t had another major attack yet. You can walk into the DC Metro and New York subways without any barriers. Our water supplies are usually open and surrounded by a simple metal fence. You can walk onto any Amtrak train in the country without a ticket and have 10-20 minutes before anyone asks you what you’re doing there.
I chalk it up to our democracy (and the war of course). People plan attacks all the time but we have enough other people in those communities committed to America and our collective vision here. That’s what I believe. It makes me proud.
I turned off the TV right before 8 am CST to take my 2 year old daughter to daycare. I must have just missed the coverage of the first plane hitting.
After I dropped her off I heard a radio report from men working on their car outside of a residential garage. I remember thinking, “Odd- they are replaying the 1993 WTC bombing”. On the way to work I turned on the radio and heard about the first plane and ‘rumors’ of the second one hitting. Thinking it was a small plane I turned on Mancow for ‘fun’ since he was a sensationalist and was listening to him when the plane hit the pentagon. At that point I panicked, directed my husband to get our daughter, take as much cash as possible out of the bank, and fill up the gas tanks. My boss begrudingly let me leave work (10 minutes later all of downtown Chicago shut down). I’ll never forget driving home on that beautiful day not knowing how many planes were left in the sky or how much worse it would get.
I was living in Iran, my junior year at high school. It was late at night when the TV program stopped and the breaking news began to broadcast. At first I thought it was a joke. Just could never believe any one would do such a thing.
The next morning at school, every one was talking about it, then the whole city and the the whole country. We were all sad and mourning. We held candle light vigils and wrote open letters to American citizens with our support and condolences. The irony was that the next day, President Bush called us axis of evil. But even that didn’t change our broken hearts and saddened feelings for what has happened to innocent human beings.
parisasaranj, please remember President Bush said many things that many Americans did not and still do not agree with. Much like when your country’s elections were rigged, stolen. When your people went to the streets, some sacrificing their lives, most Americans supported you. I’m sure what you heard from your government was that the violence was somehow America’s fault. That we were the enemy, not the crooked politicians that stole the election.
I am a Muslim.
At 9/11, I was in Jakarta. Thousands miles away from US.
I was working to feed my family.
I just knew the event from TVs and mass media.
But suddenly when 9/11 happen, most Christians blaming 1.3 billion Muslims as terrorists for (maybe) hundreds of radical people who did that.
The 9/11 that cause 5000 lives suddenly make Muslims as biggest terrorists topping the Christians who killed 55,000,000 people at World War II and 17,000,000 at World War I.
The Christians (through US and allies troops) killing about 1,000,000 muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan to “revenge” it.
Well, hatred and bigotry make people idiotically generalize 1.3 billion Muslims as terrorists for the work of hundreds radical people.
I was in the University, actually I was going to make an exam of water instalatios for buildings, I just remember that somebody told me just before i as going on to the building.. A plane crashed in New York!!! I went to watch the news, when I realized what time was… It was too late, I lost my exam, and i lost the class. I was in shock, I really didn’t care about the class and the exam.
I was at home, just woke up and walked into the living room and turned on my tv, thinking it wasn’t real and I was on some movie, I changed channels, only to realize it was real. I lived in Houston, in the city, and ran out back to see if my neighbors were home, they weren’t, I was alone in the building, watching, thinking it was just a horrible accident, as did most of the reports at that moment, until the second plane hit as we all watched live. It was horrible, that moment we realized it was an attack, that people were jumping to their deaths rather than burn. My neighbors were sent home from work, so we all gathered in the lobby and cried. We were so scared. I think I cried all day, after finding out my little brother that lived near the wtc’s was okay. I still can’t believe that this happened, even not knowing anyone who didn’t make it out alive, it breaks my heart for those that did. I still have trouble reading about it, or watching anything on tv about it.
I was in a hotel in Devon, England.
My wife and I had been out during the day and switched on the TV for the early evening news and weather. The sound was off and I saw pictures of a plane flying into a building. My first impression was that it must have been a film and that I had the wrong TV station ….
I’m European so here it was the 2nd part of the day and I just got back from school and my parents told me that a plane hit one of the WTC twin towers so I stood with them and watched with them and saw how the two towers collapsed live and I cried with my mother. I was in 6th grade back then. Now after I studied a lot more, Bush’s speech with the religion of peace garbage is a travesty against the memory of all these people that died.
I was just a little kid that day, aware that something bad had taken place, but unaware of the impact it would have on my life and our nation. When one says we must move on he is in theory correct. We must move forward in hopes to make our country a better place for our children and there children. But never should we have any reason to forget that day and the hole that still remains in the heart of Americans.
I live in NJ I am only fourteen so I was very young when this happened. All I remembered was being in school and all of the sudden my teachers get a phone call and they have tears coming out of their eyes. I stared. Then a lot of parents came to pick up their kids. I was almost left alone. The teachers didn’t know whether to tell us little’uns or not. I remembered vaguely walking to my teacher and pulling her skirt asking what was going on. She bent down and held my hand and said that two very important buildings in NYC were hit by planes by bad people. Then I wondered why my parent’s didn’t know to pick me up…
Oddly enough, I was with the same person on 9/11 as I was with on the day JFK was assassinated. And we’d been apart for almost all of the intervening years.
I was at the Gym here in Honduras…when suddenly the recepcionist comes to the weights area screaming that the US is at war and the WTC was attacked, inmediately we turned to CNN (the first plane had crashed) I went back home ´cos i got nervous, when i got there i turned to CNN just when the 2nd plane crashed! im thinking oh boy! the shit has hit the fan, the world has just changed in front of our eyes!
The eleventh of september 2001 . I was in North Hollywood california. just maoving around some in my samall shared apartment I wooke up me y roommat to share it with her I couldn’t believe what i had just seen a tear fell occasioonally as I realized the depth of pain many of my fellow americans were suffering as I relaxed and took lifes comforts for granted. I would like to believe my heart let out a sream of anguish as I saw the immediate devestation and began to realize how much pain was going on there in New York. I can’t afford hate at a time when the effidence of the destructiveness of hate is so evident. I said a prayer for all envolved and for the sick lost world we live in, so far engrossed in living regardless of how that living impacts the lives of so many others. We are given a freedom to do with our lives as we feel right for us and often abuse the rights of others. We di need a connected ness to our creator God for it is only through him that a lasting peace can be achieved. It is time to celebrate , Christ came taught started a church, and willingly died for it so we can have salvation and live with him eternally. We are so blessed Regardless of where we choose to rdrive thwe vehicle of our lives He is always with us he will never abandon us.
I remember like it happened yesterday.
I was in Miami at work. I was seven months pregnant and someone ran to my desk and told me that something crazy was happening and they were showing it on tv. When I saw the news and I realized what was really happening, I could help thinking about how I was about to bring my son into “this world.” He is 8 years old today and my mission is to teach him to LOVE and RESPECT. We will never be the same since that gray 9/11.
I was in US History class, of all places, when one of the other teachers came in and broke the news.
Riding to school with my Mom. We parked next to my Dad and brother who popped out and told us the news. One of my fellow eighth graders had an older sister in Manhattan at the time. That was a frightening day for all of us. A cousin who has been more like a brother to me that day decided to join the service. Six years later, he did. The sorrow of that day will never go away, but I’m proud of those who responded so well.
I was a student at the time, and slept in very late after a big night out the day before, skipping classes that day. After I woke up and had a late lunch (UK lunchtime), I turned on the TV just in time to see the second plane crash in. Was glued to the TV for about the next 12 hours, seeing those same terrifyingly iconic images again and again… the first tower going down was the moment it really hit home.
Shock, grief, awe, surreal… emotional maelstrom..
On my way into New York for a client meeting in, I can’t remember which tower. I was planning on attending my meeting until I found out that the second tower had been shorly after I arrived in Penn Station. I was very grateful to have scheduled a mid-morning meeting rather than the usual 9 am. To this day I find it very difficult to see images of those towers that morning.
I was in vacation in a very small Italian island called Carloforte. I remember my sister calling me to tell me about the Twin towers collapse, and I thought she was kidding! When I saw the TV news I remember I thought “now it’s going to start a big war!”.
Touching song please watch
Excellent post. That day was a seminal one. I still grieve for the victims in an abstract way.
But here is my experience, which was a warning of things to come in this country. I had just returned from overseas and was living on my boat in a Florida marina. The day after 9/11 we were gathered on the dock, the other residents and I, talking about the events. I mentioned that the attacks, unfortunately, were the blowback that many people had been predicting for quite some time, given the growing arrogance of American power, and that the country shared a collective responsibility for allowing our government to turn into an imperial colossus.
Well, the good rednecks at that marina ran me out of the place and I had to move my boat the next week. So much for understanding how the world works.
Iraq and Afghanistan add exclamation points very nicely. I wonder when and where the next attack will take place.
I was in my freshman year of college. I rose out of bed late and dragged myself to my music theory class. One the way I kept hearing conversations of rumors about Bush being held up at the Greenbrier bunker. I thought it was absurd, and continued to class. Everyone’s face at class was stone dead… enough so that it stopped me as soon as I walked in the door. I asked what happened. That’s when I found out…
It was weird seeing fellow peers in college being shipped off to Iraq. There were rumors of war, of a draft. As crazy as it sounds, I wasn’t sure where I would be in the coming months. I just knew that from then on, nothing would ever be the same. I can’t even remember what America was like before the attacks, now.
I remember being at home in Norway. In 2001 I was nine years old, and this day me and my sister were, as always, watching an after school show on TV. That show was cut short, and the news came on in the middle of a cartoon or something. We had never seen them (whoever’s behind the channel) do that before, so we both knew instantly that something very important had to have taken place somewhere. We watched the news many times that day, but couldn’t understand what had happened.
In school the next day the teachers told all of their students everything they knew about the attacks at the time, and we had one minute of total silence.
I think everyone all over the world can remember where they were and what they were doing when the news of the attacks reached them, and I am sure they too will never forget.
Remember 9/11.
I was working in the converted garage office with my employer near Houston, TX. His wife came rushing in from their house next door and said a plane had hit the towers in NYC.
