Charles, what were you doing when Flight 11 hit WTC1? Were you awake yet?

I was staying in New York, so I don't usually watch replays of it. I lived it and it was enough for me.

I was driving to work, praying my Rosary as I always do. When I got to work, I overheard some guy in the parking lot, on his cell phone, telling (I assume) his wife at home to "turn on the TV".

I was 12 miles west of the towers. Eight weeks after 9/11, I could still smell them burning when the wind was in the east.

I was driving to Jersey City on the way to Court and sadly had a clear as day look at the carnage - people were scrambling to get out of Jersey City - we thought the tri-state was next. By the way, Charles - great logo - thank you.

re: #4 Meryl Yourish

I was 12 miles west of the towers. Eight weeks after 9/11, I could still smell them burning when the wind was in the east.

Oh my.

I was in a conference room in a Montreal hotel and didn't even see a television until the first tower fell. Was scheduled for a flight back to Newark that afternoon, but wound up stranded until Thursday morning.

It was bad enough seeing my hometown under attack, but it was compounded by the utterly helpless feeling of being so far away unable to help in any way.

Working for the same company as I am now, but in a different building. We had a nice, motherly black lady as a temporary. She came into our area of the office with a blank expression on her face and said, "An airplane hit the World Trade Center." At first I thought it was a private plane, so I took my time wandering down to the cafeteria, where there was a TV; then I saw the first airliner hit the first tower and I knew we were at war.

I was walking down Bleecker Street heading to work at 8:45 AM, when I saw American Airlines Flight 11 fly over my head and strike the WTC.

My own 9/11 story is not dramatic, I wasn't near the towers when the planes hit, I was uptown, parking the car, when I heard on the car radio (observing the daily side parking rule dance) that a small plane had hit the south tower, while the reporter was still babbling about small planes, the second Jet hit and it became immediately clear that this was deliberate and most probably a terrorist attack.
I had an appointment that day at 11:00 AM with an Art News writer, who was writing a piece about my work, by 9:30 it was clear that that wouldn't happen, but since I had my studio, containing my life's work, downtown, I felt the need to venture down, took the last subway down, just two stops, when the whole system came to a halt, got out, took the bus and saw the first tower collapsing on the giant screens in Times Square, when the bus passed by. Everyone in the bus was screaming and yelling, and I was in utter disbelief, from than on everything was strange. I walked down 6th Avenue, seeing some giddy people taking photographs, and than the grey powdered masses of people started to pass me in the opposite direction.
I walked all the way to my studio on 52 Greene, just 1 1/2 blocks north from Canal, found it untouched and started to gather the information which slowly trickled in. My Landlord, an Iron work shop owner just got out from Tribeca, before the collapse of the first tower, the entire truck bed was covered with paper, ashes. I stayed down there the entire day, went down to Canal, back and watched the air force F-16 squadron flying by, securing the city.

I think it would have been better for me if the Russians, Mongols or Islamofascist had landed and the situation requiring me to fight with a gun, knife or even my bare hands, but the most damning thing was that everything was so insanely normal, completely surreal, below Canal was downtown Beirut and above not a twig was nipped on the side walk trees. Just the smell, which wafted up for weeks after the attacks.
I felt thoroughly shaken for weeks after, my work suddenly didn't seem to have any significance, as a matter of fact, I stopped working, walked around for a month or two and couldn't find my bearings.
I finally took it as a challenge to my existence as an artist and human being (these are not easy to tell apart for me) and started working about my experience. The resulting paintings (here is a link to them) were shown just once, briefly at the end of 2002, I call them "the gatherings", and they have to do with us, confronted with the enormity, not only of the attack and the loss of live, but the irrevocable change which just had our entire society thrown back into a medieval culture war of tremendous dimensions.
I am glad to say that these paintings have now finally found a home in the National 9/11 Memorial Museum at Ground Zero, which hopefully will open in 2011. This is full circle for me and hopefully closure as well.

What we can't do is close are our eyes, and it dismays me to see how many otherwise good people are completely blinded, not having any concept of the gravity of the coming years. These people will not go away, they can only be defeated, thouroughly beaten into oblivion, like on 9/11 1683, if we can't summon up the strenght to do that we will be downed and all what we (the western civilization stands for).

I was in a SAM's Club in Erie, PA watching things unfold on a wall of TVs.

I was just getting settled at work. My wife called: "You won't believe what's on TV." Within minutes all six of us at that small Chicago office were scanning the radio and online for news. We finally got an online news feed, just in time to see the first tower coming down. We all immediately left for home; I gave a couple others a ride home and then spent the day with my wife taking care of our infant daughter and absorbing all that unfolded on the TV screen befroe our eyes.

I was at work. I had heard on the radio that a plane had hit one of the towers. I just thought it was a terrible accident. Then a co-worker came in and said the other tower had been hit and my immediate response was: "F@#$ing [bigoted word]s!" And I was right.

At home in Boston, on the computer, about 10 minutes from the airport.

I remember I bought two newspapers the day after with pictures of the towers on the front page. I put them in the bottom of a trunk and I'm saving them for when my kids get a little older.

NEVER FORGET

I was working in Toledo, I thought my coworkers were joking. I had to drive to Detroit that day, and I remember it being very weird not hearing/seeing any airplanes as I passed the airport.

Working outdoors in DC area, had to listen to events on an AM radio - heard the Pentagon impact. Traffic gridlocked so we stayed in place and finished the tasker we were working on with the radio on.

I was heading in to work in San Francisco.

My boss was in DC; I stayed at work, and did my job, while reading everything I could find on the web.

The streets were empty, the building was empty, even BART was pretty much empty, when quitting time finally rolled around. A very strange day.

I was working at home for some reason, and someone at work emailed everyone and said that the first tower had been hit. So I turned the TV on, and could not turn it of off for hours. I watched as the second plane hit the second tower, and I cried and cried.

And when each tower fell, I sat and prayed for all those in New York, asking God for his special blessing to protect as many people as possible. But I could do nothing else to help that first day.

I was at work.

They had the tv's on in the conference rooms and we all went in and out of there watching, thinking it was just pilot error or something.

After the second one, a lot of us were glued to the tv's.
I remember standing in the back, watching with my hand involuntarily over my mouth.
I knew my nephew, fresh from boot camp, would be going to war.

Some of the girls in the office made up USA signs and hung them out in the warehouse.
We were told we could leave if we wanted to go home.

Driving home (45 minute drive) I saw the gas stations were packed.
I hurried to pick up my daughter from daycare, afraid that they would hit Kansas City before I could get to her.

When I got home I just sat on my front porch and listened to the silence.
Don't know why but that day was the quietest day I have ever heard.

I was in 8th grade science class in the Hudson Valley. It didn't hit me at first that this was something that was going to change the world. My dad took me out of class about an hour later.

My uncle, his brother, was FDNY and was at both towers when they went down. Somehow he survived.

I was drinking coffee on my back patio when my father called me and told me to put on the TV. I was in shock the entire day. I called my employees and told them we are not working today, stay home.....I sat there all day, flipping back and forth between the channels...

I am in the air freight business, my workers stayed home for two weeks, it almost put us out of the business and it has never recovered from that day. But, I could careless about that. I am angry to this day about the events of 9/11/01. I pray for the dead and their families and I curse the bastards that did this.

ISMD, HQSPTBN, MCB Camp Lejeune. We were just getting into our day after coming back from morning PT when we got the word a plane hit the WTC. Everyone thought they meant some cesna or student pilot got lost, then word of the second plane came down and we all went on full alert. I didn't even see any video of the attack till that evening.

I work in land surveying. The instrument man came over the radio and told me that his wife had just called and said that all hell was breaking loose. My Uncle, who was in the field with us, saw no reason to stop working so we worked all day. At the time I was living alone and did not have a TV set. To this day I have never seen video of the planes going into the towers, and I have no desire to. The stories that I heard that day on the radio were disturbing enough.

In the semi-rural countryside. The radio at a construction site a few hundred feet away was going really loud. Why? At home I listened to NPR. I couldn't believe it. It was not a cold day but I began to shiver a lot. That afternoon a friend said "we're going to war over this".

For those who lived near or worked near the towers you will remember this moment: crystal clear blue sky and lurking, dark, billowing smoke and lots of it - plus the smell. It was the smell of fear that day. Days later the air smelled like justice.

Driving in to work, stopped at the post office, and the radio and the people at the post office were talking about it. Initially, I thought it was a small plane. I knew no US pilot would fly into the buildings.
On the way in, I heard more.

I knew my best friend from college worked there, but only 2 or 3 days a week; the rest of the time, he worked at home. I tried to call him (in Connecticut), called my wife, and she tried, but we couldn't get through. He was home that day, email worked before we could get a call through.

My boss's daughter worked across the street, and had only shortly before come out of the PATH station. (She worked for the architectural company that designed some of the systems in the towers).

At the time, my immediate VP, was an Indian Muslim, who was certainly not the type to engage in terrorism, was also bothered by this being done in his religion's name. Of course, he'd be considered an apostate to Al Qaeda, and he worked for an Israeli-American company.

Left work early, and was glued to the TV. One of our dogs watched with me - and he usually doesn't pay attention to the TV. He could tell something was going on.

I haven't had the chance to go to Ground Zero, but I did see the memorial at the Intrepid museum. Part was a table of charred debris - papers, floppy disks, etc.

I was eating breakfast, getting ready for school. My father called from his car to tell us to put the TV on. I didn't really comprehend what had happened until later that day, sitting in one of my classes.

I was getting ready for work when I flipped on the tube. My wife (who was the business manager of our little company) had already left. I called her and told her to "Just come home" and wouldn't explain why.

We spent the rest of the day closed and watching for updates.

That afternoon, in tears, I took my two little boys to the baseball diamond "just to do something American". I couldn't explain it to them, but they seemed to understand.

I was at home, asleep, after having driven 700-some-odd miles roundtrip to a job interview the day before. The phone rang with someone from work calling me to turn the TV on. I watched the image of the first plane hitting the towers, then they broke with the second one. I was horrified. I did not have a long time to sit and watch, as I had to be at a criminology class I was taking. When class convened, the instructor told us all to go home, but those in the military and law enforcement to get their stuff together, as surely they would be busy that day and for some time to come. The instructor also asked us all to pray for the victims and our country. (he isn't your usual college prof, being a vet of both Airborne service, and law enforcement service for a number of years). Came home from class just in time to be called in to work that day, to replace a co-worker who had already been called up for National Guard duty. He didnt return for almost 3 years. Just a week later, my brother was reassigned to Air Marshal duty that would last 18 months.

That morning I woke up shortly before the second plane hit. I was on several web design email lists, and when I checked email the first message I saw was from someone in New York who wrote, "Did you see that? It went right into the World Trade Center."

That sent a chill down my spine. I turned on the television right after the second plane, and saw both towers burning -- and knew right away it was an attack of some kind. I didn't know they were airplanes at first, but they started rerunning the footage of the planes swooping in almost immediately, and then I realized it was a terrorist act.

I was in Monterey CA. I foolishly thought I had to go to work anyway and did, only to be told to go home (Naval Postgraduate School).

Checked to make sure my brother was okay in the Pentagon (he was, he was able to call my sister in law and she called all of us brothers). He went right back to work that afternoon.

With nothing else to do and tired of watching it on TV, I instead went for a long late afternoon mountain bike ride near the coast. I ran into another lone mountain biker and all I could say to him was "What a crazy day"

My wife and I had just taken the train from London to Coventry. She slept for much of the ride, I read a biography of one of the early Jesuits to visit Japan (Rodrigues the Interpreter). Our friend met us at the train station, breathless, and told us a plane had hit the WTC. We spent much of the rest of the afternoon glued to the television.

I was at my first week of my freshman year of college at George Washington U. My dorm was 3 blocks from the White House. I was in class when a student teacher came running in informing us of what was happening and that the White House was being evacuated. My teacher continued and she came back and told us the Pentagon got hit. I began to freak out because it was now across the river and I thought the White House was next. She came in a third and final time telling us one tower had fallen and we all ran out of the room. As soon as I got to the street there was black smoke in the sky from the Pentagon. I got to my 9th floor dorm room and could see the Pentagon on fire. The streets were chaos at D.C. was shut down. None of the phones worked. Everyone was in total panic. I remember someone running down the dorm hall screaming that their father worked on the 105th floor. There were rumors of car bombs at the State Dept and the Capitol. I watched the second tower fall from my dorm room, at which point I hit the floor and started crying (I'm from NY). A girl across the hall came in and tried to say something nice but I was pretty inconsolable. I spent the rest of the afternoon watching TV and trying to reach my parents. I spent the evening on my friends building's roof watching the blue and red flashing lights and the column of smoke still visible in the dark across the river in Virginia.

1ST plane hit, I was 5 minutes from work. When I arrived our phones were ringing off the hooks
(we send and recieve satellite and fiber optic TV signals worldwide for CNN/ ABC/ NBC/ FOX/ CBS/ plus sports and international clients)

Within an hour, cameras from local New York stations were in place. To this day i'll never forget the images I saw nor the feelings I had even though due to how busy we were, 9/11 and the days that followed were a blur

I was at home, on days off, dozing in bed. Heard something on the clock radio about an aircraft hitting the WTC. I scrambled downstairs and spliced together the coax cable that connected my TV set to the outdoor antenna, and got it fired up about the time the second plane hit.

I was in a state of stunned disbelief and anger all day, and I'm nowhere near NYC, or in the USA at all. But this was a blow against civilization itself.

May the innocents who died on that awful day rest in peace. And may the evil perpetrators suffer the most exquisite tortures of Hell until Eternity and beyond.

Since I live on the west coast I was still in bed. My dear friend Teri phoned and said "turn on your TV, we are under attack!" I will never, ever forget that day. Somehow word spread on the street that one of our local churches was having a prayer service which I attended.

I was in Navy Flight School at NAS Corpus Christi. I had a night flight the night before and got back around midnight. I woke up with my roommate's girlfriend called and told me to turn the TV on. They shut down flight school for a week.

Woke up late that day; I had the day off from work. I turn on the tv and the first thing I saw (on CNN) was smoke pouring out of one tower. Then the second plane hitting. Then the collapse of the first tower. Feels now like it was all at once. I had thought it was an accident before the second plane hit, but then I remembered the bombs in the garage from earlier and figured it was the islamists.

Remembered OKC. A friend from there had called immediately to say,"They got us," that time. He meant islamists, but he was wrong then of course. On 9/11 it flashed what he said and I thought, "Now, they've got us."

Had never heard of al-Qaeda till then, imagine. Fat, dumb and happy. Imagine, I had been for Gore!

We have a long way to go.

I was in my office in mid-town Manhattan, looking out my south facing windows on the 21st floor. I watched both planes hit the WTC and 102 minutes later, I watched them fall. I then spent the next 7.5 hours getting home with several hundred thousand shocked and very well behaved commuters.

I was at work.

I was signing up that morning for sale training at Gerry Weinberg in Southfield MI. I was listening to it all on the radio not really knowing/understanding what I was hearing.

re: #16 Ben Hur

Usually, I think you're funny, but not this time.

re: #21 Ward Cleaver

Are you serious, Ben? I hate to say it, but that almost plays into the whole "the Jews were tipped off" lie.