I spent the next three hours glue to the television with my boss, his wife, my assistant (who is also my sister) and the painters who were paint the upstairs bedrooms of the house. We sat in shock, dismay, and fear for the people in the tragedy (NY, DC & PA), but most of all we sat bonded as fellow Americans in sadness. There were no strangers in that living room that day; just as the victims and their families became no strangers to us in the following days and months via the media.
To all of the families who lost a love one on 9/11…my heart is still broken over the loss.
I live in Barcelona, and 9/11 is Catalonia’s day so it’s holidays. I was in a country house with my friends preparing lunch, I was just 16 years old. We were set to start eating and we got a phone call that told us to turn tv on, it was the first impact. We thought at first that it was a movie because the voice on the other side of the phone didn’t explain anything else, just “turn on tv!”. We sat at the table unable to touch our food or speak a word, we didn’t understand what was going on or if it was even real, then soon again the second impact took place. Our blood froze even more if possible while listening to the journalist’s alarming voice, I get the goosebumps as we speak once again. I wasn’t in NY, but that day we all felt like one. I have dear friends who were supposed to be in one of those planes but the day before decided changing destination, thank god. I can’t avoid getting teary everytime I think of it, or when I watch documentaries about it, about the volunteers that today are still suffering the consequences with illnesses and lack of health insurance. And this day also reminds me of 11/J in Madrid, this hit way closer to me and it was scary, it still is cause just yesterday I heard on tv that they were thinking about bombing the metro in Barcelona the 24th of this month.
We will never forget these events.
I was a sophomore in highschool four minutes away from the Pentagon. Some kids outside for gym class heard an explosion and saw smoke up in the air. The gym teacher said they were just demolishing an old building.
Someone came in and whispered something to my first period teacher. Her face went pale but she kept teaching. Ten minutes later the principal came on the announcements and said that a plane or a helicopter or a bomb had hit or exploded in the Pentagon and World Trade Center. It was very early and news was still trickling in.
We all were rushed down to the basement/gym locker room/bomb shelter of the school. The school was so old and so close to the White House, Pentagon, Capitol that an atomic bomb would reach us in 4 seconds so it was built with that in mind. The tv reception was so bad down there we had to take turns holding our hands against various parts of it to get any kind of picture. We were all together crammed in the locker room when the second plane hit. I’ll never forget the look on this one teacher’s face. Indescribable, but yet, that’s how we all felt. It was something else to be 15 and looking up to your teachers for guidance, for an explanation…and to see that expression.
We were kept down there for the entire day, sharing all the popcorn from the teacher’s lounge.
Everyone was desperately trying to call their dads and moms and brothers and sisters who worked in the Pentagon but the phone lines were all messed up. My uncle worked in the part that got hit, but was moved temporarily to another office shortly before the attack for renovations. My then-boyfriends father was up in the air- he was a pilot, but luckily not flying any of those planes.
different circumstances, but i can relate to the feeling of looking to a teacher for guidance and finding that they’re feeling just as hurt and vulnerable as you are.
i was 11, and sitting in class, when the Challenger shuttle exploded. someone came in from the principal’s office, whispered something to my teacher, and his face got pale. he turned on the tv in the back of the classroom — usually only used for school announcements — and we all watched the news coverage. i imagine most of us didn’t fully comprehend the loss at the time, being 11 years old, but nevertheless it had an impact on me… both the event and the look on my teacher’s face.
I was at work (a teacher) and it was very hush-hush because so many parents of our kids and people from our town were killed in the WTC.
My husband saw it from his job and was sent home.
We live down the shore, went to the beach at Point Pleasant to get away from the TV and we could see smoke drifting down the Atlantic coast.
I’m from Quebec, Canada, and this day I was at work, and we just could not work, we watched the TV at the office and we were completely dazed about that. I went 2 times on the top of the World Trade Center, as a tourist some years before the crash.
It was such a high building. Unbelievable.
These stories are amazing. I’d just driven up to the park where I taught an outdoor exercise class. I heard about the first tower, told my “students” what was going on. We all left the park and headed out every which way to collect our children from school. It was surreal. And heartbreaking. And it seemed as if it would never end. And I don’t think it has.
I was at work at the UK offices of a US company. A colleague had the BBC website pages open and told us all the breaking news that one of the World Trade Centre towers had been hit by a plane. We were all stunned as well as concerned for our colleagues in New York and their families and friends. Many of us travelled regularly to New York on business, which made it all the more horrifying to see events unfolding somewhere so familiar.
I remember following the internet for breaking news during the rest of the day at work, then watching the TV in the evening in disbelief. The next day was my birthday, yet that year I can remember no celebrations.
My grandmother was dying of cancer and was in a hospice. I remember saying to my mother that we should tell her about this terrible event, but we knew that she wouldn’t have been able to process the information. She died on September 15th.
I knew no-one who was directly caught up in this tragedy, but felt the pain, sadness and disbelief like so many others…
Good evening! I am from Russia. 9 / 11, I strongly delayed at work and at about 21.00 I phoned the manager of the company and told me to go home, because that something terrible is happening – in America are burning skyscrapers. Clash of the second plane I saw at home. My first thought was that a terrorist act carried out the Palestinians and now American troops landed in the Gaza Strip. And yet it was extremely sorry for the Americans.
I was a first responder and I lost my brother that day. I’ve been blogging about it.
I am glad others are sharing their experiences, it helps. I just wrote on blog on where I was…in the middle of the outback in Austrailia watching it unfold on FOX with about 300 Marines in an underground bunker. I WILL never forget. I couldn’t hold back tears writing it, even nine years later. You are right, we should never forget. Thanks for your post. Amie
http://www.writetools.wordpress.com
On a horse, in a meadow, in a part of Florida so rural you’ve probably never heard of it.
The farm secretary called the foreman over the radio and said that New York City was being bombed by airplanes. We rode back in and listened to the radio. We still had two sets of horses to take out. I drove home in a panic, listening to NPR.
The towers had already fallen by the time I got home.
We lived under the flight patterns for three major airports. The dark skies for the next few nights and mornings were very strange. We thought it might be the only time in our lives when we’d see skies completely devoid of human objects.
Again, thank you all for your comments. I feel that this has shifted from being my post and has now become OUR post.
So many of you have told so many incredible and personal stories. I will read all your comments over and over again.
Peace be with you all. Keep the spotlight burning.
~Mike
I was in my 7th grade science class and one of the receptionists at the front office came into the classroom and gave my teacher a note about what happened. My teacher told us the news and we were all in shock and somewhat confused. I later learned that the school board decided not to tell any of the younger kids who were in elementary school because they simply wouldn’t understand the concept.
Great post. I juts did a 9/11 post on my blog and it’s crazy to think that it’s been so many years. Hard to rethink everything, but amazing to see how we can all come together and move forward.
Please check out my post which focuses more on the racism aftermath and how we need to remember we’re all one.
http://bakiblog.com/2010/09/10/dont-just-remember-911-grow-from-it/
Keep up with the good posts!!
I remember. I was at home in Spokane, watching my two-year-old (she is about to turn twelve and has never known a day when we weren’t at war) and doing laundry.The towers had already fallen, smoke everywhere, every channel,every camera. I remember the firefighters, like ghosts, the way ash plastered their uniforms. I remember the endless replays of people jumping from windows rather than burning. I remember the fences and walls, covered with posters and photos begging for word of loved ones unaccounted for. I remember flags everywhere. I remember taking things a little less for granted. I remember crying. Yes, I remember.
I was 3 so i really dont remember but i sure was in grand island nebraska when this happend and wee lerning it in school
I was working for our church as the priest’s assistant. Father John was gone that day and I was celebrating Morning Prayer with the Episcopal Church Women. Just before I put on my vestments, one of the parishoners came in and said, “Turn on the radio!” It took several minutes for me to internalize what was happening. We were getting live reports from New York City. The first tower had collapsed and the second was on fire. I was stunned. I set aside the sermon I’d prepared and hurried to look up what I call, “comfort passages,” in the Bible.
I stood before the women of our church and together we prayed for our country. A number of the parishoners had children living in NYC and couldn’t reach them. We said special prayers for them as well.
After the service, many of us gathered in the church library to listen to the radio and draw comfort from one another. If ever there was power in prayer, it was that day. The walls of that little library hummed with compassion, love, and faith that whatever the outcome, we would find our way.
Nine years – I’m weepy now as I run through the memory of that day. I was at work in a small office bldg shared by two other single person businesses. One of these person’s wife called him to tell him that “a” plane hit a Twin Tower. I had a little 5″ TV in my office and was so saddened by this horrific accident.
Of course, like all of us – we soon learned it was our worse nightmare and I freaked out. I called my daughter and made sure her and my grandchildren came and stayed with us for 3 days. I just so wanted our family to weather this together the way it was for me
as a 9 yr old when Kennedy was shot.
I was where am I today…in Houston, trying to understand why this happened.
How 19 crazed hijackers felt divinely inspired to kill, to maim….to destroy.
Nine years later, I’m still no closer to an answer.
But I do know that so much was fundamentally altered. Life changed. It was reshaped.
As was the paradigm.
Hi Mike!
Im from Finland but I remember this day as if it were yesterday. I was home from school and I was ill. I had a fever and a sore throat. I remember I was lying in bed watching TV. I switched chanel and I saw how one of the planes hit WTC. I thought it was a movie.
Then my dad called me from work and asked how I felt and what I was doing. I said I watched a movie on TV. Then he became quiet and said “Anna, its not a movie.. its real”
When we hung up I couldnt stop staring at the screen. I had tears in my eyes and I could almost not breath.
I didnt know anyone who died
but my heart goes out to everyone who has lost someone in that tragic event.
I will never forget that day. That day I realized that there truly is pure evil in this world..
We had silent moments in school several days afterwards and our hearts and thoughts were with you over in USA..
Thanks for a wonderful post Mike
take care in the future!
Hugs
//Anna in Finland
I was doing homework (I was on the other side of the world at the time, in India, to be specific) when my grandfather, a journalist, called up and asked us to turn on the TV. We were surprised by this since our ‘TV time’ for the day was still an hour away. I distinctly remember the shock that gripped us as my sister and I watched in horror the scenes.
I was in the twin cities going to bed after getting off of work at 5 am. When I got home I went straight to bed after4 to 5 hours my girlfriend come in the bedroom and said we where being attacked, which I thought someone come into our house. I than found out the United States was being invaded as I seen the twin towers go down.
I’ve never written about where I was or what I saw on that day. It’ll be a much longer story someday. I’m on Long Island and had a view, had I chosen to watch, ( I didn’t, but for a moment) of the burning buildings from a distance, as it was a clear day.
What was most palpable to me and hardest to describe was the aftermath and devastation to so many lives in my town.
It was life in slow motion. You could feel it, you could hear it, you could cut into it, and it didn’t go away. From the woman sitting on the floor on to the grocery store next to her full cart, child in the seat, talking on her cell phone, trying to hold it together, to the neighbor who turned into an alcoholic because his brother was killed, to the high school buddy whose pregnant wife died on the plane.
The air was thick with grief.
Funny thing though. Almost everybody became nicer, almost everybody pulled together. Almost everybody pitched in and did what was needed to get back to some semblance of normalcy. Except those who decided they needed somebody to hate. Somebody to pay.
Suddenly, in this vast melting pot where I live, so many needed to know where you were born. Were you safe, could you be trusted. What was your religion? What country were your grandparents from? What was that language you were overheard speaking.
But in the end, it changed. Most people figured out that winning means loving, accepting, giving, experiencing and rebuilding.
Thanks for a wonderful post, Mike.
I remember I had just started my first year of college, as a 17 year old freshman. I remember not wanting to go to work that evening bc I just wanted to sit and watch the news. Thankfully they kept the tv on at work so we could all watch that evening. Such a horrible day in our history.
If footage from that day was still shown on tv, people would be less hesitant to go to war with these evil people. And yes they are evil, they killed 3,000 of our people. That is horrible.
So so sad. We must never forget and just go on as if nothing happened. We need to stand up for those people’s memories and fight terrorism and the evil people who murdered innocent victims!
I just got off at 5 am from my job working the night shift in the twin cities. I have just gotten to bed when about 4 hours later my girlfriend comes in the bedroom and said we are getting attacked, which I though at first someone was in the house. I than went to the living room and noticed the tv was on, and seen the twin towers fallen down.
I was a freshman in high school and it was during my 1st period class. I didn’t even understand the severity of the situation. I didn’t even know what the twin towers were nor did I know what the word terrorism meant. We were in lock-down all day. It wasn’t until my mom picked me up from afterschool that she explained it to me. A few days later when they started to allow planes to fly again I was outside for marching band practice. When we saw a plane we stopped what we were doing and clapped.
it was my second day of high school. i was in biology class. they said it over the loudspeaker. then we watched it on tv.
I was in the school.
A teacher came in and spoke ‘Kids, something awful just happened’ I was very small and jet, I remember. I couldn’t believe it.
I was at home. It was a day off and I’d lazily slept in for a long while before logging on my computer with a sleepy, waking up yawn.
Within seconds one of my MSN contacts from England started babbling about ‘They’re gone! Can you believe it? They’re gone!!’
When I asked what on earth he was talking about and he said the Twin Towers. I didn’t believe him. Not until I turned on the TV and watched the replay over and over again with a sense of absolute disbelief and horror.
It is one of those moments that ingrave itself into memory with the permenance of stone. It joined the explosion of Challenger and various other occurances that left our worlds reeling.
Etched into my mind as if on a copper plate. I was a freshman in high school. Third period English class. I walked in and a classmate had told the teacher that he’d heard about some kind of explosion in New York. We turned on the classroom tv for a few minutes and saw the images everyone remembers. The teacher tried to conduct as normal of a class as she could, but there was a cloud over our heads.
At the end of the period, I asked the teacher if she wouldn’t mind turning the tv on again for a few minutes. She obliged, and the above mentioned classmate, the teacher and myself watched as the second tower started to fall. Then I went to lunch and passed by the school courtyard. The sky was so blue. Not a cloud. Or a plane.
Next class, we just watched the TV coverage. I asked my teacher if he thought we’d go to war. He said no.
I came home after school let out early to my father’s house. He was having the inside of the house painted white. One of the workers had a radio on in the front room tuned to ABC News and Peter Jennings. My dad was watching Peter on the TV. Peter said something to the effect of “We have no idea what the hell is going on.” We watched for hours.
I was 9 and I was sitting and watching TV in my home in Bulgaria. And then I saw the report of the emergency news, live from NYC and I said “My God what’s happening?”.
I saw how the both towers collapsed, one by one and how sinking in clouds of ash. I couldn’t believe. “This is the NYC, USA how could happen…” I said.
Now I’m 18 but this was the most terrifying thing that I ever seen in my whole life. I’ll remeber it forever.
i was an eleven year old at school in Mumbai, India. i remember seeing the 1st tower collapse and how unreal it seemed to me. what made it real was watching the 2nd one collapse in real time. that’s the first time i heard the word ‘terrorism’.
india got’s it’s own 9/11 in the form of 26/11 and so many other attacks. i will never forget watching the news for 3 days straight, waiting for the encounters to get over.
peace.
I was in Revere, MA in my little house in Beachmont and on my way to an appointment in downtown Boston. I lived in the flight path and it was so strange that the planes stopped. When you live with them you stop noticing them, so when they stopped, the silence was so eerie. I remember there was not a lot of traffic as I approached the Sumner and Callahan tunnels. When I arrived in Boston, I could not go up in the building because there were some consulates there and they had decided to evacuate the building as a safety precaution. The lobby was chaotic. So I just drove home again with no traffic. My neighbors got there kids from school and we spent the afternoon glued to the television and watching what looked like fighter planes fly around Boston Harbor and Logan airport from our porches. My ex was held over at Brigham and Women’s Hospital – they were expecting tons of med flights. But then on the news they said there would be no survivors to med flight out and so everyone was sent home for the night. American Airlines sent a plane in with a grief team to Boston. We heard the plane land. It was the only plane in the sky. It was a very surreal day. We cried a lot, we lit candles, we waved American flags. I know I’ll never forget…
Back then I owned a small print shop and I was at work and had the radio on and heard this report about a terrorist attack. We didn’t have a TV so we couldn’t see the reports. So I decided to run down the street to Kmart to get us a small TV for the office.
I rememeber the strange feeling when I drove down the normally busy street -it was deserted. Then when I got to Kmart – the store was like a ghost town, shopping carts just left in the isles, it was like people just disappeared. When I got the small Tv back to the office we had to sit oustide the building in order to get a good signal – but we saw the devastation and we were all speechless.
Another thing that I remember was that we are located in an area where there are a lot of planes flyingoverhead because of a UPS hub. There were no planes flying – it was just weird and quiet.
My wife was about 75 miles from home in another town at a conference – they ended up closing the conference and sending everyone home. She went to pick our son up at school and the staff came out and said that they had told the children somethng but not all the information and wanted the parents to be able to explain it to the children.
WOW, so many amazing stories !!!
http://iblife.wordpress.com/
Amazing story!
I remember it well. I was in my Sophomore year of high school. Sitting in my choir class waiting to start the day. I remember I wore a red zip up jacket, a white t shirt, and blue jeans. Our choir director came in and sat down and burst into tears. She asked us if we had heard the news. No, not in small town ND. She told us, then us as a class left to find a television to watch what was going on. We watched it all day. We watched when we went home. And now, 9 years later we are still watching and waiting for them to try to strike again. Since that day, on 9/11 I have a hightened sense of fear for not knowing what will happen next. I fear my husband will be called back to the middle east. I fear war.
I was working – in an online meeting when I heard my cubemate to the left say “OMG a plane just hit the world trade center” – I quickly switched my screen over – I couldn’t go on with the meeting, I alerted the people in the meeting and it was shut down. I worked in a highly secure computer center for a major company. My boss came down and told us to leave. I threw my entire desk and contents into my trunk, not knowing when we would be able to return – I planned to work remote.
On the way home I cried like a baby – my niece should have been there doing a photo shoot as a model. She should have been right there in the heart of the city in the financial area. I knew had to compose myself for the call to my sister when I got home. Luckily – my niece’s shoot fell through and she was at home. Safe. Never been so happy.
The rest of the day was a kind of a blank…I do remember watching the BBC, Canadian TV and Univision so I could get more than the same stuff repeated over and over again.
I have many Muslim friends (along with every other religion in the world) – they still suffer from being targeted for something they had nothing to do with. Myself – that day – I thought we had another Timothy McVeigh radical type attack until more was known.
I try every day to treat everyone I know with the dignity and respect they deserve. Tomorrow I will fly my flag, mourn and remember.
Everyday I tell my husband I love him…because that day I thought the world was coming to an end.
BTW – I had a boss that had brain surgery the day before (Sept 10) – they had him pretty doped up – he woke up to see the tower crashing to the ground – imagine that being the first thing you see after brain surgery – they knocked him out again…
I was home preparing breakfast when my nephew called and I could hear panic in his voice telling me to turn the tv on. I froze when I saw the first tower in flames and wondered after all is done, how many lives would be affected across the world because of a lost loved one. At that moment I hadn’t realized that ALL of our lives across the world would change, it didn’t matter that we didn’t know someone who died in those buildings personally.
I remember the same feeling of fear when I was told to turn on the tv and saw our local school, Columbine, under attack.
Neesey
http://neeseyk.wordpress.com/
I was asleep in a suburb of San Francisco. The phone woke me up; it was my mother. She said, Turn on your television. The World Trade Center has collapsed and the Pentagon has been bombed.
My father then got on the phone and told me to go to my bank and withdraw most of my money. And to buy water, lots of it.
For whatever reason, my television wouldn’t work. I struggled with the remote and then, getting it to work, listened to the reports of a missing airliner. I wondered if I knew anyone who had been on the SF-bound jet.