Um, I think Ben was kidding.

It was the first day of university and my friend phoned me at 8 am and told me someone flew a plane into the world trade center, i turned the tv on just as the second plane was flown into tower 2.

They hooked a tv upstairs where they had the taliban on television, i just remember not saying a word all day, i think we had one class and left after 10 minutes.

I was at work, in Toronto.

A guy mentioned that a small plane hit the WTC. We all thought it was an accident resulting from incompetence of a pilot.

Then the second plane hit.

A coworker of mine (LLL from Romania), then smiled and said "They are all pigs in that tower." I was so shocked at him that I stared open-mouthed for at least a minute.

That was the day I started dissociating myself from all LLL acquaintances.

At work in lab, doing seemingly important stuff... Being ORD's neighbor, saw many aircraft landing rapidly and none taking off. Later found out why. Still have copy of lab notebook pages for that day somewhere.

I was at work, in Toronto.

A guy mentioned that a small plane hit the WTC. We all thought it was an accident resulting from incompetence of a pilot.

Then the second plane hit.

A coworker of mine (LLL from Romania), then smiled and said "They are all pigs in that tower." I was so shocked at him that I stared open-mouthed for at least a minute.

That was the day I started dissociating myself from all LLL acquaintances.

He's lucky. If I was there, he'd be in the hospital.

One thing I will never forget was hearing the fighter jets when they finally reached D.C. proper. Right as I heard the boom the guy on TV said that fighters had just arrived. It was one of only two times I saw fighter jets over the city in the 4 years I went to school there.

re: #21 Ward Cleaver

Are you serious, Ben? I hate to say it, but that almost plays into the whole "the Jews were tipped off" lie.

Whoa, thats just what I thought. That rumor is rampant all over the Islamic world that Jews got a heads up to stay home, because it was perpetrated by Jews.

Ben Hur: not appropriate.

I was enjoying a chance to sleep in when my husband called up the stairs to me that the WTC had been hit. Without seeing it, I assumed what everyone else did and that it was some bozo in a tiny plane who flew off course.

Then he called up to me that the second one was hit and I spent most of the rest of the day crying my eyes out in front of the TV. The only time I went out was when we drove to the side of town where we could actually see the towers. They were nothing but a thick column of dust at that point. I took a picture but it wasn't any good.

I remember wondering how many in my town wouldn't be coming home that night. I believe we lost seven. Considering the tiny size of the town, that was quite significant. Other towns near us lost more than 20.

It was, and still is, appalling.

I was living in Phoenix at the time. I entered my Sociology class about where a somewhat fuzzy TV was showing the two towers, both on fire. Classes were canceled. I went home and spent the next few hours going back and forth between the TV and bathroom dry heaving when it became too much to handle. I also remember not talking much that day. Just watched the news stunned.

I was at home from work, sick with a stomach virus. I remember my wife coming into the bathroom telling me that I had to come watch the TV.

September 11th is also my Mother's birthday.

Landed in Pittsburgh airport at 8:30am from NY. Stopped for breakfast at a place in the airport, and there was a crowd around the bar. I thought "not even 9am, and the bar is full?!?!" Then saw they were watching TV. Saw #2 hit, thinking it was a replay of what I had just been told.

Wound up at the PGH airport Hyatt, watching TV at the bar all day.

Interestingly, that night at around 11, in the hotel, I heard a plane, and knowing everything was grounded, ran to the window, and saw an olive green 707 land. At about 4am, heard something again, and saw the same plane, or type of plane take off. I assume it was in and out to collect the flight data recorders from flight 93.

Managed to rent a car the next day, and drove home.

I was home alone in St. Louis. My husband was at work, our son was back at college. I went into the den to go online, flipped on the television news on the way by, and froze. The first plane had already hit. I called my husband at work and we stayed connected through the second hit, and both towers falling. At some point during that time, I received an e-mail from our son. We wrote back and forth to each other until it was over. I think I would have lost it had not the three of us been 'together.'

I was at home in California, waiting for the stock market to open for another trading day. Then CNBC had an announcement about a plane hitting a WTC tower. Then all hell broke loose. I'll never forget the gamut of emotions I felt that morning...first confusion about what was going on, then sadness and pity for the victims, and finally white-hot anger at the scum who did this.

I was driving to work and listening to a music radio station in my car.

And then...

"We interrupt this broadcast with breaking news..."

I had just come home from Bangkok just a couple weeks prior, and still was fighting a bit of jet lag. Sitting in my (late) dad's lounge chair, snoozing, watching CNN. I woke up just after the first plane hit, and I assumed it was a horrible accident.

As it all unfolded, I was struck almost speechless. I called my siblings several times throughout that day and the next.

I didn't sleep a wink the next couple of days. I found myself thinking that it was a blessing my dad had passed away just six months prior, because he surely would not have lived through the horror of 9/11. It would have broken him utterly.

I was sitting at home doing some chores. I got a call from my girl friend who lived in NY City. Luck was on her side as she was home that day.

I talked to her for hours as she was scared and frighted for all her family and love ones. Her daughter was safe but she lost an uncle and good friends that day.

I know it was one thing to see this on TV but I cant imagine what it was like for those there. My heart was broken that whole entire day.

I was living in Miami, FL at the time. First I heard was from Drudge's headline, and then I turned on the TV. When I saw the towers fall, my first thought was "somebody just started a war".

I was going to morning services at the synagogue when an older (maybe 50 at the time) tougher (grew up in a harder part of NJ) world-wise man spoke of the attack and named Osama Bin Ladin as the likely culprit. I didn't know what to make of what he said. It seemed unreal. I went to work and found out more.

I have friends and family in NY City, but no one I knew was in Manhattan.

Gavriel

re: #48 Eagle

They are all pigs in that tower." I was so shocked at him that I stared open-mouthed for at least a minute.

Are you serious?! That's more than a LLL vs. Conservative reaction. That is a sociopath. I wouldn't react that way if an office building in Tehran got hit.

Eating breakfast at a local cafe. Wife called and told me a small plane hit the towers; although they weren't sure. I finished my meal, assuming it was a Cessna 172. ON my way out, I asked the waitress if we could turn on the TV in the office to see the damage. She consented, we did, and ten seconds after turning it on, the second plane hit.

Seeing the face of pure evil strike on live TV shakes me to this day, and the horror in the waitress' scream still resonates.

I never made it to work.

I was just arriving at work (in the UK) and didn't have the radio on. As I entered my office someone told me an airliner had just gone into WTC and a second one was thought on its way. I was in disbelief!

I remember thinking "I hope its Palestinians who did it!".

I was then glued to a tv and radio for a week. I remember the infamous Question Time stuffed full of Muslims who told us we had asked for it and brought the ex-USA Ambassador to tears.

I also remember the fake Nostradamus Quatrain that went around predicting it. It was a student who simply wrote a thesis on how to write Nostradamus Qautrains.

God Rest Their Souls!

God Bless America!

Maven,

A Brit

My son told me a plane had hit a tower so I watched the tv with him. He asked if the tower would fall down. I told him no.

One of my friends who was in the city would later tell me about the exploding pink mist on the sidewalks, not realizing it was falling people.

Another friend at Greenwich Capital had a squawk box into one of the offices in the towers. He listened and tried to give comfort to employees until the floor gave way.

Other friends watched the towers fall from the connecticut coast.

That night was the first (and only) night my kids saw me drunk. Yelling at the sky.

re: #53 Charles

Ben Hur: not appropriate.

Thanks Charles. I felt very uneasy about replying to that.

Usually, I think you're funny, but not this time.

For what it's worth Ben, I thought it was funny.

I still have a cold fury

I was in Ansbach, Germany preparing to return stateside in two weeks. I did have a soldier flying back to the states that day with his family. I found out that they were diverted to Toronto Canada from Frankfurt Germany.

We were bringing our newborn son home from a hospital in Pittsburgh. We heard it on the radio.

One American beginning a new life with the hopes and dreams that only America can bring, while over 3000 of his fellow Americans were having theirs savagely torn away by a group of murderous barbarians.

I will never forget what happened that day.

Heard about it listening to Howard Stern, on my way to meet a client at a coffee shop. The client had to leave because her husband was in the Pentagon. Never heard back from her; never heard about him. My wife's office would have been in the impact from Flight 93 if some heroes hadn't made things otherwise. When I understood that, things got serious.

I was in my office on the Jersey side of the Hudson when the first plane hit. I immediately called Israel since I just knew it was Terrorism. I was on the phone to Israel when the second plane hit. I walked one block down to the river and watched the towers collapse live. I have a colleague in the Navy, also a Dentist, who was coming home from a active duty tour in Japan. He was flying to Hawaii to met his fiance before coming back for his next tour in Connecticut. She never made it to Hawaii and he was "stuck" in Hawaii playing golf for a week!

35,000 feet over the Ohio/KY border on the way to Sacramento Califronia with my son. Got sent to Atlanta, had to take the Greyhound Bus home

#$%#$%#v Muslims

New Jersey Turnpike. Secaucus. Beautiful day. Driving a convertible with the top down. About 10 cars pulled over to the side on an overpass with a perfect view of lower Manhattan.

Later went to an office in Secaucus and had a picture window view of the collapse.

Weather wise it was a gorgeous September day in NYC.

I'll repost what I wrote for the "Where were you?" thread from 2003 (which can be found under "Never forget" on the upper left side of this page):

I was at home in Washington, DC, getting ready to leave for work, when the radio reported the first WTC attack. I switched on CNN: within moments, we saw the second attack, the announcer shouting "there's a second plane!" and then a fireball rolling up from the bottom of the screen. I think at that moment, the void opened, it became clear what was happening. I sat horrified, staring at the events unfolding on the screen, for another 40 minutes; then, for some reason (I still can't explain why), I decided I should still go in to work. In the Metro station, a calm voice announced, "attention Metrorail passengers: the Pentagon station is closed, due to a terrorist attack." Surreal--the same tone of voice, the same style, used to announce, I don't know, that an elevator at station X is out of order. I rationalized that the reason the Pentagon had closed was due to the attacks in NYC. Only upon arriving at work did I learn, from the building security guard, that the Pentagon itself had been hit.

The next hour is something of a blur. Someone in the office had a television on; the first WTC had already collapsed. Someone had a wire report from internet that a Palestinian group had claimed responsibility (does anyone else remember this?). I heard the sound of a jet engine outside (I work about 2 blocks from the White House): to this day I don't know what that was, perhaps an Air Force patrol. I decided it was time to get out of downtown DC. I joined the exodus walking north along Connecticut Avenue; taking the Metro seemed like a bad idea. As we all know, it was a gorgeous day; some of the people streaming up the avenue were smiling and joking, as if this were just a day off from work.

Arrived home, switched on the television, saw the second tower had collapsed; frantically tried to make phone contact with family in the NY area. I eventually got through to a friend in Colorado, and asked him to try to call my family; it worked, somehow that call went through. After a while, I was able to get a line, too. My immediate family was all fine; but nobody knew yet where my cousin was, who worked in one of the WTC towers. I had forgotten that fact; I felt sick.

I went to join some friends to watch the news and just have some company. Some people seemed preternaturally cheerful, as if this were happening somewhere else. What the television was showing was unreal; US airspace closed, domestic aviation locked down. Unknown number of planes hijacked. I reached my sister by phone; she had news, my cousin was fine, she had been late for work that morning and this had probably saved her life. For some reason, upon hearing this *good* news, this was the first time I felt that cracking sensation inside me, and felt tears well up.

We finally went to get something to eat at "The Diner" in the Adams Morgan neighborhood. A weirdly, obscenely festive atmosphere there--not celebrating the event, no, but just a cheerful chatter as if it were a weekend. What the hell is wrong with these people? I think I mostly stared straight ahead. The t.v. in the corner showed the Palis dancing in the street. I will never, ever forget that image. Ever.

I was in a meeting. I remember someone telling us that an airliner had hit the WTC. There was a Nat. Guard Lt. Col. sitting next to me and he breathed out loud...."Bin Laden"

the rest of the day was surreal

Home and desperately calling my wife (who works next to the Pentagon) on her mobile to tell her to turn around and come home.

I was in NY State. The local residents went to the muslim encampment nearby with rifles drawn. The Feds flew in in choppers afraid that the muslims, with ties to the '93 WTC bombing so it was a connection that made sense that day, would blow up the reservoir which feeds NYC. For months our local State Troopers went to Ground Zero to guard it. The threat is persistent around these parts. The sound of gunfire at night is common. It's not a question of memory, it's here, it's alive, it's now.

re: #14 Stormy

At home in Boston, on the computer, about 10 minutes from the airport.

I remember I bought two newspapers the day after with pictures of the towers on the front page. I put them in the bottom of a trunk and I'm saving them for when my kids get a little older.

NEVER FORGET

Since I was away I had my wife collect the NY papers. I really never much looked at them, but put them away for safe keeping. Some day I'll explain it all to my son.

One of the more terrifying things that day was being unable to get through on my phone to Manhattan to check on some friends and my mother, but I managed to later in the day. When I later found out hundreds of Cantor Fitzgerald employees were killed I knew it was bad news, as I had a couple of friends there. I also knew several of the firemen who were killed in the collapse.

My friend who lives a few blocks up on Greenwich Street managed to get his young kids from PS 234 and was able to flee through the Holland Tunnel before it was shut down. My wife finally put me in touch with him the following afternoon as he relocated to his home in PA. Since the school was destroyed he enrolled the kids in school out there for the year. His building essentially became a command center for weeks afterward.

Whenever I visit there I still just stand there looking at where the WTC used to be. It breaks my heart to this day.

I was at work and tried like hell to find something on the internets about it - the traffic was such that no news sites would load. A friend found a TV from a training room and we watched the 2nd plane hit and then both towers collapse. We were sent home early and I was so numb the rest of the day. I'm a native NYer now in Dayton OH and was stunned that my hometown was attacked.

We're not far from Wright Patterson AFB and a fighter jet flew past that afternoon with a sonic boom - that scared the hell out of us at that moment - we had no idea what it was for a while.

The thing I remember just as much is the sarcasm and sardonic comments about President Bush from various talking heads on the TV. That was when I realized that some of us just don't love America, they hate it, and not even a murderous act like this can change their minds. I also remember when President Bush visited Ground Zero with the bullhorn - a truly heroic moment and one that made me love him and America even more. Let's ROLL!

re: #46 Occasional Reader

Um, I think Ben was kidding.

If that was a joke then it deserves a down ding. Not something to joke about.

I was driving to my morning class at Rutgers Newark along route 3 in New Jersey. This was about 40 minutes after I saw the attacks on the morning news from my house.

At first I shrugged this attack off as some pilot accident, and went on about my day, driving to class.

While listening to the car radio, I heard the 2nd attack happened and knew that this definitely wasnt an accident. The moment that was etched in my mind was how the entire route 21 highway was full of stopped cars, and all the people standing on the highway just looking at 2 smoke columns coming up from across the river. You could see the towers engulfed in flames.

that night after the school ended, I drove back on route 3 east, towards New York City, and I remember the highway sign flashing back and forth

NYC Closed, NYC Closed, with 2 never ending smoke pillars rising out from behind the sign on the island just 5 miles away.

the most surreal day of my life.

I was in my car in Toronto, just about to park when I heard on the radio that a plane smashed into the tower and I said to myself-it's a terrorist attack. I walked into the building where I worked and told a few people-we tried to log onto CNN but it was crashed...they put the TV on in a large room and everyone just sat and stared in disbelief...my husband and I wondered if we should pick up the kids from school and take them home. The magnitude of the disaster was impossible to comprehend in those first moments...we sat watching at work for a couple of hours. We were allowed to go home early. The skies were silent. A friend said a few days later do you think people will finally understand what we are up against? I said I hope so but I don't think so.

I was on NJ Transit going through Secaucus and notice the moment after the first plane hit. I was with my dad at the time, and we both worked in Manhattan. Dad would normally take PATH to WTC, and I'd go to Christopher St.

I didn't see the plane, but did see the smoke, and some fire. I called my office to tell 'em I might be late because something was going on at the WTC. No one quite knew for sure what was happening.

I made it into Manhattan. Don't know where dad was.

I made it to my office. Only then did a coworker note that a plane hit the WTC. I called dad. He was okay, still in Hoboken and he told me PATH was closed. I had made the last PATH to go through to Manhattan on either the 33rd st or WTC lines.

He was sitting tight. I'm at my office in Manhattan. I called Mrs. Lawhawk (wasn't married to her at the time, but she was working out of state). Next thing I know, the second plane hit.

Local news websites are toast. They're overloaded as everyone on the planet is trying to figure out what's going on. I check the JPost and BBC. I find out that multiple planes hijacked. Two crashed into the WTC.

I go to the window at the office where I can see the towers. Both are on fire. I can smell 'em. I'm a mile+ to the north.

The incessant ringing of emergency personnel screeches all around.

I go back to my desk and get in touch with Mrs. Lawhawk's family and relay messages - apparently cellphone lines are swamped, and pretty much everyone in the region is trying to call loved ones. I have one of the few working circuits through it all and get calls and relay messages.

I call Legalbgl. He works two blocks north of WTC.

He's okay. He got to WTC just as the second plane hit. He got cut by someone running into the subway to avoid falling debris, but it's a scratch. He and I will meet around 12pm.

My office announces evacuations around 10:30 or so. Where would you go? I stayed where I was. I had phones, I had internet, and people could reach me.

I made a gameplan - meet up with Legalbgl, and then walk back to Brooklyn.

By that time, both towers had come down. Something I'd never ever contemplated. And there it was. The smell was overwhelming, and the mass of people flowing out of Lower Manhattan was somber and dust covered.

We finally cross the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn, looking back all the while. The towers were gone, but fragments of the outer shell were still visible hundreds of feet into the air. We had no idea how many died - too many to bear, that's for sure. I raged inside. At the same time we were walking across the bridge, construction gangs were assembling with cranes and all manner of construction vehicles waiting to cross into Manhattan to help rescue people. Little did any of us know that there would be no one pulled from the Pile beyond those first few hours. Everyone else was dead. There were relatively few people injured.

You either survived. Or you didn't. Hundreds of firefighters were gone in a flash.

And I spent the rest of the day on legalbgl's couch in Brooklyn glued to the TV trying to find out what had happened, who was responsible, and wondering what country or group of individuals were going to be turned into glass.

I finally did manage to get home the next day, quickly running up to meet with Mrs. Lawhawk.

Not long after that day, I started chronicling the relief, recovery, and rebuilding efforts. I do that to this day. It's my way of coping, dealing, and knowing that some good might come of it.

I was a senior in high school. In calculus class, we were in the one class room that had all of the tv's and recording equipment set up, so we put it on right away when we heard about the first plane.

You should have seen the faces of some of the students in my class, absolutely seared into my memory.

While watching it we saw the second plane hit live. I couldn't deal with it and had to just get up and leave. (We're in Long Island, by the way).

On the way home the radio starting talking of one of the towers collapsing, and my mouth damn near dropped to the floor. The tower? Those huge towers we can see from miles away while driving to the beach? Gone?

Very fortunately I did not lose any loved ones directly that day. But it changed me for good.

I arrived at work around 8:30 am that day. I was in as well as the Adminstrative Assitant for the company president. A friend of mine IM'ed me and said there was some sort of plane crash at the World Trade Center. Immediately I went to the website of Fox News and saw the first hpto images of the hole in the side of WTC 1. I went to the Admin. and said there was a plane that crashed into the WTC. She did not believe me and I told her to put on a news site on the computer... We both saw it...

I returned to my workstation and kept tabs by putting on the radio. I had on && WABC with Curtis and Kuby. Then the horrifying news of a second crash and I knew this was not a coincidence... Some really, really terrible was happening and not far away... I had a meeting in the board room at 9:30 and went in with the knowledge that the WTC was hit and on fire. No one else at the meeting was aware nor did they seem to get what I was saying... I could not concentrate and when I went to update things I heard that the Petagon was hit as well... It was at that moment when rumors of all kinds started flying and we stopped working and paid attention.

Then the towers fell... It was an almost eerie feeling... Like we were thinking what the hell is happening? We're all engineers and saw it and could not fathom it... It was a moment that I realized something really awful had happened and the price that would be paid would be great on both sides. I started to pray, thinking that this was my last hour as I thought it was a prelude to a nuclear event... Thanksfully, it was not...

We all had lunch brought in that day. We all sat around and discussed our feelings. Some of us wanted revenge to immediate and painful. Others embraced a more reserved mantra. I did not venture out into the streets until 5:30pm when I came home. Zombies walking. Silence. Got on my bus and headed home... Saw the smoldering wreckage and watched people in the bus cry... Got home, stayed up till after midnight. I did not think I was going to work the next day. But listening to Rudy Giuliani and his words of hope made me get up and relive my life on 9/12. Never again to live as I have before, taking NOTHING for granted, especially my country.

re: #9 Joel

I was walking down Bleecker Street heading to work at 8:45 AM, when I saw American Airlines Flight 11 fly over my head and strike the WTC.

Here's a song for you.

re: #48 Eagle

Good Lord. I would have punched him.

...clearest sky I'd ever seen before or since that day...

I was on my way home from taking my gf to work, heard it on the radio. I was wondering that morning what direction my life would take, having been laid-off the day before...

Then I knew I had to find out "why?" - and find the solutions.

re: #84 tedzilla99

Todd Beamer

I was just finishing packing my bag getting ready to leave for the Palm Springs airport when my boss called, we were traveling together, and asked if I had the TV on. I told him no, he said turn it on and we aren't going anywhere. I did just in time to see the second aircraft hit the tower. I can not put into words what I, and I suspect millions of others felt when they witnessed this atrocity, but I can tell you that on October 14, 2001 I and my boss were in the city for business and we went to ground zero. It was terrible, thousands of people standing in silence and the smell of death was still in the air. I know I have smelled it many times in my life. I will never, ever forget nor will I ever find forgiveness for those who started this war. If I wasn't so damn old I would be back doing what needs to be done.

I had a few days off from work in Texas. Heard about it on the radio. Was glued to the TV for several days.(like everone) When I got back to work several days later. Several employees had told me about one of the managers telling people to turn off their radios and get back to work...I fired his sorry ass the next day.........

A 411 Operator in NJ.

I was in my office as usual. At that time, my office was on the seventh floor of a twenty-one story building which happens to be the tallest one in the small southern city where I live. My brother was in his Manhattan apartment. I called him to see if he was okay. He seemed more annoyed by the disruption of his work day than anything else. That should tell you a lot about my brother.

re: #32 Charles

What an honor to have posted right next to Charles and only appropriate since we were both probably shaken out of our west coast dreams and into a nightmare at about the same time.

...it was shortly after that that I discovered LGF, and how it's grown.

I was at my job at a commercial nursery in southern New Jersey. One of the sales guys told us about the first plane ("Oh, how odd....") then about the second plane ("Oh. My. God.") The nursery is located right by two regional airports which have tons of small aircraft that we would hear on a regular basis; when the FAA grounded everything, the silence was stunning.

For myself, 9/11 is remarkable for how it affected the people around me. One guy I know was the nephew of the pilot of the second plane. Our neighbor across the street had just been laid off from Cancor Fitzgerald; he would not have been there that day, but eight of the ten people he would meet with there were killed. My EMT friends attached to ambulance companies spent the next few days on the NJ side of the river between NJ and NYC. A friend in the Red Cross spent the next couple of months working twelve hour shifts where all he would do is track vehicles involved in the recovery efforts. My college roommate worked for a company involved in air quality and environmental cleanup at Ground Zero. A college friend's dad was the only guidance counselor at a school up in northern NJ whose community is full of commuters to NYC.

I remember driving up to northern NJ with my wife on that Friday. We just looked out the window on the NJ turnpike as we went past the site. Even from afar, even through the window of television, there was nothing like seeing that smoke plume rise from lower Manhattan. Even so far away, it was larger than life.

re: #82 jemima

I was in NY State. The local residents went to the muslim encampment nearby with rifles drawn. The Feds flew in in choppers afraid that the muslims, with ties to the '93 WTC bombing so it was a connection that made sense that day, would blow up the reservoir which feeds NYC. For months our local State Troopers went to Ground Zero to guard it. The threat is persistent around these parts. The sound of gunfire at night is common. It's not a question of memory, it's here, it's alive, it's now.

Near Hancock?

re: #75 Pullus Iulius

Heard about it listening to Howard Stern, on my way to meet a client at a coffee shop. The client had to leave because her husband was in the Pentagon. Never heard back from her; never heard about him. My wife's office would have been in the impact from Flight 93 if some heroes hadn't made things otherwise. When I understood that, things got serious.

In New York - Warner Wolfe was on the Imus in the Morning show by phone. He lived across from the towers. He was describing people jumping out of windows. It was surreal. I was horrified.

I had just finished my morning walk. I always leave the TV on FNC throughout the day so Dog will have company.
I entered the family room and FNC was talking about a plane hitting the WTC. As I sat down to watch, the second plane hit.
I rarely left the front of the TV for the next couple months.

re: #32 Charles

That morning I woke up shortly before the second plane hit. I was on several web design email lists, and when I checked email the first message I saw was from someone in New York who wrote, "Did you see that? It went right into the World Trade Center."

That sent a chill down my spine. I turned on the television right after the second plane, and saw both towers burning -- and knew right away it was an attack of some kind. I didn't know they were airplanes at first, but they started rerunning the footage of the planes swooping in almost immediately, and then I realized it was a terrorist act.

Wow, Charles.

Watching the Naudet brothers' footage of Flight 11 buzzing them and slamming into WTC1, and firefighters exclaiming, "Holy shit! Holy shit!", and their commander saying, "We're under attack" still freaks me out to this day.

I was in my bedroom getting ready for work when My mother in law phoned us. My wife answered, and yelled up to me to turn on the TV. I saw the one tower burning, the other one gone, and was very confused. Then I saw the replay of the second plane hitting the towers, and instantly knew exactly what was happening, and exactly who did it. My first feeling was like the whole world shifted realities, with the realization that the terrorist attacks had nowcome to our country. I had to drive to work, and the local radio station was carrying the NBC audio. I heard who I think was Tom Brokaw, just uttering moans, and 'my God's'. I get into work, and a co-worker comes up to me at the door and says " they're gone. both, gone... We had the TVs on the rest of the day, and did not get anything done.. Very bad day.

I was at my desk at a small internet startup in St. Louis early that day. I was listening to NPR news through my headphones just like I did every morning when they broke in a couple of times to report that a plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York. I didn't think much of it at the time. Figured it was a private two-seater or something and no big deal.

Then employees starting coming in saying "Did you hear what happened?"
We had a giant screen with satellite hookup in the lounge tuned to the Today Show and then CNN. I stayed there for the next 6 hours with 20 other people and watched the whole thing unfold in disbelief. Sometimes I still don't believe it.

Home Depot on Pleasant Hill Rd here in Atlanta.

Went inside, and everyone's cell phone went off at the same time ( the first plane had already hit ) and we all had them up to our ears hearing that the second plane had hit.

Everything..........and I do mean everything.....stopped in the store.

re: #78 experiencedtraveller

New Jersey Turnpike. Secaucus. Beautiful day. Driving a convertible with the top down. About 10 cars pulled over to the side on an overpass with a perfect view of lower Manhattan.

Later went to an office in Secaucus and had a picture window view of the collapse.

Weather wise it was a gorgeous September day in NYC.

I was not far from you - to this day I have never seen a sky so BLUE

we're five hours ahead of New York . i had just come trhoigh the door, having been to the park with the dogs for a little ealy-afternoon leg-stretch, when the phone went - my sister: 'switch the TV on, right now - something horrible is happening in New York!'
I did - and as the image came on, the second airliner crashed into the South Tower.
I have no words to describe what I felt at that moment - horror, sickness, grief all at once.
Then, we got the rolling news, what happened first, what happened then - the Pentagon, the despair, the helplessness of not knowing what else was going to happen - and then the first tower collapsed.
It was an image of pure horror and fascinating, terrifying beauty.

My sister rang again - and her first words were 'this means war'.

How right she was.

That war is still ongoingT

I was getting ready for another normal flying day at Grand Forks AFB. It was the last 'normal' morning we had for quite a while. Less than 2 weeks later, most of us were on our way to the Middle East with sorrow and anger in our hearts, a plan for retribution in our minds, and no idea how long we'd be engaged in this conflict. I have never looked back, and have no desire for another "normal day" at work until we are safe from this destructive ideology. Like Fascism and Communism, radical Islamism will take time, treasure, blood and will to defeat. We have the first three, do we have the last?

At work. We all spent the day in the conference room watching the news. I went outside , look up to heaven and asked my dad to help all the people who just lost their lives.

My wife and I were on a scuba diving trip in La Paz, Mexico. We couldn't get home for days and finally took a Mexican domestic flight to Tijuana to get closer to home. We didn't get back until almost one week after 9-11 and finally coming over the border and seeing all the flags and the eerie silence was something I'll never forget. I know Charles asked to keep this non-political, but I knew there was as he puts it "a bad craziness going on out there" perhaps sooner than most as we watched the first tower collapse at the dive shop surrounded by folks from all over the world. A British divemaster said to me immediately after the first tower fell...and I quote this prick, "Well, the American economy was too big anyway and needed a giant hole in it..."

Needless to say, I had to be restrained. This guy was lucky we were in Mexico, as the thought of a Mexican prison and two Germans next to me were the only things that held me back.

I was at home with my baby daughter. My husband called just after the first plane hit. I thought it was just a terrible, terrible accident. He said, "No. Terrorist attack." I didn't really believe him until I saw the second plane hit. I was just stunned.

My daughter is almost nine now. She will never know what life was like before 9-11.

A Little Angel

I was a freshman in High School. I remember vividly standing in the school library and remember watching both buildings just pancake and feeling the blood just turn to ice in shock.