That night, I stood out in my Bay Area back yard and watched a strange blinking light in the sky; it was some sort of military aircraft flying what looked like a fishhook pattern. It would blink once and then appear miles above where it had been a few seconds before.
I was in Southampton, NY. It was my first day of classes in my MFA program. I got up early opened the shade and saw an absolutely beautiful sky. I turned on the Today show and saw the World Trade on fire. I remember thinking, people are dead. They have to be, whoever was right where the flames are. Then the second plane hit.
My father, uncles and cousin are FDNY. My uncles had all already retired. I called home and got no answer which was instantly terrifying since my mother should have been home, even if my father was working. Turns out, they were at the dentist. My father was in the waiting room where there was no TV and my mother was in the chair where there was. She came out and told my father he’d just been called in to work. My cousin had been working the night before and he’d told his father, a retired lieutenant, that he might work Tuesday to take off Saturday and go surfing. They wouldn’t know for almost 24 hours that he’d been on his way home, then when he heard the news, turned around and went back. Six men from his firehouse died. He would have been one of them if he’d been working.
When I finally talked to my mother, she told me my father was on his way in. She said something about the towers collapsing. I said no, they didn’t. Yeah, they did, she said. They’re gone. I’d watched it happen, but without understanding. I ‘d told myself it was just ash and smoke from the fire. Growing up as a fireman’s daughter, you knew about the Waldbaum’s fire, 1978. Arson. Six men killed. And you knew about the Worst Day. The 23rd Street fire in Manhattan in 1966. The most firemen killed in one day in the entire history of the department. Twelve men died.
A day or so after September 11th, I was watching the news and the anchorwoman said, “It is believed that as many as 300 firefighters have been killed.” It sounds melodramatic to say I dropped to my knees. But I did. I dropped to my knees.
The new Worst Day. 343.
John Ginley died. His two brothers weren’t working. Timmy and Tommy Haskell died. Their brother wasn’t working. Ron Bucca died with Orio Palmer on the 78th Floor. Pete Ganci died, and Ray Downing, (who firefighters called God) and the chaplain, Father Judge. The Angelinis died, father and son. The Vigiano brothers, NYPD and FDNY. Dennis O’Berg’s son, Dennis. Lee Ielpi’s son, Jonathan. Tim Stackpole, just back to full duty after horrific injuries in fire in 1998 that killed two other guys.
Yesterday, I read an essay I wrote in October 2001, about attending Captain Stackpole’s wake. I’ve posted it on my wordpress blog without changing a word. My family was incredibly lucky. I didn’t know how to pay tribute then, and nine years later, I still don’t. Nothing will ever be enough.
Such a sad day in our American history. I was across the country on the west coast and I just remember feeling an immense feeling of sadness and wanting to help.
Sherri
I was the principal of a Christian elementary school in the DC suburbs. We didn’t have computers in every room yet, so I let the teachers know what was happening by calling them to their doorway. I then dropped off periodic typed updates. By 10:00, the first parents were signing their children out, wanting them to be close and at home. At first, we weren’t going to let the students know what was happening. Too many had parents who either worked at the Pentagon or close by and we hadn’t heard from them. But as more children were picked up by their parents, the remaining students had concerns. “Why is everyone leaving?” (We also kept the students inside for recess. Fully armed fighter jets were flying overhead.) We knew we had to inform the students about the situation.
Going into each classroom was one of the hardest things I’ve done. We had so few facts and struggled with our own questions, let alone theirs. We also didn’t know how much information parents were going to expose their own children to, so we tried to paint a broad picture without giving details that would frighten them. We prayed as a staff at lunch time and we prayed in each classroom: for wisdom for those in charge, for protection for the rescuers and for our nation, and for healing for all those injured.
The children who had parents working in DC were among the last picked up because the beltway was one gnarl of traffic. (Thankfully, none of our parents perished in the tragedy.) There was one TV in another part of the building and it was next to impossible to get onto the Internet, so it wasn’t until after school that most of the staff saw all of the images.
All schools in Montgomery County were closed the next day. Officials were still trying to assess the threat level. Most students and staff stayed home, watched TV, and tried to adjust to the fact that things would never be the same again.
I had just left Landvetter airport and was heading in my car to my apartment in Gothenburg City, Sweden, Europe.
When I switched on the radio I heard that there had been a explosion at the World Trade Center and that one of the towers had collapsed. I thought to myself: “Oh, they shouldn’t be allowed to exaggerate like that in the news. People might believe that one of the towers is actually gone.
When I later parked my car, I walked by a convenient store where lots of people had gathered to watch television. The pictures showed downtown Manhattan in smoke.
I hurried home to switch on both CNN on TV and New York Times on the Internet. There it was. Freaking unbelievable. Then I found out either by CNN or New York Times, I can’t really remember which one: it was all so confusing, that the second tower had collapsed moments earlier. In Swedish TV the ambassadeur Pierre Schori reported from the UN building that “America is under attack”. And I got the report that there had been an explosion at the Pentagon. “This ain’t happening,” I said to myself. “This is World War III”.
I fear it will last a hundred years.
Håkan Tendell
First n 4most, tx, MLM, 4 the important post.
I was in my office on the 28th floor of a 40 story tower in downtown Boston.
People were walking around in the halls saying that the plane had hit. Like many, I 1st thought it was an accident, w a small Cessna.
The company president, always had TVs on in his corner office, because he owned thoroughbred race horses that he watched during the day. His office was filled w peeps.
Then I learned it was not an accident.
I was very frightened, out office tower was directly across the street from Government Center, where City Hall, and all the local, regional, and federal agenices were housed in an office complex. The State Capitol building complex was a few blocks away.
I thought that this area could b Boston’s Ground Zero. I decided I had to get out of this office tower, and FAST.
I took the elevator down to the street level, the Dunkin Donuts store was packed w peeps crowded in front of a tv.
I walked across the street to the lobby of another office tower that had a big lobby with a huge wall of tv monitors. Hundreds of peeps were gathered and watched as the 2nd plane hit.
Then they told us we had to leave the building, which was being evacuated.
I decided that I would go back up to my office , quickly, get my personal belongings, and try to get home.
I was very frightened being in that office tower.
I left the tower, walked across the street to the Government Center plaza, and sat down down on a bench near the entrance to the train station.
I was afraid to go into the subway station. My train, the Blue Line, went underneath the harbor, and surfaced at Logan airport.
It was the most beautiful of New England Fall days, not a cloud in the blue sky.
Sitting on the bench, I watched as cars zipped by, these turned out to b unmarked police cars, whether they were Boston police cars, or Fed cars, I didnt know.
Finally, I decided, feeling that being in downtown Boston was not safe, that I had to get on the train, and make my way home.
I was very frightened as I rode the subway. At the first available station, after the train crossed under the harbor, I exited the train, ran out of the station, and began the long 6-8 mile walk home to my house in Winthrop, which is located right next to Logan airport, where the planes began their horrifying trips.
Having lived next to Logan for so many years, I ahd become used to all the noise from planes landing and taking off all day.
The country’s commerical aviation system was shut down for roughly 5 days. I had trouble sleeping at night, because the air was void the noise from the airport.
During the day, you could look to the sky, see a lone plane flying, and realized that it was a military aircraft.
My sister lives just north of the “Village.” A retired NYC public school psychologist, she, like a multitude of New Yorkers, volunteered her time and provided counseling services at one of the sites set up to help all those affected by the day’s tragic events.
Subsequently, I got a temporary assignment, as a member of the consulting team, that helped train and graduate the first team of TSA employees that assumed their duties at Logan.
The day after the event, I purchased a small American flag from a street vendor in Government Center, that still to this day, is affixed to my car’s windshield.
Almost a decade later, when watching footage of the Towers tumbling to the ground, it still seems to me that I’m watching scenes out of a Diehard movie.
MLM, again, thanks 4 the post.
I love New York.
G_D bless America!
I was on a business trip enjoying an early morning swim and my cell phone rang. It was my boss and he told me to go to my room that something terrible has happened and to turn on the TV.
I was shocked, scared and then I started to panic. I was far from home and my family especially my son. I called and told everyone that I loved them and then I asked everyone if they were saved, because if this was the end I wanted to make sure that I was going to see my loved ones in heaven.
It was gut wrenching day that I will never forget
I was in Southern California, waking up to go to high school, when my dad, a firefighter with a love for NYC, got a call to turn on the TV. Later that night, when my dad gathered me and my sisters together he told us that we would remember this day forever. I asked him, “Will everything be different from now on?” And he said, “Yes.”
My dad eventually made it out to NYC with a couple of other firefighters to help with clean up and to check in on friends in the FDNY.
In Africa… I think it was about 6pm, i was told to come and watch the news. At first, i thought: hey another hollywood blockbuster… man i was wrong. Was a very sad day indeed; the pain was felt thousands of miles away.
I started the day asleep on in my parent’s basement. I had taken a semester off from school (undergrad) and I was waiting tables at night. I had stayed late the night before and cocktailed in the bar.
My mom called me after everything had initially happened and said something to the effect of, “Can you believe what’s going on?” I didn’t know what she was talking about and I turned the TV on just as the second plan was crashing into the towers.
I didn’t get dressed that day. I stayed in my pajamas on the edge of my dad’s recliner with a remote control in my hand watching the same loops and feeds for hours — just hoping for more news.
I was not really coherent. Among all the horrible thoughts I remember thinking, “And I never got to see the towers.”
Crystal
http://www.crystalspins.com
Me either, I wish I had. I actually wrote about this today on my blog…
i was celebrating my birthday, saw those horrifying images on tv and my heart just sank..
My birthday is on 9/11 and I remember that my friend sent me an email from the new world trade financial center that morning 10 minutes before the tragedy happened. It was a very sad day, sitting in front of the TV and watching these terrible scenes. My friend was traumatized and luckily survived.