I work in DC but, as fate would have it, I had scheduled an off-site conference in Williamsburg, VA. Several of us were standing around the butt can on our first break when a guy came up and told us a plane or something had blown up the WTC. He was somewhat hysterical and we thought he had blown something out of proportion but decided to check out the TV in the Hotel Bar.

We watched as the first tower was on fire and saw the second plane hit. At this point, we knew it was deliberate.

The group I had together were all Coast Guard Port Safety and Security types so I had them all call back to their Units to see if they needed to be recalled. All were told to stay in Williamsburg and finish what we were working on but be prepared to work hard upon return. I did lose one member, but not because of recall. His spouse was Air National Guard and had been recalled so he needed to get home to Baltimore to care for his kids.

In hindsite, keeping everyone in Williamsburg was the best thing. I had people from all over the country and most wouldn't have been able to get home before Friday anyway, when the conference was scheduled to end.

That night, we were sitting around the hotel pool and remarking how unusual it was to see no plane lights passing overhead. Eerie.

re: #22 Jimmy the Notable

I was in 8th grade science class in the Hudson Valley. It didn't hit me at first that this was something that was going to change the world. My dad took me out of class about an hour later.

My uncle, his brother, was FDNY and was at both towers when they went down. Somehow he survived.

Your uncle is a brave man. I bet your whole family was sick with worry!

I was doing surgery. After a while, I had to ask the circulating staff to stop coming in with news reports and concentrate on the patient- we were all losing our focus. None of us could go and watch the TV or listen to the radio for an hour and a half. There were two cases that morning- in between them one of the anesthesiologists told me that another plane had hit the Pentagon. We were in the stairwell between floors when he told me that. I was on call that day and I didn't watch the TV or listen to the radio for 24 hours, I was worried I'd make a mistake if I was distracted, and I knew how upset I'd be.

It wasn't until the next day that I got anything that wasn't second hand.

Posted this once already on the Overnight Open Thread...added a little

On 9/11/01 I was teaching and when classes changed another student ran in and said to turn on the TV (we all have tvs in our rooms) that a plane had hit a building in NYC. I thought he was just joking, but another student came in saying the same thing, and so I turned on the tv. I was in shock. The students were silent. We couldn't believe what was happening. Our headmaster told us we didn't have to teach, and I couldn't have--I just kept the TV on all day. My husband (then boyfriend) tried to call me but couldn't get through the school lines--tons of parents were coming to pick up their children. We live in a large military area, and many were afraid there would be an attack in our area. A friend's daughter worked near the WTC and a student's uncle worked in it--many stories like that. After school I withdrew cash from the bank, filled the car with gasoline, bought some food supplies, and sat in front of the television, still not being able to believe it happened and worrying about what would happen next.

Every year on 9/11 I talk with my students about it and have them write an essay about remembering 9/11. I tell them to talk to their parents about it as well. I don't want them to forget. I have read their essays now--they were in 3rd grade at the time, but they all have memories of being in school and the teacher's reactions, moms coming to school to pick them up, watching it on tv and thinking it was a movie...they also wrote how they would never forget. I hope they don't.

This morning we had a minute of silence at 8:47 am.

Had just gotten back to the house from jogging. It was a clear and cool day as an unusually early cool front (for Texas) had blown in previously. I was just watching the sun come up on the eastern horizon.

I turned on the radio for traffic reports and the announcer was describing the first hit, then flipped on the TV for confirmation.

Within about ten minutes, I knew what it was. I prayed right then and there that the U.S. would finally locate, fix and annihilate the Islamic terrorists who did this. I prayed for a disproportionate response that would leave smoking craters dotting the enemys' land. I knew this was a continuation of the war that was launched against us in 1979 as I had irritated more than a few people back then by advocating the same on the Ayatoilets of Iran.

And here we are.

Was at home before work. I remember going down to my son's room and telling him to turn on the TV. He came into my room and we watched the news together. I'll never forget - whatever channel we were watching didn't have a good view on the screen when the first tower went down. All we saw was the huge, billowing cloud - knew immediately what it meant, but hoped there was another explanation.

I spent my second day at a new job surfing the web most of the day. I was in a (IT) training class at Haworth in West MI. On break I got a message from my wife that a plane flew into the WTC. I recall CNN was reporting a small personal craft at first. My first reaction was how could a dumb ass fly into something that big on a clear day. Then when it changed to an airliner, I knew what was up.

I didn't know anyone in NYC so I didn't lose a personal friend or relative, but all Americans are my brothers and sisters (yes, even the moonbats). Being the person I am, vengeance is all I could think of.

I've learned more about Islam since then, and about the world in general. I can't imagine a world without the internet where information travels slower and the sharing of ideas so limited. It's blogs like this that offer so much learning potential. Thanks Charles and all the Lizards.

i was 8 blocks away when the first plane hit.
the noise was explosive. i heard it and felt it in my whole body.
i knew it was something terrible but my mind jumped over my fear and i heard my self say out loud, 'oh it's just the scaffolding across the street'.
i walked to the door trembling, knowing the scaffolding would still be there.
i saw people in the street, screaming and pointing.
i ran out and looked south to see such a terrible dark gaping hole in the tower.
i knew this was not an accident.

Our daughter was in NYC attending Columbia Teacher's College. We live in LA. The morning of 9/11 I was at work, and someone had a small TV set with the news on. She told me that a plane flew into the WTC. I thought nothing of it but watched a bit of the news with her. Then we saw a jet fly into the WTC and it became obvious something bad was happening. I called my wife and told her. Then I called my daughter, who had been at gym and didn't know anything about it. whew!

She looked out her window and could see the smoke. But she was far from the WTC.

We had already bought out tickets to visit our daughter, and didn't want to cancel the trip. We went to New York about 10 days after 9/11.

Airport security was scary. Not efficient. Very slow. But still very reassuring.

We had to see ground zero. It was amazing; frightening; horrible. There are no words. I remember the smells of smoke and concrete. Rubble was piled as high as 3 stories. You couldn't get too close, but you didn't want to, either. The ground was soot, debris, concrete dust.

Every fire station and every police station had flowers, photographs, and cards in front, piled high, thanking the officers for their bravery and sacrifice. Every police vehicle and every fire truck had a wreath on their hoods.

We went by St. Pats quite a lot and saw Rudy get out of his vehicle to attend another funeral, often throughout the days we were there. Traffic would stop, pedestrians would stop, some would clap for the Mayor. It was not joyful clapping.

In the hotel we were in, many people were there who were working at ground zero for rescue, clean up, and what have you. They all had the ever-present black lapel pin. We always thanked them whenever we saw them. It was an amazing time. I have been changed by it.

I was home with my 10-month old and when my husband called to tell me to turn on the T.V., I just wanted everyone I loved to be with me. I had to tear myself from the television and I had to take the baby for a walk to just contemplate what would happen next. I was in Minnesota, but such a tragedy felt so close. I just couldn't even watch the replays today. It's still too sad.

re: #85 Ford_Prefect

If that was a joke then it deserves a down ding. Not something to joke about.

It has to be a joke, but come on.
That post can get lifted & wind up on a truther or Jihad website.

My wife was home and like many other moms that day, she immediatly went to school to get our 2 kids. She felt safer having them home. I knew my day was shot, but since I actually kinda work on the Hudson River. I had a lot of trouble getting out of town. All the roads were closed going in, but it was not so easy to get out either.

I was in high school - a senior, to be precise. I had just finished my first morning class and was walking up the hall to my locker, which was between my first two periods' classrooms. I heard a lot of buzz in the hallway about "World Trade Center" and "terrorism" and thought that my second period teacher, who always had the TV on, must have had a CNN special on the '93 WTC bombings or something. Thinking nothing of it, I grabbed my books and turned to go when I overheard one of my teachers say to another, "Did you see that? Another one just hit!" Feeling my blood run cold, I practically leapt the 20 or so feet into the classroom just in time to watch the fireball blowing through the second tower. We watched live as a report came in from the Pentagon evacuation, and I remember feeling absolute powerlessness when he reported the building shaking like it'd been hit.

I was almost 11 years old, in fifth grade, so my memories aren't very clear. I was up and watching the news coverage in time to see the second plane hit. Of course I had no idea what was really going on, but the whole school day was somber and everyone seemed to be dazed. I knew when I got home from school that afternoon and saw the towers come down that it was very deliberate and very evil. For the next several days I couldn't stop thinking about how many people had died (still can't, for that matter), and whether we were safe or if more was coming. I see now that we were, but it was a terrifying experience.

re: #121 buzzsawmonkey

The empty firehouses.

Haunting image.

I was at a conference in Pittsburg. When I travel, I usually turn on a cable news show while I get ready for the day. I had just stepped out of the shower with a towel over my head, drying my hair. I first heard the reporter saying something about a plane hitting The Towers. Then I took the towel off my head and saw the smoking Tower.

Interestingly, I had just returned from a two-week trip to Israel where I had heard several terriost bombs go off (never at the scene, thank G-d). So I think my initial reaction was "Uh oh, terrorism is really here now." I think I was expecting to see many more attacks over the next few months. Thankfully, that hasn't occured.

I stayed put in Pittsuburg all day Tuesday and Thursday. Took a bus to Philly on Thursday, and caught a train to Boston. I remember, while standing in line at the bus terminal, hearing the guy in front of me being told that it will take three days for him to get back to his wife and kids in Seattle.

In Boston, they towed all the cars parked in the garage at Logan Airport to a field north of the city. A friend had to take me in her car to go track mine down.

Never forget.

At home. Watching the tube Fox News, Jon Scott. I watched all day, into the evening. Don't remember eating, couldn't have anyway. Didn't move, except for nature calls until the morning of the 12th.

Rage and tears. That day plays like a video, over and over again in my head, to this day. Some tears, more rage.

re: #48 Eagle

I was at work, in Toronto.

A guy mentioned that a small plane hit the WTC. We all thought it was an accident resulting from incompetence of a pilot.

Then the second plane hit.

A coworker of mine (LLL from Romania), then smiled and said "They are all pigs in that tower." I was so shocked at him that I stared open-mouthed for at least a minute.

That was the day I started dissociating myself from all LLL acquaintances.

I would still be in prison l if someone had said that to me!

Was working for a Nautical chart, software agent in New Orleans at the time and by the end of the day, and for the rest of the month, we were inundated by calls from the general public for US flags and orders by Navy purchasing contractors for charts of the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and Indian Ocean. Interest in information regarding approaches to Diego Garcia seemed by peek shortly thereafter as well. ;)

9/11 happened in a boring and pathetic point in my life. I was fresh out of graduate school, having just obtained my Master's, and was an unemployed moonbat living with my parents while addicted to EverQuest and trying halfheartedly to find a job...:)

As, a slacker, I was sleeping when the first plane struck. My Mother woke me up in a panic, and implored me to go downstairs and see what was happening on TV.

I, like everyone was awestruck by what I was witnessing. I knew it was Islamic terrorism, due to the definate suicidal nature of the pilots; and knew it was probably Al Queda and Osama bin Laden, having previously bombed the WTC, USS Cole, and engaged in other attacks overseas. My outlook on the world changed that day. I grew up...

A few years later I would read the Quran and some Hadiths for myself, no longer trusting the CAIR talking heads trotted out on CNN to practice "damage control" and alleve all fears regarding Islam and its unfortunate relationship to terrorism. My outlook changed further; and I began to see 9/11 as the latest battle in a 1400-year old war. I was no longer a moonbat who completely disbelieved in any need for war for any reason...

re: #121 buzzsawmonkey

Lawhawk's post above reminds me of the firehouses.

The empty firehouses.

Most of Brooklyn's firefighters had headed over to the WTC when the planes hit. When the towers came down, whole shifts had been wiped out. Every firehouse had an impromptu memorial of flowers and candles in front of it. Some of the firehouses were all but empty.

And many in Manhattan now have permanent memorials. You walk up to this unassuming little neighborhood firehouse, and there are, say, two dozen names on a plaque. "Sobering" is not quite the word.

I'm on the west coast - Seattle. I was home, on my treadmill. Microsoft allowed employees to stay home that day; even the salon I use (which is in a high-rise building) closed, as did the Starbucks where I usually buy coffee across the walkway.

My biggest impression came in the days and weeks after. I seriously worried every day, for quite some time, that it wasn't over...my guard remained up for a long time, and I wondered if I would ever get my sense of security as an American back.

I have, and I have President Bush and his administration to thank for that.

God bless the heroes of 9/11 on Flight 93, at the Pentagon, and on the streets of Manhattan...and God bless those we lost, and their families. The fight is far from over, but the healing is in process, and the spirit of America is healthy and strong. (Thanks to those of you who were near the attack sites, for your stories...it really brings it home in a way that those of us who live far away could not fully understand without you.)

I was in midtown Manhattan. While watching the North Tower burn everyone was confused, nervous - I think b/c terrorism was the last thing on our minds and how in the hell could a plane hit the World Trade Center on a perfect September day? It didn't make any sense. Almost everyone in the office saw the second plane hit the south tower on the TV. More confusion, disbelief, shock and now inklings of panic - as everyone began to make calls and send emails, and respond to emails asking if I/we/you were ok, safe.
Once the towers came down, the panic set in hard. Rumors of bombs in Grand Central, Penn Station, and then in our building spread like wildfire. Our building was evacuated less than an hour after the second collapse and the evacuation was tense. Then I was on the streets with everyone else in midtown who appeared to have a similar experience. I knew I wouldn't be able to get off Manhattan to my then pregnant wife, who thankfully never made it into the city that day but did have a a clear view of everything from Hoboken, NJ, so I ended up at the apartment of a friend where we just sat and watched the news the rest of the day. I remember hearing our fighter jets overhead for the rest of the day.
I finally was able to get on a ferry the next morning and couldn't believe, once I saw it with my own eyes, that the towers were gone and there was a column of acrid smoke still rising over the site. I thought to myself, this must have been what it was like to be on Oahu on December 7, 1941. I was thankful to be alive.

FDNY!

re: #71 Dirk Diggler

Not today.

I was working at home and so was my wife. My wife's boss calls and asks if we were ok. I said "yes, why?" He said an airplane hit the WTC tower. "We're fine" I said thinking he had lost his mind. Why would a small aircraft veering off course, crashing into the WTC affect us? The thought of what had really happened was inconceivable. After I assured him we were fine, I let him go. It gnawed at me: why would he call asking such a question? So I went downstairs and turned on the news. Stunned, I watched events unfold. I was snapped back from the shock and disbelief when my daughter who was 3 at the time asked me "why was the building on fire?" How could I explain so a 3 year old could understand that there are some very bad people in this world who are usually kept very far away. I turned off the TV, gave her a hug (or maybe she gave me a hug) and we drew pictures. I suppose 5 days went by before I learned my sister-in-law's lost her sister when the Islamists attacked the WTC.

I was in Greenwich Village. I heard the first plane fly (loudly) over my apartment building. Then a report came on the radio that a plane had flown into the WTC. That very first report said that a small plane (like a Piper Cub) had hit the building.

I went outside to the corner of 12th Street and Sixth Avenue to see for myself what was happening and it was plain that it was a huge plane that had gone into the building which was now burning.