I was in my Freshman Science class taught by Mrs. Ryckabush. I was standing in the front right corner of the class working on a lab holding a graduated cylinder. Didnt really know how serious it was untill I got home and saw it on tv. Originally I thought it was a little personal plane that hit it. I was way off. Wierd it happend long enough ago now, that High Schoolers now have very little memor of it happening since they were about 4 years old at the time
I had just returned the night before from a friend’s funeral. She was only 39 and the first contemporary I had lost. My husband was stationed in Newport, RI, and I was teaching a class at the Armed Services YMCA with my son being babysat in the next room. I went in the office to get something for my student and the whole office, with the exception of the babysitters, was gaping at the TV. When I asked what had happened, the elderly bookkeeper whispered, “The World Trade Towers have been attacked.”
After my shock and a quick look at the TV, I went into my classroom and told my one student about it. We continued to work, but I told her if we had to evacuate, I would get in touch with her at some point.
About ten minutes later, babysitters came bursting into the hallway, each holding a child and leading others by the hand. We were told to get out of the building now. It was right next to the base and they had no idea what was going to happen next.
I gave my student supplies and left the rest, grabbing my son and heading to the car. We were lucky. We lived about 30 minutes from base, but as I drove north toward Bristol, RI, I kept looking in the mirror to make sure it was still okay.
Later, with my son napping and the TV tuned to CNN, my husband came home early. After getting all of the patients out, he was able to leave the clinic where he worked. He was an officer, so he stayed behind helping with the evacuation. We hugged and cried at the door.
I moved to NYC when I was 19 and have always loved it. I hope to retire there, believe it or not. I figure my friend passed days before so she could be there to help the thousands who died that day in the towers, at the Pentagon, and on the plane in Pennsylvania.
I was in the eigth grade. I had woken up for school very early that morning, and I was watching music videos on VH1. In the middle of the music video for “When It’s Over” by Sugar Ray, suddenly the news came on, and I was wondering why, because that never happens. Then it was explained that a plane hit the first world trade center, the second one hadn’t hit yet. I had no idea what the world trade centers were at the time.
I got ready to go to school, and banged on my mom’s bedroom door before I left to tell her that a plane hit the world trade center. Then I went to school like it was any normal day, something freaky happened, but it didn’t mean much to me at the time. Then when I got to school everything proceeded like normal for my first period science class, then at every class after that, the event was all that was talked about, and the news was on as well in every classroom.
At lunchtime I started to get really scared. I had friends that were talking about the pipeline being bombed, because I lived in Valdez, Alaska at the time and the pipeline is right on the other side of the bay, about a mile or so away from town. Basically it was turning into a panic, that I was getting swept into.
After school I tried to go talk to a counselor I had been seeing for years for A.V.V. but no one answered. So then I went home, and my mom was like, “Where were you!?” because she was scared too. That was when I realized the weight of it all.
For years afterwards I thought it was dumb that it was all that was talked about for a while, even though it was a very terrible thing that happened. The whole point of the attack was that it would totally scramble our brains and make us afraid, which was what happened.
Now I have started reading about theories that is making my insides curl up inside. Who knows anymore, who knows for sure what the reason was?
I was at Camp Lejuene, sitting on the living room sofa, putting on my watch and about to go for my run. I didn’t go for my run that day, I was glued to the sofa and then my husband called and I knew he would be receiving orders to deploy soon. I had been a Marine wife long enough to know what was coming next after such an attack on America soil.
nice 🙂
Watching it live at work. As soon as I walked in the office, a co-worker (Linda) shout “A plane just hit one of the Twin Towers!!” “WHAT!?? No way!” We all made a dash to the TV to see what was going on. We all stood there in disbelief, staring at the screen. The media was calling it an accident. An accident?? All I could say was.. thats no accident! No way is that an accident! How the hell could a plane be allowed to fly so close to the NYC skyscrapers!? No way. It just didn’t make any sense.. how do you not SEE the TWIN TOWERS!? I was overcome with rage.. then.. the second plane hit. We all gasped at what was before us. The office turned to chaos. Not only because most of us are NYers, and this certainly “hit home”, but because the reality set in.. we must be under attack. I wanted to get out of there and go to my kids, but I was glued to the TV. Could it really be? In this day and age.. in our lifetime.. we are being attacked? The US.. this powerful nation I have always considered “Untouchable” was actually under attack. I can’t even describe all the feelings we all had within the next few minutes, then hours. Shock, rage, fear, then sadness. The months following we (locally) all went about our business as usual, but everyone in a completely different mindframe. We were sad for the events, the victims, the fallen heroes, the tragic stories, but yet had a sense of gratefulness and new appreciation for our own lives. Globally, since then, our supposed calm, safe world has been completely changed.. not so much for the better.
Thanks Mike, for the awesome blog.. as tragic as it is, its very important to “Never Forget”
I was in 6th grade, sitting in math class. Out of no where a teacher from across the hall came into the classroom yelling at us to turn on the television. First image we saw was the twin towers covered in smoke, my teacher was extremely angry because he had family/friends who happened to work in one of the buildings. 5 minutes later the principle was on the intercom system informing everybody of what happened and shortly after that school was let out. Craziest thing i’ve ever seen, won’t ever forget it.
http://minilaptop410.wordpress.com/
Though I don’t live in USA, I really don’t remember what I was doing, just browsing through the tv channels when my Dad announced a plane had been crashed in the Tower.. Mixed with shock and sympathy, I could only conjure an “OK” until he left and I opened Fox News and saw the news.
http://sulfonix.wordpress.com
I was at work, and listening to the radio. When the news came over that a plane had hit the 1st Tower, our world stopped and held its breath for hours. Luckily, one of the women at work had brought in a TV earlier that week for some reason, and we were able to watch the televised news reports. We all cried most of the day.
The International Peace Gardens on the border between North Dakota and Manitoba keeps the spotlight burning in a very special place – The Peace Chapel is the only building that straddles the American/Canadian border, and within are messages of peace engraved in marble around the walls. There are also flip-placards displaying newspaper reports of the 9/11 disaster, and the heroism of people everywhere that struggled to regain peace.
There is also a 9/11 monument placed at the Peace Gardens with 10 steel girders from the Towers, and the words Recall, Reflect, Remember.
You can visit their website at http://www.peacegarden.com/sights.htm
Never forget.
I was in school, having lunch at the actual time of the attacks I think but I didn’t find out what had actually happened until I got home later that day and my grandad was watching the news on the tv. I couldn’t believe that something like that had happened hours earlier and been unfolding the whole time without anyone in school finding out.
http://sylviangirl.wordpress.com/
I was on my way to work when I heard it on the radio. I worked for a small company and when I entered the office & told them, they were disbelieving. Then they brought an old tv out from the warehouse & turned it on in the corner. We were all gathered around trying to take it all in when the second plane hit. Thousands of miles away, it felt like we were near, my heart broke. It broke for our country. It broke for the people, their families, the horror. It broke for the loss of respect of human life. Who gives anyone the right to do such a thing to another human. Who cares the religion, culture, etc. We are humans. We share this world. We need to get along.
I remember the fear of, when is this going to end? And I remember thinking about my kids & family. Others around me just went back to work. I didnt understand how they could.
I was supposed to register for my new semester at school that morning. My school was pretty much a block away from Penn Station. I got up late that day and was fumbling around trying to get ready to head into the city. I put the TV on so I could get my usual weather news while I dressed and was a little puzzled as to why a movie was on. It wasn’t a movie. Apparently the first plane had hit the tower only 15 or so minutes prior to me turning the TV on. Pretty sobering moment for sure.
On that day I was actually sleeping the day off! But a friend came to my place and knocked on the door until he woke me up. I was puzzled as to why he drove to my place instead of calling me. Then told me what was hapening and still sleepy and not comprehending too much what the big deal was, he brought me to another friends appartment (we were University student and all lived in the same neighbourhood) where everyone was gathered and the whole thing was unfolding on TV. A few minutes after I arrived in the room the second plane hit. The horror sight woke me real good then. It was very horrible to see so many unsuspecting civilians die in such a short time, being offered as a gigantic news spectacle.
For me the next marking thing that came after was that for weeks and months on end, you could berely see anything in the media ammounting to a critical reflection as to the “Why”. You had no right to allude to possible reasons for the event, you had to take part in the “they are evil – we are good”, “they hate our freedoms” group mentality. The masses of people satisfied with interpretations devoid of substance was another great sadness.
Where was I? I’m quoting from my personal essay posted at filipineses09, my blog:
“I flew back to New York two days before September Eleven, but I was driven away by friends to Baltimore soon after I wheeled out my suitcase from JFK International airport. We took the Verrazzano Narrows off the southern edge of Manhattan. The sky was its usual glorious New York glow, something really other worldly on summer nights: the skyline seemed cutout against that sky, and the windows of skyscrapers as always, backlit.
I traced with my eyes the rhythm of the tower tips on the sky, and had decided how flawlessly it flowed: the Citicorp and IBM huddle way down west, the Empire State, Chrysler, New York Met Life midtown, and the black towers of the World Trade Center on the southeastern end. Curving into Verrazzano, I felt the towers had seemed within my arms’ reach. My friends told me – a bit prophetically it later turned out – ‘Look at the towers for the last time, at least for now,’ and I did.
Two days later, over a bowl of breakfast cereal, I watched the North Tower spewing fire, oozing black smoke, as an airplane the size of a dragonfly on my host’s small television screen kept on its steady flight path into the South Tower. Before my eyes, the tower burst into flames, tiny figures flying off; and then, it imploded, falling on itself in giant billows of smoke and ash. For weeks like many unknown to those who died, I watched and grieved for a weeping New York on television.”
The rest of my sorrowing visit can be read at http://filipineses09.wordpress.com
What am I doing? Living my realization of what America is beyond the superficial–its human, grieving, compassionate, caring core–and understanding Americans more.
I was at school in a little town in central Mass. We spent most of the morning watching the news, in every class I was in. Several kids went home, and the rest of the day was far from normal, even after we turned the televisions off.
I didn’t lose anyone in 9/11, but I’ve lost family in the subsequent war. When such terrible things happen, like 9/11 and the earthquake in Haiti, the recovery effort is often magnanimous for a few weeks, maybe a month or two. But people move on to the next disaster and forget about those still suffering. Haiti still needs our help.
reading everyone’s comments. I am speechless.
http://www.forantonia.com
I had just gotten back in the car after dropping my kids (then 3 years and 6 months) off at day care when I heard about 1st plane on the radio. As I drove to my job as a newspaper editor, the deejays, who were apparently watching live TV, said another plane had hit the second tower, and I remember thinking something like, “Well, this was no accident. Saddle up.”
My colleagues and I spent that day publishing the first extra edition our paper had printed since RFK’s assassination — and, in the Internet age, probably the last that it will ever publish. As I was working, I AIM’ed my former boss in New York, who had slept in that morning because she was scheduled for knee surgery later in the day. She hadn’t heard anything about it because she had just awakened when I got hold of her. She was OK, but as it turned out, she lost a nephew who worked for Canter Fitzgerald. He had gone back into the building to make sure everybody had gotten safely out of his office. He was still in there when the tower came down.
I was at work. I didn’t know what was going on at first, but all the radio stations kept going on about something had happened in New York. At first I wasn’t clear on what exactly had happened, until I went next door to the gun shop and saw the footage on CNN.
Then I freaked when I realized that President Bush had landed briefly at Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City (right across the Red River from my hometown) and there was another hijacked plane unaccounted for. I called my mom and my brother in a panic. Mom was at work. My brother was at home. I told him to stay there!
That day saw our nation bloodied as it had never been before. Pearl Harbor didn’t even come close in terms of loss of life. But we came together as one nation, one people. Forget the petty shit that normally dominates our lives. All our focus was on what had happened to us and on those responsible for the destruction.
That day changed us, all of us. We need to always remember. I know that I will NEVER allow myself to forget.
And just because I can’t talk about 9/11 without referencing these two posts, here are the links to the Miami Herald article (http://louisiane-fille.livejournal.com/15957.html#cutid1) and the I will NOT forget email (http://louisiane-fille.livejournal.com/15649.html#cutid1) that I posted on my blog years ago.
I had pulled a sicky from work. I was sat in my flat playing the computer when I had a sudden urge to put the news on. All I saw was the plane hitting. I couldn’t believe it.
Has it really been this long? Feels like only yesterday
Link to where I was: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=da8+1ap&sll=51.469395,0.192733&sspn=0.008047,0.022681&g=da8+2ln&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Erith+DA8+1AP,+United+Kingdom&ll=51.486942,0.17223&spn=0.004022,0.01134&z=17&iwloc=A
http://danjswade.wordpress.com
We were at Disney World. I was pregnant with our second child. The came onto the Disney bus when we were at a stoplight and informed us that Disney World was closing. We walked back to our hotel, packed, and drove 10 hours home making minimal stops. We listened to the radio the entire way and after arriving home sat in front of the television watching in disbelief.
Funny enough, my story is just like Jay’s.
I was in a 7th grade school assembly, learning about what to wear or not, school rules cause I just changed schools, then it was done we were sent back to class. And a few minutes later, they asked us to come back to the gym again.
This time, to announce to us the horrendous news about what had happened. I remember just going over in my head about what happened . I don’t even remember what they said or how they said everything in the assembly. I was just in my own world going over what happened and what it may have looked like since I hadn’t seen the news yet.
It was a horrific day, so quiet.. everyone just had nothing to say. It was insane and soo unreal.. Yet how very real it was.
I live in South Africa. I was in 12 years old, just got home from school. Did my homework then decided to watch my favourite kids show (can’t remember what) it was around 3pm. My show was interrupted by a breaking news story which was covered by CNN. I just sat there in awe and couldn’t really understand what was happening.
I watched it was it happened and watched all the theories and saw both towers collapse. The only other time I remember watching so much CNN was during the 09 US election, the difference is that mad me happy. 9/11 made me sad but mostly scared.
I was just arriving home from school that day, when my mum told me the world trade center was burning.
we had lunch, steaks with potatoes and beans..
the next thing I remember seeing my mother and sister standing in front of the TV, crying.
(btw. i was in Düsseldorf, Germany)
Thank you for being a part of this worldwide remembrance. On one hand, it’s amazing that you even remember what was for lunch. On the other hand it’s not as this was such a defining moment for everyone.
My best to you in Düsseldorf.
~Mike
I was in San Diego visiting family with my husband of 11 months and about 5 months pregnant with our first child. I’m originally from NY and my husband is a soldier in the US Army. It is a day that changed my life forever!
My aunt didn’t wake us up when the first plane hit. It just seemed like an awful accident at first. Then the plane hit the Pentagon and she knew we needed/would want to know. I sat there in horror as I watched the towers fall. I cried and wondered what type of world I was bringing my child into.
Every year, I watch the footage from the news and I’ve started sharing it with my two oldest children. And I always cry telling them about what happend, try to explain why it happened and tell them this is why their daddy goes to Iraq.
When I married my soldier, we weren’t at war and I never thought about the sacrafices that my family would be asked to make. And if I had to do it all again, I would do it in a heartbeat!!
God bless you and your family!
Thank you!
I’d like to thank your entire family for your husband’s service. I hope that everyone realizes that when family member goes, a whole family goes with them — in a way.
Your children are in the best of hands. I am thinking the best of thoughts for you husband wherever he may travel in harm’s way. I am writing this from the safety of my office because of people like your husband.
~Mike
Thanks Mike! I appreciate it! And he wouldn’t have any other career!
I was in my car, on my way to work. I heard about the first plane hitting, and I called my wife and told her about it. While on the phone, the 2nd plane hit. It was just unbelievable. I got to work, and we all could not stop trying to get more news about it and talking about it.
For days, I could not stop trying to take it all in. I was angry, I remember I called the National Guard recruiting and asked if they’d take me, a 42 year old Software Engineer, the guy laughed, but I was serious. I still feel the same way today – we must take a stand against evil.
I spent some time collecting some of the tributes, artwork and such, done following 9/11/2001. You can find it on a page I created back then:
http://sdebeaubien.comxa.com/09112001-tribute.html
Viewing the tributes, especially the videos always takes me right back and helps me remember what we’re fighting against.
Somehow, so many are are still trying to get answers out of this day but I’m not sure they will ever come. Thank you for sharing your tributes and artwork.
~Mike
We were eating breakfast on our boat in Mallett’s Bay, VT – we couldn’t believe it when we saw the second plane approaching the south tower…must be a mistake. Within minutes, the sky was filled with fighter jets heading south from the VT National Guard base. Scary.
What an idyllic place to be on this terrible day. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. A fighter jet is a real scary sight and sound. I’m glad they’re playing on our team. But I wish they didn’t have to play at all. Thank you again.
~Mike
I was getting ready for class during my second year of Uni.
I was looking after a dormitory… 3rd floor… all freshmen…
they cancled classes around mid day… we all staid in eachothers rooms watching the TV. Several of my residents had family in Washing, D.C. and a few who worked in the pentagon. We had one resident who’s father’s office was right where the plane hit… he had gone to get his hair cut that morning and hadn’t made it to work when the plane hit.
I remember the University did a candle light vigial that night… and some of the students went home to be with family.
It was a rough time on a lot of people, especially those who were affected directly.
Amazing that a haircut literally saved his life. Wow. Thank you for sharing.
~Mike
I was a senior in college at The University of Missouri. I had just woken up, and as I was walking down the steps in our house, my roommate, standing there, eating her cereal, told me a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. We both thought it was an accident. But as we watched, another one plane hit. All of our classes were unofficially canceled that day. There was backlash on a favorite local coffee shop called Osama’s (which has since closed down), and the lines at the gas stations were out to the streets because of rumors that gas prices would sky rocket. I think the latter part was a defense mechanism for all of us in our midwestern state school.
The thought of that day still numbs me. I’m sure it always will.
Dear Emily-
Thank you for sharing your story. In a way, I wish that Osama’s had stayed in business. Chances are, it was probably an honest, hard working person or family trying to run a business and live the American dream. That would be my hope.
~Mike
Not just Americans were shaken by this, like the ‘where were you when Kennedy was shot’, that my parents remembered. From London, I was travelling in Pakistan, in the Kalash valleys, doing a travel piece for the Guardian, but of course the West, with its 24 hours coverage, lived it in a way none of us did out there. We got back, in fact, two days later, to see that unbelievable image of a plane about to hit the first tower. The reactions from actually sweet and human people where sadly upbeat, at times, about ‘evil’ America, or waking up the world, or because they could not connect with the tragedy of ruined lives. Well, from one boy there. That time though felt strangely unreal, like living inside some movie. One of our party had a friend who worked in the world trade centre, but thankfully had not gone to work that day. The Foreign Office told travellers to get out, which we didn’t, but it was a tense time, and there were rumours of Bin Laden being seen in the North. I watched the film last night about the flight you took back, and brought down, and it was both hugely inspiring and so amazingly sad. Real heroes though, like many there, amid such madness.
I did not take that flight back. Heroes did.
As I writer for The Guardian, I find your words “sadly upbeat” to be particularly true about the days immediately following 9/11. Thank you for sharing.
~Mike
I was in school in NYC when it happened, and my mom came and took me home, much against the school’s wishes. My grandma from Florida called us to make sure we were all right; she’d seen everything on TV. We were actually planning on moving farther downtown right before 9/11 happened, but when the twin towers collapsed we called it off.
My friend’s mother taught at Stuyvesant high school, and she and her students watched the entire event happen through their classroom windows. To this day, she refuses to talk about it. It must have been awful to watch. Just seeing it on TV is horrific, but to have seen it in person must have been beyond belief.
The thought of our children watching this from their classroom windows stops me dead in my tracks. I’m glad you were able to communicate with your family on that day. Please tell your friend’s mother that even though she won’t say a word about this, I heard her clearly.
~Mike
Anybody that was alive this day can answer that question. I was on campus, just let out of my first class and the building was buzzing. I went to the sorority house to watch the news and saw the second plane hit. Burned in my memory.
Dear Brooke-
Yes, anybody that was alive that day can answer that question. Thank you for saying so much with just that one sentence.