Then the other tower exploded as the second plane hit the building from the south. I saw the first tower fall, then went back to my apartment to try to reach a friend in the Financial District by phone (to see if he was OK) and when I went back outside, both towers were gone.

What pundits don't understand is that in a situation like that, no one knows on the spot what is happening, or why. We were confused and in shock. This was probably the most terrible day of my life and I can see now that I was in shock (post-traumatic stress) for more than a year afterwards. New York City only regained its equilibrium with Christo's artwork of The Gates several years later.

We are at war. Our Islamic enemies want to kill us -- all of us -- i saw it with my own eyes. God bless the victims of 9/11. Pray for their souls. God bless America.

Thank you Mr. Johnson for Little Green Footballs.

I watched on the news at home in Iowa when the first plane hit. I drove to work, and turned on the TV just as the second plane hit. I turned to our office manager standing next to me and said "This means war."

I was at work when my wife sent me an email that said "If you don't have the TV on now, turn it on!" While I mused over what would have her so upset, a co-worker raced in and yelled for us to turn on the TV.

As we watched the destruction unfold, I had a co-worker exclaim how America did even worse in other countries and we deserved what happened. I got in his face and yelled at him to the point that my boss had to calm me down.

Me and My husband were working in the barn all morning and took a couple of training horses out to work. We had no idea what was going on until we took a break and went to the local market. The owner came running out and told us we were under attack. We went home and I sat in front of the tv for two days and nights. I now have a tv in our barn on Fox News all the time.

re: #14 Stormy

At home in Boston, on the computer, about 10 minutes from the airport.

I remember I bought two newspapers the day after with pictures of the towers on the front page. I put them in the bottom of a trunk and I'm saving them for when my kids get a little older.

NEVER FORGET

I've got the LIFE special magazine and one other.
they are very special

I was sleeping. I was awakened when a relative called me numerous times to wake me up. When you get that many phone calls in a row you realize something horrible has happened. That relative told me to turn on the news. I said "no, I'm sleeping". The relative again told me to go turn on the news, and that it was important. I walked over to the T.V. and turned on the news, and watched untill I had to be at an appointment. I went to the appointment, and they acted as if nothing really had happened.

PS: You all really should be mindful of the personal information that you are contributing to this discussion. I have noticed that many people have been much more honest about and forthcoming with personal information on this thread than usual. I admite the thought, but if personally do not want the entire world knowing my age, location, High School &/or College I attended, and other personal information that I have seen other people volunteer on this thread.

I was at home. I'd been commuting from Dallas to Houston for a number of months; flying down Monday mornings and back Friday afternoons. I happened to have jury duty that Monday, though, and was preparing to go in late to the local office when the first plane hit.

I spent the rest of the morning discussing the events as they unfolded with a few friends on a small email list. All of the others save one are female, and they were terrified - I wanted to stay with them.

After things calmed down (relatively speaking) in the afternoon, I went into the office and tried to get some work done. I was pretty well useless that day and for the rest of the week, though.

My memories of the mundane are a bit vague, but I think I worked the following week in Dallas as well, then drove to Houston for the week of the 24th. I believe the airlines were flying again by the week of 1 October, and I resumed my normal routine.

The Monday morning flight was somewhat subdued, as they typically are - passengers usually catch a few Z's or polish up some paperwork. Those of you who've flown Southwest Airlines' commuter flights pre-9/11, though, will remember the afternoon flights as rather raucous and even somewhat rowdy, particularly on Fridays. The liquor flowed as fast as it could be bought and poured, those with free-drink coupons would hand them out like religious tracts, and everybody would be joking with each other and the flight attendants. That first flight back to Dallas was absolutely nothing like that - I think everybody on the aircraft simply sat and stared into the middle distance the entire time.

I think that's when it really hit me that things were pretty much never again going to be the same.

(I also remember, while driving back to Dallas the previous week, passing under an overpass atop which was parked a firetruck with a fireman waving a huge American flag at the northbound traffic. I wept like a schoolgirl for several minutes, and nearly had to pull over for a while.)

I also remember where I was when I heard the first commercial airplane flying overhead many days later. How odd it seemed to hear that plane after so many days of quiet in the sky. I just stood there and watched as it flew across the sky.

I was in Rotterdam Netherlands for a business meeting. So the news hit us in the afternoon. We were in a meeting where there were three Americans and about a dozen Europeans. Someone ran in the room and told us. We got on a speaker phone with my wife and as she was describing things the first tower fell. We adjourned and went back to the hotel and watched all night on CNN.

The next day our host realizing that holding meetings was pointless took us on a field trip to the huge water project in southern Netherlands. We had a tour guide, a Dutch woman, who was incredibly proud of the project. She kept repeating how the project had been done 100% with Dutch taxes. At one point, to the shame of our hosts, she turned to the three Americans in the group and said, "I bet you don't know what your taxes go for." We stood looking at her and finally I replied, "I don't know where our taxes are going today but I can bet they will be in Afghanistan by the end of the month!"

Looking at the sky, amazed by the complete absence of airplanes, seeing only the contrails from fighter jets as they came to the limit of their patrol area overhead and turned to circle back toward the city.

My story is pretty unremarkable, compared to others. I was sound asleep (6am here on the West Coast), when a loved one came running in and woke me up very abruptly, yelling about the World Trade Center. I was pretty unclear as to what the World Trade Center even was. I tried to poo-poo the whole thing, wanting to go back to sleep, saying, "Well, whatever happened, it'll OK," but the loved one dragged me out of bed and we turned on the TV. Then we saw the second plane hit. I actually remember saying at that moment, "This will dominate the news for the next ten years." It was only when the towers were burning that I remembered I had visited them when I was a teenager, the only time I had ever visited NY.

i bet every american knows where they were that morning.

re: #136 Occasional Reader

And many in Manhattan now have permanent memorials. You walk up to this unassuming little neighborhood firehouse, and there are, say, two dozen names on a plaque. "Sobering" is not quite the word.

I walk by a firehouse on 43rd between 5th and 6th everyday and there is a shrine to the fireman that was lost from that house; a little alcove with his picture and a candle always burning, and a sign saying that his comrades will leave the light on for him.

I am also inspired to this day by the brave souls who tried to attack the terrorists on their plane. Just thinking about the words 'let's roll' makes me shiver and thinking about those people on planes calling their loved ones, knowing their lives were about to end-just to tell them one more time they loved them.

I'm tearing up again just thinking about it.

TELL YOUR LOVED ONES TODAY THAT YOU LOVE THEM. DON'T WAIT.

I was a freshman in college. It was a Tuesday so my first class was at 9:30. I arrived a little early and the professor spoke to the class that something had happened in NYC that morning. He turned the projector in the lecture hall onto some news station. We knew it was bad, but didn't really understand the scope of it until after the class was over. We actually had a Mass Communications lecture that morning! Afterwards he turned the projector back on and we watched the news coverage on CNN. The whole campus was frenzied. Some people were scared, but mostly people were just angry. I didn't know anyone in NYC at that time, but my friends did and they were scared. We all helped to get into contact with their families. The first ones through shared their phones as much as possible.

I like how many people were in schools, of various sorts, and I'm pleasantly surprised at how many young lizards there are. I guess the kids are all right, after all.

I was a telemarketer at the time, strangely enough raising money for fire-fighters in northern Illinois. I was on the noon to 9 shift.

I got to work and they told us to go home because the telemarketers on the 8 to 5 shift were getting a rough time asking for money.

I don't know how I missed the event before noon but it was a surprise.

I was in Detroit doing some consulting. Ran a meeting with various managers and execs of a client company. A guy burst in and said a plane had hit one of the towers and was on firet. I didn't think much of it until he came back in later and said another had hit the other and it looked like a terrorist attack. Some in the meeting were clearly not going to continue contributing so I told everyone we'd pick up on things the next day. Shortly thereafter the building was evacuated.

I never saw an image of the attack until I got back to my hotel that night - I had been flown out by the client urgently and was focused on their problem. It wasn't till I saw the images on TV that I understood the enormity of what had happened. Until that point, I looked at it in more analytical terms - that we were now at war and that we'd kick the shit out of the bad guys. And I figured that we'd change the rules of the middle east once and for all. The emotional element didn't enter the picture till I saw the pictures. The folks jumping to their deaths did it for me.

I didn't fly back till that Friday, the first day they re-opened flights. Took 4 hours to go through security. Sat next to the CEO of Rubbermaid on one leg of the trip (corporate jet was grounded elsewhere). Every male that got on the plane would make eye contact and kind of form a contract that if anything happened, we'd Flight 93 the bastards. All the males would keep scanning the seats around the aircraft. Seems like insane paranoia now, but that was what we felt at the time.

That weekend I found out that a friend's son (who worked at Cantor Fitzgerald) was missing. Later, with no real official news, we all came to realize he had been murdered and that his pregnant wife was now a widow.

Actually, I was in NY visiting from Israel.

Before I left for New York, I wondered aloud to a friend, "I wonder what will blow up this year."

The embassy bombings were on August 7, 1998. I was in NY visiting from Israel.

The Cole was on October 12th, 2000 and I was in NY vising from ISrael.

That morning I was driving my father to the train station and we heard about the first plane hitting the WTC.

I said it was definately a terror attack.

My father disagreed, saying "Why would they hit the top and not the bottom?"

I said because they were flying a plane!

When the 2nd one hit he knew I was right.

I was enraged for the rest of the day.

There was a lightening storm the night before that knocked out our DirectTV so I only had radio in the beginning

Not only because of what happened, but also because, as someone who has been advocating Israel's position for years before 2001 with the arguement of Islamic expansion and rejection and jihad, I had said, "It's coming to you" to more Americans and Europeans than I care to remember.

So, I was one of those assholes screaming, "AHA! Let me see what you are going to do now! I told you so! HOw does it feel now, Great Moralizers over Israel?!?"

Keep in mind that this was during the Clinton administration and Oslo when buses were blowing up outside my apartment, and a week didn't go by without a major attack.

The average number of deaths by terror prior to Olso bringing Arafat was something like 17 a year and that was deemed unacceptable.

After Oslo and Arafat coming to town, it increased to something like 200-400 a year.

And all we (Israel) did was ignore it, hit empty buildings, etc under pressure from Clinton.

I even used to say that I couldn't wait until they hit Europe

Then it became more real.

Brother's best friend from college (who I'd met and partied with a number of times) was gone, etc.

I've never gotten sad over the attacks, much like I was never sad over attacks in Israel, I was livid.

I can't watch the footage because it pisses me off beyond belief.

I made aliya to Israel in '94 because there were buses blowing up all over the place. The last straw was Nachson Waxman. When the deadline passed and they murdered him during the rescue operation, I called my parents the next day and told them I wasn't coming home.

I felt the #1 thing I could do was make aliya. Strengthen our numbers. The last thing the Islamofascists want.

My motivation also came from being an American.

I would always feel like "If this was America, we would erase those mf'rs." I was not used to being in a country that could get hit and hit and hit and not react - and was being told not to react by America.

On 9/11 I was pissed and wanted my America back.

I was enjoying a leisurely breakfast with my family in Pensacola, Florida, when a friend of mine called. He didn't tell me what had happened; he just said: Turn on the news. Now. And hung up. There was an eerie dread in his voice.

We immediately left the kitchen for the living room, turned on the television to CNN, and saw the first tower top smoking. While we were absorbing the scene, we saw the airliner fly into the second tower. That was when we knew that this was not a horrible accident, but a deliberate attack. And that we were now at war.

I still retain and espouse my classical liberal domestic social positions, but my naively leftist geopolitical and foreign policy pretentions were irrevocably shattered and shed on that day. We can only preserve and advance our rights and freedoms if we vigilantly and steadfastly protect them, and the constitutional democracy from which they flow, from those who would destroy them and substitute regressive theocratic totalitarianism in their place. After having voted for Democratic candidates for president ever since Carter, in 2004, I voted for my first Republican candidate for president (to re-elect Dubya). In a couple of months, I will vote for my second (to elect McCain). The Global Antijihadi War eclipses all other issues and concerns for me now, and I can no more trust Barak Obama with the safety and security of this nation in the face of that continuing threat than I could trust John Kerry before him.

I was on my way to work when I heard the news. The first tower had already come down. I couldnt believe what I was hearing. I got to work and my co-workers were gathered round the radio. I went home and got a portable tv but it wouldnt come in at work. I went home at lunch and went to the church across the street. It happened to be my denomination but it wouldnt have mattered what denomination it was. I needed to pray. the church was packed. sro even in the balcony.

I was at work that morning when the first plane hit, and was watching TV with others when the second plane hit. I immediately knew it was terrorism when the second plane struck. Two fellow attorneys were in the air flying back home at the time of the attack. The law firm I worked at at the time required a lot of travel, so the odds were high that some of us would be in transit. We also flew to Manhattan on a regular basis, and knew a lot of people in New York. The two attorneys were returning from the west coast, and eventually had to rent a car and drive home after they were stranded where their flight landed. I have tried to draw my friends' attention to the dangers of global jihad ever since.

re: #153 nyc redneck

i bet every american knows where they were that morning.

Just like Pearl Harbor. My mother remembers hearing about the Pearl Harbor attack on the radio.

Alan Jackson-Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning

I was working at the time for IBM in Raleigh, NC, in a huge computer lab where there was too much interference for a radio to work.

Which meant I got the news in fragments because internet news sites died soon as the attack happened.

Like everyone, I thought the first plane was a horrible accident. The second, when we learned of it caused a stunned silence and the realization that we were under attack.

I was home getting ready for work and turned the news on just a few minutes before it happened. I remember I thought terrorism and then looking at one of the towers in a TV shot thinking it wasn't lining up vertically quite right. I had a dream about a person in a plane crash saying "Why me, this is so unfair"

I remember all those things and the subsequent pictures of people jumping to their deaths. This is one event my life that I will never forgot. We owe it to those people to crush Al Quaida out of existence and all the causes of AlQuaida.

I know exactly where I was and what I was doing at that point in my life.

I think Wrath just made an excellent point.

LIZARDS: The whole world can be reading this thread. Do consider how much personal information you are posting on this thread. It's very good advice.

FOX News: As it happened.
*warning, I haven't watched the entire video.*

Not everyone cried that day.

In my office in suburban Atlanta we had a small closet with a stairmaster and an old TV with a fuzzy picture. Someone downstairs told us all that an airplaine had hit the World Trade Center in NY. My first thought was "oh no... just like the B-25 that hit the empire state building in 1945"

More people started commenting that it looked intentional. A crowed gathered in front of the TV straining to see what had happened. It seems oddly appropriate that it was somewhat surreal and out of focus to me.

That evening at home I struggeld to explain to my young children why someone would hate enough to do such a terrible thing. It is a defining moment in their young lives.

The defining TV broadcasts that I recall so vividly in my life are the Apollo moon landings, the Challenger disaster and the launching of the planes overnight in Desert Storm.