~Mike
I’m a Realtor. I had a listing appointment at 9AM with clients who were moving back to their hometown, New York, after a year of trying to like living in DC and failing. It was his birthday, and he thought it was appropriate to celebrate by listing the house on that day and “getting back to where we belong!” I was running late, and so a couple minutes after 9, I started my car engine and the radio came on. I was just in time to hear the announcer talking about the first plane crashing into the tower, and then, in complete disbelief, announcing that a second plane had crashed into the other tower. I live in Arlington, very close to DC. Later, when the plane crased into the Pentagon, I could see smoke all over and all the main roads around me were immediately closed. My daughter was working in DC and living with me. It took her many hours to walk home. There was no cell service. They were the longest hours of my life.
I could not reach my wife in PW County from anyplace in Arlington, where I finally managed to land after a confused trip out of DC, directly because of the phone service disruptions. I communicated via a fellow we knew who lived in No. California. I could reach him, but I couldn’t call 35 miles down the highway. We both worked on Capitol Hill, but she had evacuated almost immediately, not long after I arrived for work.
Communication on that day was perhaps the most frustrating thing. It was such a clear day yet we all felt left in the dark. Thank you both for sharing your memories with all of us here.
~ Mike
I was in gym class in High School. My town is 15 minutes from the heart of NYC. You can see the skyline from any point in our town. We pretty much watched it happen. It was terrible. Parents flooded the halls of the school, people were crying over friends and family that were in NY or who were firefighters, my friend even lost her dad who was a firefighter. It was complete chaos and yet in the mist of it was this unifying spirit of compassion. All of a sudden, we were all the same.
Dear Michele-
No matter where you physically were on that day, you could see the skyline. I am sorry for your friend and for her loss. My brother is a firefighter and was a responder at Ground Zero. All of a sudden, we were all the same- well said and I thank you.
~Mike
Where was I?
My husband (who was my boyfriend at the time) phoned me to ask if I had watched TV yet that morning. I told him I hadn’t and he wouldn’t tell me why, but insisted that I turn it on. I had remodeled my basement to hold my bookkeeping business in my house in Tualatin Oregon on Shawnee Trail. I turned the TV on and watched with my business partner, Carol, and we sat in horror, shock and disbelief all day watching the scene replay itself over and over again. We sat in tears most of the day. It has taken years for me to get over the shock.
What am I doing to keep the spotlight burning?
I am educating the young people in my family, friends and anyone who will listen to me about acts of terror. Knowledge is power.
Mosque at ground zero? – How about a hall for all forms of religion to help “Build a bridge.” instead!
Dear Mischelle-
Keep spreading the word to anyone who will listen. I could not have said it better. Knowledge is power. And thank you for being a bridge builder.
~ Mike
Thank you all for your comments and for keeping the spotlight burning. I will read all your comments over and over again. Peace be with you all. ~Mike
When the attack actually happened I was sitting through a 7th grade conduct assembly (I still remember the horrendous slide explains what a girl could and could not wear). The group of us in the assembly found out when we left and headed towards lunch where the story evolved from a plane flew through the Twin Towers (i.e. in between) to a small plane hit one tower to eventually what happened.
For the rest of the day I remember the old social studies teacher in our area took down his two TVs he usually used for showing crappy videos and used them to pick up CBS which most of us sat watching for the rest of the day, terrible staticy signal and all.
Even with the clearest TV reception, that day was a blur to all of us. Thank you for being a part of this post. I hope you are doing well.
~Mike
I had been laid off a few weeks before, so I was home in NJ that day. The day before, I had done two things that stood out in retrospect: I had read Lamentations (the image of Jeremiah weeping at the sight of his city in ashes suddenly seemed so *real* the next day), and I had promised myself that the next day I would *absolutely* buckle down, get to work, and not turn on any form of entertainment until I had thoroughly job searched.
So Tuesday morning, I did not turn on the TV. I did not turn on the radio. I did not web surf. I just did job search stuff. And about midmorning, suddenly none of the job search sites were responding at all.
So finally I gave up and turned on the TV. The channel I turned to appeared to be playing some kind of “disaster” movie. I remember, for just a second, thinking, “Wow, it’s so obvious that they based this building on the Twin Towers, except there’s only one of them. How cheesy.”
And then I changed the channel, and realized it was all too horrifically real, and that the 1st tower had collapsed just a moment before. Literally fell to my knees as I watched.
So much loss, so much devastation, so horrible to think that it can all be caused by hate in a human heart.
my dad thought it was a disaster movie too. he was driving cross country from NY to CA, and was in either Iowa or Indiana (i forget which), and he turned on the tv to watch the news. It wasn’t until he saw the ABC logo on the bottom of the screen that he realized that what he was seeing was real. That’s when he called my mom (in NYC) to find out what was happening and if it was possible for her to get my brother and me from school.
It was, is and will always be a disaster. On that day, every station was playing the same horror movie. As people drove across the country, the world was watching. I hope you both can change the channel in your mind.
Personally, Seinfeld makes me forget. Whatever works for you, please do it. Thanks for sharing.
~Mike
I was at school teaching a class. The Principal told me the News and we watched CNN videos in stunned silence. I still can’t believe that this has happened.
How could a plane descend from 30, 000 feet and slam into a building without warning?
Mercedes
http://pppministries.wordpress.com
Mercedes:
If you watch the movie, Flight 93, you’ll understand the confusion and disbelief on the part of the air traffic controllers and NTSB.
Nothing made sense that day. I hope you can both make sense of it in ways that can help both move forward the best that you can. Easy to say. Hard to do. Keep the faith.
~Mike
In my office on the west end of Toronto, Ontario. I had a good view of the CN Tower (back then the tallest free-standing structure in the world and a Toronto landmark). I kept looking out the window to see if the tower was still there. I spent the day trying to reach friends in NYC, and despairing when I could not get hold of two of them. One of them got in touch the following day – she and her co-workers had been evacuated to some kind of hall. The other, sadly, was in his North Tower office.
I hope you tuned in for the ceremony and heard your friends name read. I lost a friend as well. I tuned in. I am sorry for your loss.
~Mike
I was driving on my way to work to St. Louis. I heard the horrible news come over the radio and was in shock. I remember thinking it was a joke or I had heard it wrong. I remember crying and thinking of all that were touched by this tragedy.
We will never forget….
I bet radio could be even worse than TV because your mind could run so wild. But maybe not because this was worse than anyone could conjure up in their imagination. Thank you for being a part of history here.
~Mike
I was across the street from the Pentagon when it was hit. I was a journalist in DC at the time. I went on to cover the attacks from the Pentagon and then from Ground Zero. I’ve seen some things the rest of the world has never seen, thank God. The memories are seared into my mind forever. Tomorrow, I will do as I do every 9/11: I’ll take some goodies to one of the local fire houses and thank these brave men and women for risking their lives in honor of those from the FDNY who lost their lives that day. Never forget.
Dear Theresia-
My brother is a fireman 19 Miles outside NYC and was a responder to this attack. In his recollection he said, “I remember fighting so hard to not cry, but the tears made tracks through the toxic dust on my face.”
Thank you for honoring the FDNY on this day.
~Mike
Mike,
I am a native Washingtonian and was living in the DC area at the time. I was dropping my son off to kindergarten when I found out via radio that the first tower had been hit.
My birthday is the 13th, so I had a birthday package at the post office from my grandmother. I was in line at the post office when the second tower hit.
I proceeded to my office nearby where one of my young subordinates was in tears because her father had just been called up to the National Guard and had to be there in 30 mins and she was an hour away. I sent everyone home.
By that time we lost all phone and internet. I proceeded to all three schools and picked up my kids. I took everyone to my Granny’s house, since I was sure that we wouldn’t survive and I wanted us to be all together.
This was the single scariest day in my life, followed closely by the three weeks of terror the very next year, due to the DC Sniper.
Oh my gosh, Jewel, I remember the DC sniper! No one wanted to get out of their cars to get gas and everyone was ducking when they saw a white van… it was quite a strange time to grow up in DC!
Dear Jewel and Mary-
I can’t comprehend the D.C. sniper after this has all just happened to the world. Jewel, we are all together now. But the important thing is that we stay together on this issue that should hit home to everyone. Think good thoughts you two and I’ll do the same.
~Mike
I don’t know why it made a smiley face! I was trying to say my son is 8. Sorry!
I have an 8 year old son myself. An honest typo. Go grab your son and put a smile on his face.
~Mike
I was having cataract surgery when the bombing occurred. During my recovery, the doctor said I could only use my eyes to watch TV. The room TV had only 10 channels, all replaying the same images all the day long. What a bummer.
Hi Jim-
I hope your surgery was a success. This day changed the vision of the entire world. If you can somehow turn the bummer into a positive, that would be ideal. But you did already by sharing your story with the world here. Thank you Jim.
~Mike
It’s funny how a few words can stir up all the emotion like it happened only moments ago. And to that point, it is something I never really stopped thinking about, and at the same time can’t believe that is has been nine whole years. Really?? I feel like that is not even possible.
My story is similar. I was in Boston, working downtown. We sat in a conference room glued to the one and only widescreen TV in our office. During the time between the first impact and the second, we sat glued to the terrible disaster. After the second strike, the mood turned to shock and horror, similarly to every other person watching live TV.
The industry I worked in at the time required that colleagues, partners, and friends were all out traveling the globe. I personally knew 5 people from my office who were in New York on business, and planned to be in the WTC the following morning. We also knew associates and friends where were flying to LA.
The chaos and panic that happened in our own city, while nothing like the atmosphere happening in NY, is something I will never forget. 30 minutes or so after the second plane hit the towers, I descended the stairs of my 15 story building, and was met by a sea of people, walking down the normally car littered, cramped street in Boston. People talked quietly as they made their way with the others. Some cried, others looked stunned as their minds replayed over and over the horrible visions they just saw or news they just heard. One common theme we all shared is that being in the city, any city, was probably the worst possible idea.
Due to technology and limitations, cell phone communication was almost non-existent. It was hours later we learned that our associates in New York were able to rent a car and drive home to Boston. Hours after that, we learned that our friends traveling to LA were safe, and were happy to be stranded half-way across the country.