Cross-posted from an earlier thread:

I didn't make it into Manhattan on 9/11/01. The cops already had sealed it off to cut off any escaping terrorists. (Giuliani had worked for years to train NYC's emergency responders in what to do in the event of a terrorist attack. The cops had sniper teams covering all the bridges and tunnels.) Under the circumstances, that probably was a blessing. There are few words to describe that day except "long nightmare". The teachers at the high school were pulling kids out of class all day to tell them their parents, who worked in the Twin Towers, were missing. Twelve of my friends and neighbors. Joe Leavey, an off-duty FDNY lieutenant with Ladder 11, who drove all the way down to the scene when the alarm came in, was one. A year later, the N.Y. Times published a transcript of his final radio communications. He was leading his men up the stairwell to the Sky Lobby when the tower came down. There were wounded people there whom he wanted to evacuate.

I did go into Manhattan the following day, although not downtown. You could smell the smoke everywhere, like a gigantic electrical fire. You didn't even want to think about what was in the ash.

Ten days later, I ventured downtown with some friends to pay my respects. It was as you've described it. I swore that I always would stand up thereafter, no matter how long the odds.

G-d bless the emergency responders, the victims, their families, and our troops!

Cross posted over at PatDollard.com

I was at work and a lady had a small TV on in her cubicle. About ten people were gathered around it and we watched the second plane hit the tower. :evil: anger filled me….I knew that this was a terrorist plan but did not now who they were. I was driving downtown afterwards to go to the Federal Bldg when the first tower collapsed. Obviously, the Federal Bldg was closed before I got there. Sad day in many peoples lives.

re: #121 buzzsawmonkey

Yes, I used to work near a firehouse in West Village/SoHo. They were one of the hardest hit houses in the City. It was hard to go near it without breaking down into tears because of the impromptu memorials, to say nothing of the walls of flowers that sprang up around the City and region.

Still, one of the more haunting memories is when I got back home the next day. It was going to the parking lot where I was parked and finding other cars sitting there just like mine and I wondered how many of those other people didn't make it out?

Turns out, there were a few people who didn't from my town. Soon, the family members would come and claim the cars.

The other memory I have of that day was later in the afternoon. Orders had come down from the base CG that all base communications were to be locked down for official purposes only until further notice. No calls, no emails, no web use if it did not relate to the mission. Base wide emails and notifications went out to all commands. 2 hours later, while we were monitoring our firewalls for any suspicious traffic, we start coming across hits for a porn site. We track down the user and some dipshit E-7, due to get promoted to E-8 October 1st, was sitting watch in some warehouse surfing porn. CG sent MPs and dragged his sorry butt to the brig. Within the week, he was court martialled and busted down to E-5.

At the time I was living near some of the flight paths leading to LAX, and I'll never forget the silence when all the planes were grounded. It had an eerie expectancy, because no one knew if the attacks were finished, or if there were still planes in the air on their way to more targets ... or if something even worse was about to happen.

re: #53 Charles

Ben Hur: not appropriate.

Please delete.

re: #165 newsjunkie_ky

Alan Jackson-Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning

beautiful, i love him.

I was sitting in a computer lab deep in the basement of my university, working on some exercise or something. Then I was done or got bored and checked the news on my regular news site. I think that was after the planes hit, but before the towers went down. I went home and turned on CNN International (our only 24 hour news channel).

I don't think I a news broadcast had made me cry before that day. The second one was the Ronald Reagan funeral.

I hadn't been into that computer lab for many years after 9/11 2001, so one day during the last year I went in there just as small remembrance.

A couple of other random memories:

-While walking up Connecuticut Avenue in DC to get home, at some point I passed a synagogue. It occurred to me "this might be a target."

-Hearing rumors (I can't remember exactly where or from whom) that the Old Executive Office Building was on fire; same for the Hay Adams Hotel.
Also hearing the Sears Tower had been evacuated.

-Standing on the roof of my apartment building that afternoon, watching the smoke rise from the Pentagon across the river; seeing fighter jets patrolling overhead. Two neighbors, female roommates, saying to each other "okay, let's pack up the car and start the evacuation"; thinking to say "don't bother, it's over for now", but decided not to.

-Hearing one friend asking rather incongrously whether this was "more like a Tom Clancy novel, or a Robert Ludlum novel"; I think people were just having trouble finding a psychological frame in which to put what was happening (myself included).

Getting ready for the first day of my chosen profession. Had to go in to work that day. Although I no longer am with that firm, I still use the same computer password they gave me that day: 9/11.

Every single day I open my work computer, I am reminded of that horrible day.

re: #149 Ford_Prefect

I also remember where I was when I heard the first commercial airplane flying overhead many days later. How odd it seemed to hear that plane after so many days of quiet in the sky. I just stood there and watched as it flew across the sky.

I work about a mile from one of the USAF training sites. It was NOT quiet around here.

I was still at home that morning. I was preparing for a job interview later in the morning. My then wife rushed into our room and almost dragged me into the living room. I was stunned to see the images before my eyes. I even thought it was some kind of sick joke but then my dad called and relayed his horrified astonishment: the United States was under attack. On our soil.

re: #79 Occasional Reader

I was in San Francisco on the day of the 101 California murders. That afternoon, I met a friend (as I usually did Thursdays) for a beer. The bar was full of people drinking, talking and laughing too loud - many of them from 101 Cal, many of them lawyers, or at least employees of law firms.

It's a way of coping.

re: #53 Charles

thank you

Seven years ago, I had just had throat and nose surgery and woke up in my hospital bed in Danville, Indiana with a tracheotomy tube in my throat so I couldn't speak at all for a couple of days.

I was about ten minutes into writing my requests to the nurses on a pad of paper when the first plane hit. The nurses came in and we watched what we thought was simply a horrible plane accident. Of course events became more apparent as they unfolded but I couldn't say anything only watch in horror and try to communicate through writing.

Many were speechless that day but I especially was. When I woke up, I was wondering about my recovery but that flew out the as the morning went on.

The thing I remember most is the absolute quiet after they grounded all air traffic. It was an eerie calm and you don’t realize how much you miss the background noise of life.

The outpouring of emotions from other countries, especially the United Kingdom and Canada was heartfelt and moving. I really remember the ceremony in Ottawa days later that showed how much the Canadians really, truly cared. Many other countries also expressed their grief but a lot of that faded when they realized we would react differently that they had in the past. They expected us to lick our wounds and simply curl up in the UN protection. They began to turn when we went looking for the culprits responsible for the attacks and feared our wrath because they were afraid of being attacked as well.

That is why many don’t like us now: we don’t take it lying down like they want us to.

re: #91 sparrowlake

Here's a song for you.

Thanks haven't heard that in years. Now I work across the street from Ground Zero.

I was skateboarding with the pentagon in the background and had no idea what was going on until the building was hit.

I was on the freeway in Los Angeles heading from Whittier to Redondo Beach to give a DOT training class to about 80 people. We didn't cancel the class and we didn't get much training done either.

I was in Brazil at the Embraer factory and my plane ticket home was just a 6 character code I'd say to the guy behind the counter. However, I think I was on the FIRST plane to land from overseas on Saturday morning. I know I was on the first into Miami.

Being in a TOTALLY empty Miami airport was the creepiest experience in my life. We saw ABSOLUTELY no one until we hit customs. Couldn't take my regular connection to Reagan-National Airport either -- had to change airlines and go to Dulles.

I had it easy.

I was sitting in my family room in Oregon watching Fox News and saw the second plane hit on 'live' TV. All I thought was, "We are now at war..." I was shortly joined by my 15 yr old son. He joined the Air Force at 18 and is helping to 'bring 'em to justice.'

I also had a 9 yr old son to whom I had to recite, every night as I tucked him in, the list terrorists recently killed or captured. If I forgot one in the sequence he would stop me and say the name I had forgotten. We did this together for at least a year and a half - until he got a little older and and we all felt a little safer.

As the years go by without another attack, I am reminded of the assurances I had to give to my young son every night that George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, etc. had the wherewithal and the grit to do the right thing and that, therefore, he should lay his head down on his pillow and go to sleep so he wouldn't be tired in school the next day.

I'm not a traditionally religious person any more, but I can tell you that I was praying to someone or something as I closed my little boy's door every night...praying that all those assurances I was dispensing would be borne out as true in the fullness of time.

So far, so good.

Thank you, George W. Bush.

re: #147 WrathofG-d

PS: You all really should be mindful of the personal information that you are contributing to this discussion. I have noticed that many people have been much more honest about and forthcoming with personal information on this thread than usual. I admite the thought, but if personally do not want the entire world knowing my age, location, High School &/or College I attended, and other personal information that I have seen other people volunteer on this thread.

We have lifelock, it's fine.

I was driving to work listening to the morning talk shows...the first plane was a curiosity. When the second plane hit, I'll never forget how immediately the realization sunk in. I've never experienced such a 180 turnaround in thinking.

My brother worked in Manhattan that day, still does. His blog at the time tells a remarkable story of what he witnessed. He was on the subway underneath the towers between plane hits, then had to walk out.

His account and pictures are at the following link:

[Link: www.thefineline.org...]

The Smithsonian used his cell phone in their display as an example of how people communicated that day.

I just dropped my daughter off at school when the radio broke the news about the first plane. On the drive program the male host said terrorists. The female strnuously disagreed.
I turned around & went home. I pretty much knew & saw the 2nd plane hit. I actually thought Bin Laden.
I got a call from my raging liberal niece, saying that they had to be white supremists just like Oklahoma City.
I pointed out that they had the Middle East types on film going through security. I ended the call because my temper was boiling.

re: #10 2by2

Please include the link to your art.

I stood in front of my T.V. getting ready to change my then barely three-month-old daughters diaper. I cannot believe she is seven now. My wife was upstairs getting our two-year-old son from bed. I watched in disbelief as the second plane hit tower two. What I was seeing did not seem real.

I look at my son and daughter today and pray for those that did not come home that day and thank God I live in the greatest county on the face of this earth. God be with the souls who perished that day and may God be with their love ones.

Never Forget.

anyone remember how the air was an eerie pale orange for months in lower manhattan.
how it smelled. how we breathed it.

I was moving furniture into the den in our house so new carpet could be installed in the rest of the house. I had just gotten back home from planning and attending my mom's funeral and taking all her stuff to a women's shelter with my sister. That morning, my sister called from San Fran as I was moving stuff and said, "Turn on the TV!" Such weird things stick in the mind... I remember watching the second plane hit the towers with the TV surrounded by all our junk. That monthlong period threw me for a long time and I still have trouble with the idea that my mom didn't/doesn't know about 9/11.

re: #175 Charles

At the time I was living near some of the flight paths leading to LAX, and I'll never forget the silence when all the planes were grounded. It had an eerie expectancy, because no one knew if the attacks were finished, or if there were still planes in the air on their way to more targets ... or if something even worse was about to happen.

At the time, I lived at a point along one of the final approach routes to O'Hare. The afternoon of September 11 was an absolutely cloudless day in the Midwest, and the stark absence of plane trails was absolutely striking.

Funny thing, I remember calling my mom on the phone while on the freeway listening to everything as it was happening and she told me "they knew the instant they struck the building there was no Allah, only the one true God."

I remember a few days later riding a train into the city (Grand Central) and I was the only one left in the car - not many were making their way INTO the city yet, and there was a brief case left on the luggage rack over head.

I alerted one of the train staff and he shrugged it off, "Someone must've left it..."

I switched cars thinking Americans would really need to get their shit together to fight this war.

I'm in Jacksonville, Florida.

I was working for a place that serviced, and sold supplies and accessories for, RVs and campers... you know, those big Winnabago things, trailers and stuff. They'd brought me in as a drive-around contact-guy for the local RV parks to bring them catalogs, ordered parts, and stuff. (Turned to to be a dead-end job for me, but that's another story...)

I showed up that morning, ready for my marching orders, and some guy came out of the big garage area where they service RVs, into the little office/meeting/customer-contact area, stating there'd been a news report on the radio that a plane had rammed into the Twin Towers. Oddly enough, this guy was joking about it, stating something to the effect "It'd be nice if some of those guys would come and ram THIS building, put it out of my misery..."

I don't think he understood the magnitude of what, culturaly, had just happened.

They turned on the TV, set to CNN... I remember joking "Why are we watching the Clinton New Network?" and suggesting we switch to Fox News (we did), and we stood there and watched it for a little while.

Well, they sent me and some of the other guys home that day. I then went with my folks for lunch at Golden Corral, and the employees there actually dragged out a TV (about a 15-incher on a TV cart) into the section where we were eating, to play the news... where we learned of the various government actions and reactions as they unfolded, the things W was going to say and do, and so on. Everyone at the Golden Corral sat there just kinda dispassionately, quietly, watching and listening to the TV while they ate.

That was the extent of my connection to the events of 9/11/01. We then went home later and watched it for the rest of the day on our own TV.

re: #175 Charles

At the time I was living near some of the flight paths leading to LAX, and I'll never forget the silence when all the planes were grounded. It had an eerie expectancy, because no one knew if the attacks were finished, or if there were still planes in the air on their way to more targets ... or if something even worse was about to happen.

I was on the NJ Turnpike a few days later, driving past Newark Airport early in the AM when flights were resumed. It felt odd - or was it a relief - as I watched a plane land. The weather was exactly the same.

re: #149 Ford_Prefect

I also remember where I was when I heard the first commercial airplane flying overhead many days later. How odd it seemed to hear that plane after so many days of quiet in the sky. I just stood there and watched as it flew across the sky.

When I got back to Jersey on 9/13 I was spooked by the quiet. I lived about 15 miles west of Manhattan at the time and always had traffic from Newark overhead. It was maybe around 6 or 7 pm when I heard a plane and I recall seeing people rushing outside looking skyward expecting something ominous.

List and photos of all 343 New York City Firemen killed at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

re: #196 nyc redneck

anyone remember how the air was an eerie pale orange for months in lower manhattan.
how it smelled. how we breathed it.

I'll never forget that smell.

re: #196 nyc redneck

anyone remember how the air was an eerie pale orange for months in lower manhattan.
how it smelled. how we breathed it.

From NJ I never really remember any smell. I think the prevailing winds were mostly blowing out towards Brooklyn and Long Island?

I worked nights at the time, and I lived at home (I had just turned 21 and quit college due to finances). I had gone to bed around 7:30 am central and was just dozing off when my father threw my door open and told me an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Being half asleep I was like, "Whaaa?" He repeated himself and I realized he was serious. I got up, went downstairs to the living room and was watching the coverage on TV. My Dad and I had been discussing how a plane could have hit the towers when the second plane struck.

We were both shocked into silence and just watched until the reports of the Pentagon being hit started filtering in and then the first tower collapsed. We watched as it fell. Frankly I was only kinda shocked. Given where the planes had hit, I had expected somekind of collapse above the impact zone, but I didn't expect the entire building to go down. After it collapsed, I knew it was just a matter of time until the second tower collapsed. I wasn't watching when that happened, I was on the phone with my boss. I worked at a hotel right outside a military base and we were full of officers and senior non-coms staying at the base for training. The majority of them were checking out early to get back to their duty stations asap and I needed to know if she wanted wanted me back in to help the morning desk clerks.

After she said that she thought they could handle it, I learned the second tower had gone down. My father and I both headed to our cars and rushed to the nearest gas station cause we didn't know how bad it was going to get.

While I was filling my tank, the guy on the same pump but on the other side of the island looked at me and asked, "Do you think we're at war?" I replied, "We're at war with someone, the question is who."

I notice a number of people posting that are very infrequent posters. Thank you for the contributions.

Never Forget!

Most folks in our department were gathered around one of the large-screen televisions in a conference room. Saw the second tower collapse on one of the live network feeds. Work was dismissed for the day, so I went home to watch TV with the wife and two-year old daughter. At the time, I was waiting for the CT Bar Exam results. After seeing what was taking place, I couldn't have cared less about whether I'd passed or failed.

What I wrote back in 2005.

re: #191 ModerateWolverine

We have lifelock, it's fine.

I'd worry more about harrassment/stalking from moonbats or jihadis.

I remember I was getting ready for a day of trading when I saw the futures get very volatile. Turned on the TV, and assumed it was just an accident, until the second plane hit. Then it was just shock.

re: #150 Big Steve

At one point, to the shame of our hosts, she turned to the three Americans in the group and said, "I bet you don't know what your taxes go for." We stood looking at her and finally I replied, "I don't know where our taxes are going today but I can bet they will be in Afghanistan by the end of the month!"

I too did plenty of work in Europe in the 90s.

Anti American sentiment was very strong then - not the result of Bush. Bush just enabled them to speak up more loudly and find an audience for it here.

re: #152 zombie

I actually remember saying at that moment, "This will dominate the news for the next ten years."

Wasn't there a NY Times pundit who predicted that 9/11 would be old news within a couple of months?

Living in San Diego, I see the planes coming in over downtown all the time. Every time I see one, an image of it banking into the city flashes thru my mind.

The hours before the 9/11 attacks I was busy moving between two apartment in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope. Once I packed everything in the place, a friend trekked down from the Bronx to help me lug what seemed like hundreds of heavy boxes packed with CD jewel cases. It was raining fiercely and we cursed every minute of it. The new apartment was on the corner of Prospect Park, and the roof afforded a brilliant view of the two towers-- bricks of lit office lights several inches large against the late night sky. My buddy and I smoked many cigarettes on the roof between schleps up the stairs, as the rain had cleared and the now-famous perfect September weather was starting up. We took our time looking at the Manhattan skyline and it was about 4AM when I figured I should give him a ride back to the Bronx with my rented U-Haul.

There may've been better ways of returning to Brooklyn but I got Krispy Kreme coffee and the new morning's New York Post into my head-- so I had to pull off the West Side Highway and get some. The nearest Manhattan 24-hour shop was at the foot of the World Trade Center, and I parked around the corner or Church Street; it was about 5AM. A half-hour later I had plowed through the paper, reading anxiously about the next day's Democratic mayoral primary-- curious about exactly which Socialist would maybe become the next mayor and destroy the City. I was tired and ready to go home, but I'd stupidly left the keys in the U-Haul ignition and locked the doors.

I called a the truck rental, then a locksmith for some help. The price they quoted me was $180-- $90 plus a late-night fee of another $90. If money was an issue, the receptionist suggested I wait until after 9AM for their normal daytime prices. Five minutes or so were spent smoking and sipping hot coffee, studying the time, and deciding if saving $90 was worth killing a few hours before Tuesday morning's rush-hour. Suddenly realizing my exhaustion, I called the locksmith back and asked for the late-night double-priced special. The guy arrived pretty quickly, laughed at my clumsiness and opened the locked car door. (I carried the receipt labelled '9-11-01' and 'Church St' around in my wallet for about a year.)

On the Brooklyn Bridge I drove past commuters in traffic going the opposite direction and felt thankful I wasn't working that day. Once in my old duplex loft, I checked Drudge and passed out on the couch sometime into the 7 or 8 o'clock hour.

The phone rang and woke me up. It was my old roommate's mother, who'd just seen the morning tv coverage of the first flaming tower. I hung up and looked out the window to see the initial black plume pouring into the sky. Turning back to the old tv set, I saw the second plane hit its target. I wasn't exactly certain of how to feel, other than a vague War of the Worlds-type rush of adrenaline that only increased by the hour. Who knows how many minutes went by watching news coverage and alternating with disbelief to the kitchen window, where I could see everything-- just a mile down Carroll Street and across the East River.

I needed a whole new pack of Luckies-- and maybe another coffee-- for this.

Across the street the NR line was depopulating, and confused residents from the furthest neighborhoods of Brooklyn were wearily walking back home along Fourth Avenue. I thought of the long sixty-blocks to Boro Park the Hasidim had to go; residents of Bensonhurst would walk even further. As they walked south, nobody could keep their eyes away from the smoking towers for more than a few seconds. I turned around to look down Carroll Street again myself. The smoke leaked into the atmosphere and I thought it may stay there, forever capping the brightness of a beautiful blue sky like a filter of black or gray. Suddenly one of the towers fell-- silently-- and a strong burst of dust shot up the empty path from the river. We closed our eyes.
[continued]

re: #147 WrathofG-d

PS: You all really should be mindful of the personal information that you are contributing to this discussion. I have noticed that many people have been much more honest about and forthcoming with personal information on this thread than usual. I admite the thought, but if personally do not want the entire world knowing my age, location, High School &/or College I attended, and other personal information that I have seen other people volunteer on this thread.

I would post every shred of my personal information right here right now if it would ensure that we would never forget....

"The Pentagon has been hit," I heard the radio voice say in the Korean grocery about a minute later, as the dazed and determined residents of Brooklyn were starting to shuffle through the main streets. I remembered the new Bob Dylan album was due to be released that day-- and I'd waited for it for years. The sky was on fire in Manhattan and, in Park Slope that afternoon, the record shop was packed. By that time I needed a break from the "If you're just joining us..." radio replays; I took a walk with 'Love and Theft.'
Reality panged. I still needed to finish moving into the new apartment. I asked the U-Haul people for another day with the truck, on them. Bizarrely they agreed and I tooled around the streets packed with emergency vehicles, errand to errand, listening to the news on the radio. Though I had things to do attached to the temporal world-- like schlepping more boxes-- my enthusiasm in doing them felt near-pointless. Was this the Apocalypse or the morning on the End of Days? Should I spend my final hours consumed with life's detritus? These questions took me longer to answer; years later I still struggle with the same existential thoughts, and my conclusions were no less definitive than the average New Yorker's.

I stayed that night at a friends' place in Williamsburg where several of us had gathered to spend the night. We fiddled with the tv antenna to watch Giuliani sum up the day's horrors. Even his most fierce critic that night was moved to silent tears with him. Twenty-four hours after looking innocently at an intact skyline, I was smoking again on a rooftop; this time we were speechless watching tanks roll down Metropolitan Avenue and into Manhattan.

#101 Nevergiveup

Yes, near Hancock.

I was snug in my bed, blissfully ignorant of the events until one of my roommates woke me up saying "there was a terrorist attack or something on the world trade center, they flew a plane in to it".

I remember sitting with my roommates and watching CNN. Watching people jump, the towers collapse, some and dust... awful memories.

I was home, in Los Angeles getting ready for work. I was sickened as I had been at the WTC the prior weekend and was on flight 11 on Monday, New Jersey to Los Angeles. Needless to say, I feel very lucky and mourn those that lost their lives.

re: #214 Occasional Reader

Wasn't there a NY Times pundit who predicted that 9/11 would be old news within a couple of months?

It was over at the grey lady, soon after I think they started their impeach Bush push?

I was at the dentist. When I arrived they had the radio on and we're talking about how a "small plane" or "explosion" had hit the World Trade Center. My first thought was some lost pilot veered out of control. While at the dentists office we heard the report of the second plane, then the Pentagon. Of course we all knew then this was no accident.

I left the dentist office and went home instead of to the office (I work and live very close to home). By the time I arrived the first tower had collapsed. I went inside and just hugged my wife and we cried. A little while later I went to work, but I didn't get much work done as I had the radio on all day. Even to this day, when I see video of the attacks, the emotions come rushing back. I know I'll never forget that day.

West Coast, I woke to reports of a plane crash into the WTC, speculation was still a light plane. After getting a cup of coffee the reports were getting more urgent about the fire so I go and flip on the TV.

My first sight of the building it was clean it was no light aircraft. But something commercial sized. I turned down the volume because the talking head were just so damn stupid, I could see from the image about the only thing that had right was airplane hit the build, the rest was moronic.

About that time the second plane hit WTC

I swear to God my first thought was, "At least we know Bin Laden doesn't have a nuke." The second plane made a terror attack, and anyone who'd followed Mideast terrorism closely like I did and do knew the number one threat was Bin Laden and cronies. And the big worry at the time was Bin Laden and his money getting they hands on a loose nuke from the Soviet break up.

The next thing I remember was a close shot of second tower hit. It was very clear to my firefighters eye a collapse was imminent and screaming at the TV for them to get the firefighters out.

I knew we were going to war, a long, bitter war for our very survival.
My flag which on flew on holidays went up, and was soon replace with an all weather flag and lighting. It's been up 24/7 since 9/11 and as long our troops are in the field fighting the war.

re: #198 thedopefishlives

At the time, I lived at a point along one of the final approach routes to O'Hare. The afternoon of September 11 was an absolutely cloudless day in the Midwest, and the stark absence of plane trails was absolutely striking.

That was the weirdest thing, the silence and the absence of planes. I'm so used to seeing Southwest planes headed for Love Field, one after another. And traffic helicopters. But during that week, nothing.

re: #213 karmic_inquisitor

I too did plenty of work in Europe in the 90s.

Anti American sentiment was very strong then - not the result of Bush. Bush just enabled them to speak up more loudly and find an audience for it here.

The next time Europe implodes I hope we say "Well, we saved your butts three times in the last century, maybe it's time you learned to grow up and take care of your own problems, like an adult"

Cross posted from an earlier thread -

I remember precisely where I was. Traffic into work had been horrible. I had just come down a ladder well into berthing on ship, walked into the lounge across from my rack. Just in time to see the second plane slam into the tower on TV.

The rest of that day was a blur. We fired up all the comm gear, got ready to get underway. I talked to my mom on the phone at one point long enough to tell her, "I don't know where I'm going, or when I'll be back."

In the end just about everyone else got underway, and we sat on a pier for two weeks on triple watches. One our guys went on emergency leave to NY - lost a relative. Work was never quite the same. I don't think my mom ever bugged me to get out after that.

No, I'll never forget that. Or the diverted flight that did a low and slow over our bow while I was on watch a week later. Felt like my soul was about to jump out of my skin.

I was leaving my office to go to court. A colleague ran up to me, breathless, and said a plane had just hit the WTC. We both agreed that didn't sound like an accident. I arrived at court and was conferencing with opposing counsel. One of them was a guy I faced regularly. He kept coming up to me with updates: "They hit the Pentagon, too." I realized we were at war. I felt numb. Finally, they evacuated the courthouse and I shuffled back to my office in daze. The streets were crowded with people trying to get back home. In Boston, there was some concern we might be a target. I eventually got on the subway, arrived home and turned on the TV to see the WTC collapsing. That very night, I was lectured by my neighbor's British wife about all American had done to deserve it. I haven't spoken to that couple since....

I was at Con Edison, on 14th Street. We had a front row seat to the whole thing. I worked in the Corporate Communications section as Corporate Webmaster.

At some point, a friend said, "Look at that." We pulled up the blinds and saw the smoke billowing out of the first tower. Reports were filtering in; maybe it was a gas explosion? Someone had called up a radio show and said that he saw a plane hit the first tower. I remember thinking to myself, "A 767 straight into the tower? It's a little early to be drunk, pal." If only.

There was a TV that was hung on the wall that mirrored what we were watching right out the window. As we gathered to watch the smoke from the first tower on the TV and out the window, we felt, rather than saw, the second plane fly past us. Moments later we saw the second plane's explosion as it slammed into the second tower. It was then that we knew it was an attack.

The phone lines went dead almost immediately. Internet was still functional. 2001 was in the midst of the Intifada in Israel. Buses were exploding daily. My cousins IMed me from Israel to ask me, me, if I were okay, because they saw the report on the TV. The world had gone completely insane.

I had an anxiety attack, couldn't breathe. I needed to get out of the building.

There's a Food Emporium by one of the outlying subway entrances. At some point during the day, a dust-covered fire vehicle (SUV, not truck) had parked half-up on the sidewalk. The truck was there for more than a week. No one touched it, except for a few finger swipes in the dust on the bumper and the windshield. Collected as a reminder, perhaps.

In NYC, you don't make eye contact. It's a thing. I remember walking down the street looking at people and they looking back at me. Making sure I was "ok," that I wasn't going to fly a plane into a building. And vice versa.

That night there was a firefighter in Penn Station. He was covered in dust from head to foot. He was speaking a bit too loudly into his cell phone. No one said anything, and even strained a little to catch what he was saying. I happened to be standing next him. I heard, "...fucking nothing left..." I stopped listening.

I was getting my teeth cleaned for free at a Dental School (NOT recommended BTW!) when my friend called and told me about it.

i remember the first wtc bombing. they killed 6 people and would have prevailed in bringing the towers down then if they weren't so stupid.
they parked their bomb laden trucks one sub-basement too deep.
iirc,clinton didn't even come down to the site.
that was our wake up call and he missed it.

re: #206 Nevergiveup

That's right - most of the debris (papers, dust, etc.) wafted over Brooklyn and then out to sea. It was only when the winds would shift would other parts of the region get a taste of that smell (and you'd literally taste it - a sharp metallic/acrid smell).

I was drinking coffee about to go to my Squadron in MCAS Miramar thinking I was watching some realisitic movie. It took a few minutes to realize it was real. Once aboard base, I flew one of the few helicopters allowed to fly that day picking up missiles from Fallbrook Armory for the jet squadrons.

re: #219 jemima

#101 Nevergiveup

Yes, near Hancock.

I went to a Camp in NE PA and I read about that Muslim enclave. My daughter goes to Binghamton now so, i usually stop for Breakfast in Hancock now a days.

I was a senior in college at the time. I remember being in class that morning and someone said something about a plane crashing into on of the towers of the WTC. I remember some people in class joking that it was probably a drunk pilot. A few minutes later an announcement came over the building intercom to inform us that the plane that flew into the WTC was likely linked to terrorism. We were released from class and we all gathered into the main office of the journalism (that was my major) building where they had brought in a TV. Other than the image of the final plane flying into the tower, the thing I remember most was the looks on the faces of my classmates and the faculty/staff that were gathered. We were all mortified. A few of us, including me, shed some tears as the news really sank in and it hit us. I will NEVER FORGET that day...the way I felt, the images I saw, the realization that the world and America were forever changed. I will never forget!

God Bless America

I was walking into the West Des Moines office of Marsh and someone said that there were reports that a small plane had just hit one of the Towers. I had just shipped several boxes of seminar invitations that I'd written and designed to our NY sales office located on the 49th floor of Tower 2. I worked so closely with the head of the office so I quickly went to my desk and dialed her phone number from memory. It rang and rang...then we started getting word that the phone had gone dead on a call to the Marsh office in Tower 1

We were on the phone to try to locate colleagues and watch the events unfold on the television in our conference room. It took days to find out who was safe and who had perished. Of course, even today, we must assume that certain people died since there was no body...