Days later, planes were allowed to again take to the skies. The first plane I actually witnessed was early one morning. I was driving into the office, preparing to drive over the Tobin Bridge. I was stopped in traffic, and the sight of a plane again flying stirred up enough emotions that I sat in my car and cried. It was the first time I cried since the attack, but was certainly not the last.
Brad-
This day left the world stranded for answers. I am glad that all made it home alive. On that day, I don’t think there as a “best or worst” place to be. We were all in the same place and it wasn’t a good place. Thank you for our account and for keeping the spotlight burning.
~Mike
I was at the home of my in-laws, pregnant with my first child in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She (my MIL) just started screaming “A plane hit the world trade center!” over and over. Once in the living room and seeing what was going on – my morning sickness was worse than ever. I explained to my son (who is 8) a little about what happened that morning because they were talking about it on the radio on the way to school today. He wondered why his teacher didn’t talk about it. I still have newspapers from that day – I’ll show him one day.
Dear Jane-
Not to diminish your condition, but I think we all had morning sickness on that day. Please share it with your children when the time is right. We are given two ears and one mouth for a reason. Most of the time, listening is the best support you can give your children. Please take care.
~Mike
I was at home, but due to work the 2nd shift as an R.N. for a Blood Center in N.J. collecting blood. When I arrived, I was both surprised and shocked to see crowds of people standing outside our building entrance waiting to donate blood. There were so many people in the lobby, it was hard for be to get through.
We collected so much blood that day and the next day all staff had to come in early and scheduled a mandatory 8:00am to 8:00pm.
A local Starbucks store donated a huge carafe of coffee/ snacks and came back to refill it. a Also, a tent was donated for the people waiting outside.
Thank your for being a R.N. during this- the toughest of times by far.
And thank you for collecting blood on the day when the world lost so much.
~Mike
I was in my fourth grade classroom. We weren’t allowed to go out for recess later in the day and I was convinced that our school was trying to torture us because it was such a nice day and they weren’t letting us out. We didn’t find out about the attack until we went home or to after-school care.
I was in fifth grade. I remember classmate after classmate being called to the office for early dismissal. At first it seemed like a strange coincidence, but then there were rumors of a serious storm. My teacher was reluctant to say anything, but she eventually told us a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I guess she hadn’t seen the news yet, because after she explained to our class what the WTC Towers were, it sounded like it was just a small plane. That it was an accident. It wasn’t until my mom turned on the news after school that we really found out the truth.
I was also in school, I was in fifth grade. However, our teachers never told us what was going on. I still remember walking into my living room after getting off the bus to see my sister, and mother crying on the couch. I was young and didn’t understand at the time, how many lives really were effected by this. I will never forget. God bless those who were lost, and their families, and go bless our men and women over seas fighting for our freedoms, and keeping us safe.
I was in tenth grade and heard about “an attack” shortly after the second plane, however I didn’t even know it was planes or buildings or even that it was within our borders. Teachers didn’t want to talk about it bc it was upsetting, but that prevented me (and others) from knowing what happened until nearly the end of the day. For older kids & teens, teachers really should have been more forthcoming.
I was in third grade and as my school was just 4 blocks from the north tower we all were evacuated. My dad got me and took me to our apartment which was right next to the school. About 20 min later I simultainiously heard and felt the first collapse while watching it on tv as the apartment faced west and we were north of the tower. We then packed up a few things closed the windows and walked downstairs fearing that the power might be shut down. We then began walking up the bike path that folows the west side highway. We had reached harison street by pier 25 when we heard I rumble everyone turned around and I got to see the collapse of the south tower, the one which had the radio tower. Everyone watched in universal terror as the top of the building fel crushing all of the rest. A few seconds later the dust cloud came torwards us and everyone ran. It never reached us but completely covered my apartment building which was 25 stories high.
I was at first pleased as I got another month of summer vacation after just 2 days of school. The depth of my experience did not hit for a few years but I still vividly remember that day
On that day, I believe that we were all in the same grade, even though i have a few years on all of you.
Your memories are what make this experience so important to so many of us. Thank you for being a part of this. All of you.
~Mike
How could you not remember where you were when it happened? I was just getting into my car and I heard it on the radio. It didnt seem real. I went back inside and watched it on the news.
My mom says 9/11 is like when JFK was shot, or Pearl Harbor happened. If you knew when it happened, like, you heard on the radio, or anything like that, you always remember exactly what you were doing.
I really only remember 9/11, but I remember it vividly. It was my freshman year of high school, and I woke up to it on the radio. I watched the 2nd plane hit on the news, and I was the one who told my friend whose sister was starting her first day of work in the WTC that something horrible had happened.
Her sister, luckily, had overslept and never made it to work.
I remember every moment of that day. It didn’t really seem “real” for a few days.
And on that day, the freshman became an adult. This is our generation’s Pearl Harbor. Like generations past, we will all get through it together.
But this will never be easy. The thought behind this post is to keep the memory of that day alive, no matter how tough it may be. And you passed with flying colors. I hope you can find the strength. Stay strong. It’s the American way.
~Mike
Coming home from school. As I was walking to my car, I heard someone say, laugingly, that we were attacked. It was the first time that I ever was truly hear broken about such a huge travesty.
With good faith, hard work of our armed forces and American security, I pray it will be your last.
~Mike
Yesterday I watched a documentary about the 9/11 and Oh my God I cried all night. How could we ever forget? Words are not enough.
I still cry when I watch Flight 93 and it wasn’t until this year that I could actually force myself to sit down and watch the whole movie. In the past I couldn’t go five minutes without bawling and turning it off.
The human body is not equipped with as many tear glands as were needed for that day. Go at your own pace, both of you. As Burt Bacharach and Ronald Isley said: “Take it easy on yourself, make it easy on yourself.”
~Mike
At work, in a federal building near DC. I just remember rumors flying everywhere, of car bombs being found and all sorts of other stuff (turning out to not be true). They sent us all home, and I just remember how it was such a beautiful, clear sunny day.
It is still unbelievable to me what a beautiful day it was, yet what an ugly day it was. Thank you for being a part of all of our memories of that day.
~Mike
Hey Mike.
Every year I decide whether or not to share my complete thoughts and experience from that day. So far I’ve declined each year, but I have talked about it a little bit from time to time.
I was living in the NYC suburbs of Yonkers at the time. I worked in Times Square and was at my desk already that morning when my boss’s husband called me to let me know what was going on.
At first, was it an accident? Then a second plane hit. Then we are trying to tell our families we are OK. And at the same time trying to find friends and loved ones scattered throughout the city. The phone situation was chaotic. Times Square was mayhem and massive crowds stood in the center island and watched in disbelief as the second tower fell, all on the jumbo TV.
Eventually a small group of 10 of us walked all the way to Queens across the 59th St. Bridge. Traffic was horrible, people and cars, but there were some great stories. (Pick-up trucks stopping to get as many old people as they could fit so they wouldn’t have to walk so far, is one I can think of). From the bridge we could see so much smoke and ash and blackening of the sky, but no one could understand how the actual conditions were at the site.
When we got across the bridge, a city bus took everyone for free to my friends home where we watched the news for 12 hours or more. I finally was able to take a subway to Grand Central Station and a Metro North Train home. Still, we knew very little.
From my 7th top floor apartment in Yonkers, where I used to have a view of the Twin towers behind the illuminated George Washington Bridge, I had a view of billowing smoke for months. I have some video.
Well, I have a lot more to say, but that’s it for this year probably. Let’s just say that I shed a lot of tears that year. Thanks for the opportunity.
Rob
I’m so sorry you had to go through that… It’s good you found the strength to go on with your life. Not as many people were so fortunate to be so strong. You are blessed.
I am like you and have never talked about it openly for years until now. I’ve posted some of my thoughts on my blog today: http://tigerlalie.wordpress.com/2010/09/11/911-and-new-york-city-on-my-mind/
It’s good to hear that, in times of chaos and panic, people came together rather than fall apart.
Thanks for sharing, it sounds like it too a lot for you to write what you did. It helps others like myself to hear stories like yours. Thanks again.
Rob-
I have family that lives in Yonkers as I write this. Thank you for keeping the spotlight burning by sharing. While this is the worst tragedy many of us have experienced, it brought out the American spirit in so many.
When you look out your window, please see the towers in the most important place of all: your mind. My best to you.
~Mike
Driving to school my sophomore year of high school. I remember hearing it on the radio, turning it up to see if this was real or not. I couldn’t imagine something like that happening in our country.
I remember being on the other end – in a radio studio. I was running a live news show which was on air, when I noticed a plane had hit the first tower. At first I presumed it must be an accident, probably a light plane. Then we realised it was something more and began to react to that first attack. Then we saw the second plane hit the second tower on the TV screen in the studio. As you’d expect, everything we had planned went out the window.
I was lucky enough to have an excellent and calm presenter – though I remember shouting at other staff to quit gawping at their TV screens and get on the phones to find people to speak on air. At the time I was angry, though I suppose you could hardly blame them. It wasn’t long before the phone lines to the New York area went down.
After a few hours I handed over to a new team and sat in a basement bar watching the TV footage again and again. Even though I had heard from a colleague who was inside the first tower as it was hit by the first plane, it was still hard to believe it had really happened.
This was a time to be cool even though I’m sure your stomach told you otherwise. Thank you for sharing your memory with all of us. ~Mike
Not in my office on the 102nd floor of the North Tower, thankfully. I was in a plane on my way there from Florida when everything happened, and didn’t find out what had actually occurred until just before noon, when we finally landed and I was able to get on the phone after we were diverted to Atlanta.
Wow, that’s just amazing.
That is crazy.
Murray, your story is is the luckiest and most fortunate of all 494 responses I have seen. ~ Mike
That is amazing and you are truly blessed!
wow talk about being lucky! Live your life wisely 🙂
i can’t remember, if i am there
OMG!!! That’s crazy!!!
God works in mysterious was they say…
Its a blessing that you are here with us today….
I cant imagine what that day must have been like for you… 😦
Thank you all for blessing Murray. It worked.
~Mike