We lost nearly 300 colleagues. Second only to Cantor Fitzgerald who lost 658.

When the bombing in 1993 happened, the head of our division kept telling the NY head of office that he couldn't understand why she would want to stay in the WTC. He was convinced that those responsible would eventually come back to finish the job.

I do remember the almost sickening silence of no airplanes in the sky for next two days.

re: #160 Ben Hur

Now THAT is what I expect from Ben Hur!

where was I

sitting at my computer chatting with friends in an irc channel where we traded rare B movies and hanging out on a mud. like usual i was listening to fox and friends when the first plane hit after the second hit i woke up mrs claw and told her we are at war one of the guys either on irc or on the mud was at his high school in new york witnessed both plane hits. when flight 93 crashed it was under a minute flights time from where i lived. i then embarked on a long journey learning the truth about the middle east and islam, crusades , barbary wars etc... i will never forget, also wanna shock a liberal into seeing the truth what works occasionally for me is to print out the entire database from the religionofpeace.com something about a list hundreds of pages long show the extent of the jihad we along with all of the non muslim world are facing

I had just finished an 8th grade English test and went down to the library to check out a book. The librarians had the TV on and were watching the two towers on fire. When we switched classes to go to Social Studies, I told the teacher that the WTC had been attacked and she told me to "Sit down and don't joke around about that."
One of the other guys ended up turning on the TV in her room and she just stood there with her hand over her mouth.
We found out later that the librarian had a daughter who was in Manhattan going to school and she couldn't reach her by phone (for obvious reasons).
At about 10:00 am our time (CDT), the superintendent sent out a mass e-mail telling the teachers to turn off their TV's.

On the London Underground, a railroad employee overheard my Yankee accent on a mobile phonecall. He offered, "There's a disaster taking place in America. Come with me and I'll show you."

He escorted me in to the stationmaster's office where the ordinarily America-resentful station-staff were transfixed staring at a wall of security TV screens. One of the screens was tuned to ITN news which was showing the WTC crashed-into and smoking. We watched gob-smacked as the first tower demolished.

I travelled to the International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam (ironically being perenially re-held this week) where a Dutch businessman approached me to offer his condolences for America's loss.

He confided, "now perhaps you (Yanks) will begin to understand just what we Western Europeans are having to come to terms with."

This led to my creating the jihad-awareness videomagazine, DemoCast.com.

I was also in college at the time. I commuted to college, but that day the first plane hit I chose to skip school. I drove to Hackensack NJ to a high vantage point to look at the buildings (along Washington's Retreat Route he used to get out of NYC during the Revolutionary War), I saw both of the towers that day. It is a series of days I will never forget. The stink in the air when I went down to Hoboken the next day, the f-16's flying over Rt 3 not far from Giants Stadium. The Beautiful Weather of those days, playing Outdoor Roller Hockey in Paramus at Petruska Park and commenting to those playing with me how queit it was since we didn't have any air traffic from JFK, Newark, and Teterboro. It was surreal...

I prayed and continually pray for those that lived and died through that day with worse outcomes than I had that day.

May they live/rest in peace.

Woke up that morning with an overwhelming need to turn on the news...Not something I had ever done before. Tuned in just after the first plane hit.
My first thought was total loss of ability to turn..etc or a suicidal pilot.
Then the second plane hit....knew then it had to be the ROP

Other 9/11 memories.

A friend worked at the Cantor office in CT, and was on the squawk box call that morning, when they heard a commotion, a few "OMG's" and "holy shits", a loud noise, more screaming, someone saying "get the hell out", then nothing. No one on the other end made it. My friend could barely talk about it..the look on his face when he described what he heard.

My town in CT did a fund raiser for a new playground in the months after 9/11, selling bricks with messages for the walkway. Most are happy messages, with kids names, "love mom & dad", that sort of thing. A few rip your heart out...messages from families who's loved ones never came home.

The unclaimed cars sitting in the commuter lot at the train station. For days. Before they were brought home by family members.

re: #226 Leonidas Hoplite

The next time Europe implodes I hope we say "Well, we saved your butts three times in the last century, maybe it's time you learned to grow up and take care of your own problems, like an adult"

That day, as I left the plant in Rotterdam, a Dutch woman security guard, who that very morning had endlessly hassled me about having the right paperwork, threw herself into my arms in tears. At least in the Netherlands, all anti-americanism ceased that day.

I was driving to work in northwest Ohio when news of the first plane hitting the tower broke on the radio. The reader for ABC Radio news was just perplexed as to how a plane could have hit the tower on such a clear beautiful day.

When the second plane hit, I was at my desk on the phone talking business with a city government customer, the radio was on in the background. (No TV in the office) The news reader shouted: "Another plane just hit the second tower."

I yelled over the phone: "Did you hear that?" Jim didn't know what I was talking about. I yelled: "We're under attack! We're under attack! Planes are slamming into buildings in New York." He thought I was joking. I yelled at him: "Hang up the phone, run over to the Mayor's office and turn on the damn television. We're under attack - we're at war!"

Nobody worked for the rest of the day. Some wondered if we should be stocking up on ammo. (I had plenty, but thought - you never know.) I looked up at the sky all day and watched every rental truck with enormous suspicion - not out of fear, but as a matter of extraordinary alertness. I didn't smile for months afterwards.

re: #183 Dianna

I was in San Francisco on the day of the 101 California murders. That afternoon, I met a friend (as I usually did Thursdays) for a beer. The bar was full of people drinking, talking and laughing too loud - many of them from 101 Cal, many of them lawyers, or at least employees of law firms.

It's a way of coping.

I guess I'm just wired differently.

The next morning, I attended a meeting at work. Most everyone else was just talking away about the matter at hand. I was there, but not there, if you know what I mean.

When I first heard about the planes I was in my car traveling between the central facilities after training, back to the Advanced Test Reactor(A reactor for testing new fuel and or new materials used in nuclear reactors). The previous day, I walked around our site on the INL and was looking at the fence. It was to be taken down. They were scaling back security at the Idaho National Laboratory(at that time it was still INEEL(idaho national environmental engineering lab)). We had a double chain link fence with cameras and motion sensors, they had already removed the cameras and motion sensors and were in the process of removing the fence(it was planned and budgeted). I heard about a plane hitting the tower while listening to AM talk radio. I thought, big deal, a plane or two had hit the Empire State Building and as a matter of fact a WWII bomber had as well. When I badged in to the site, the guards filled me in on what really happened and that it was not plane but passenger jets.

The one thing I remember thinking about was the people. The abject terror that they must have experienced, the knowledge they must have had that they weren't going to see their wives, husbands or children again in this life. I felt a terrible feeling in my heart, knowing all the things that I would want to tell my kids and my wife before I died, and they were not able too. They didn't die instantly and had to endure the forbodding knowledge that thier death was at hand. How terror filled and alone they must have been. My god rest their souls.

re: #138 Leonidas Hoplite

This was our Pearl Harbor........and there are many among us in the free world still making excuses.......sad.

re: #150 Big Steve

"I don't know where our taxes are going today but I can bet they will be in Afghanistan by the end of the month!"

I see you took the diplomatic approach. Also acceptable: a backhand.

Seeing lots of unfamiliar nics on this thread. Keep posting.

I was waiting in front of my house at 6 a.m. for my ride into San Francisco from the East Bay. When she drove up, she mentioned that a plane had hit the WTC, and we thought it was a little plane...one of those weird news stories. We were listening to NPR while driving over the Bay Bridge when the live NPR reporter in NYC started screaming that another jet had hit the other tower. When I got to work, I turned on the big TV in the conference room and people drifted in and watched. We saw the towers fall. About an hour later, the mayor of SF, Willie Brown, told all non-emergency city workers to go home. This was about 9 a.m. California time. The police on BART were yelling at us to just get on any train out of the city and transfer later. It was very scary, as we didn't know if other planes were heading for us or other cities. The GG Bridge is a pretty big icon here.

It all changed our lives, of course. It's one of the reasons I found LGF and why I'm a Republican now.

re: #190 elevenbravo1969

My kids got addicted to "24", which of course scared them (but not as much as 9/11). At first I was going to stop them from watching, but then I figured out to tell them that those are the worst things the writers could think up, year after year, and they haven't happened because our military and domestic enforcers have done the best job possible. God bless them.

re: #121 buzzsawmonkey

Lawhawk's post above reminds me of the firehouses.

The empty firehouses.

Most of Brooklyn's firefighters had headed over to the WTC when the planes hit. When the towers came down, whole shifts had been wiped out. Every firehouse had an impromptu memorial of flowers and candles in front of it. Some of the firehouses were all but empty.

ok, that one made me cry.

Thank you.

But just for the record, I had Saudi friends that called the day after asking if that lie was true.

I was working at a law firm in West Palm Beach. Another secretary had a radio and heard about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. We thought it was a private plane. Then the second plane hit. I told a co-worker that it was bin Laden (to this day, I don't know why I said that). We all went downstairs to a stock brokerage firm that had TVs, and we all lined up, silently, watching and crying. We closed the office early and I remember on the way home thinking, "where the hell was the CIA?"

At home in Chicago.

I woke up and sat down on the computer to buy tickets for a Sept. 18 business trip to New York. At the time I was traveling to NY a lot; my wife and I had just been there two weeks prior, for her birthday. We had dinner at Windows to the World, took a bunch of clowning photos on the WTC plaza.

Saw the first building on fire, yelled at my wife to turn on the TV. When I got to the den, we watched the second plane live. Attempted phone calls to friends and business associates in NY, couldn't get through. Don't know why, maybe shock or denial, but we sent the kids off to school and I commuted to work as if it was any other day. Total mental fog. I decided to go back home after they order the evacuation of the Sears Tower and John Hancock building.

The next night there was a knock on our door; it was a friend from San Francisco. Because of the air shutdown he was driving back to SF from Boston in a rental car. The night of Sept. 10 he had stayed in the Copley Plaza hotel in Boston, along with several of the hijackers. He spent the morning of Sept 11 being interviewed by police.

I was watching TV in my living room with my 2 year old and my 5 month old, also chatting on the phone with a dear friend when the second plane hit the tower. I said all kinds of things that you should never say in front of children, moved a little TV into the playroom, put videos on for the older child and watched the replay for hours. I have to say, it was the worst parenting I've ever done. The fun part was remembering another plane crash that I was about 20 feet away from when I was a child.

My SO and I were on vacation in Scotland with my parents. We had we had just finished touring the Stone Age village of Skara Brae and I escorted my parents back to the gate house. She had stayed behind to look at something else. After a while, I went out to look for her. I saw her, sprinting across a field, arms waving, hair blowing. I flashed for a moment, "like a shampoo commercial." As she got closer I could hear what she was screaming in a voice of rage and fear, "New York is being attacked."

We got back to the B&B and turned on the TV to learn the grisly details through the arch prism of the condescending BBC. Next day we were back in Glasgow scheduled to leave but all flights were cancelled. Took us five more days to get on a flight.

The people we met were kind, gracious, and caring in the aftermath. The BBC, with few exceptions, could scarcely contain their glee.

I was working at Home Depot at the time and remember going to the break room to get a cup of coffee and saw the second plane hit the tower on the tv in the break room. I vividly recall the feeling in my gut as I saw that scene unfold and the feeling of anger when I found out the who the douchebags were that were behind the attacks. That feeling of anger still burns inside of me as alive today as it was on that dreadful morning.

I was at work, just doing my thing when my mother called me and said a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I thought it was a little Cessna. Then she called again and said another plane had hit and it was bad. So I got on the internet and didn't get off all day. It was then that I discovered the power of the net, and after 9/11 I discovered that I could get more facts on blogs than I could on all the news stations put together.

My information sources switched that day and I've never gone back to the networks. And I have never forgotten that day - never. And I will remember it till the day I die.

For those who haven't read it.

Tilly's Story.

I was at work, we thought it was a small plane and everything would be ok. Then we were watching the TV and the second plane hit. We knew that it was not a small plane and it was a deliberate attack. First words out of my mouth were, we've just been attacked. Everyone agreed we should find out who did it and turn their little chicken boned bu&&s, to ash courtesy of a nuke. Then make the whole place a giant parking lot.

I was on a plane in Charlotte, NC next in line to take off when the crew began to tell us that something was happening in New York, but they weren't sure yet. We were turned around and returned to the gate since we were told no more aircraft were taking off today. To this day (since I don't remember the time) I'm not sure if this was a preemptive grounding in Charlotte, or if it was after the FAA grounded all planes.

The next thing I remember is getting off the plane and staring in shock at the news footage on the TVs. We just stared for a while, unsure what to do. We were watching when the towers went down. I couldn't believe it, I had just been in New York two weeks before and just couldn't imagine such massive towers coming down.

I was vacationing in Mazatlan with the turnwife and my bro. I was still in bed nursing a hangover when bro yelled out "Johnny you've got to come see this, a plane hit the world trade center." We all crowded around the set and I'm kind of embarrassed to say it didn't immediately dawn on me it could be a terrorist attack - right up until the point the second plane hit! (looking back I had no idea what Al Queda was and barely knew about Osama - nothing about Islam either) I said "holy shit bro, we need to get back home NOW." We quickly packed as we watched the reports that kept coming in. Then we heard about the grounding of all planes and I honestly thought we were going to be stuck in Mexico and away from our kids for a very long time. We headed to the airport ASAP and stayed overnight with the other Americans on the charter and made it back to SF the next day IIRC. One family had friends or relatives that worked in the towers, never found out if they lost them. At any rate the cabin erupted in applause the second we touched down. I still remember the sense of bonding we Americans had immediately after 9/11. Even complete strangers in stores seemed go out of their way to look at you directly to say hello. Boring story I know, but one that I will NEVER FORGET.

I was in a closed door meeting discussing T1s or somesuch when the door opened and the HR Troll yelled a plane just hit the World Financial Center... which is where my mother was working. So I started to make my way upstairs and everyone was saying, "You have to get on the roof and see this!"

So I grabbed my cell off my desk and started calling my mother at her office as I made my way up the stairs to the roof and when I looked out from 14th & 5th I saw the HUGE hole in the side of the WTC. I thought, immediately, "wow... that's a big hold for a Cessna." My cell wouldn't connect.

I realized something really big was happening at this point. I made my way down to the street and saw one of my guys and handed him my cell phone and said, "Kenny, call my mother, call my father, call Lynda and don't stop until you get them." He looked at me oddly and I tuned him around to see the smoke coming out of the WTC. "Holy shit! They're both on fire?"

I couldn't understand why the other one was on fire. Maybe the Cessna's wing flew off and hit the other building?

I started running down town. The surreal thing I remember was that no one was listening to the news. All the radios had Howard Stern on. He was saying, "This isn't an accident. You know what this is, you know who did this." It didn't connect to me.

As I got close I realized I was going the wrong way. Everyone was coming at me. This cop, Thor, grabbed and turned me around. I tried to come back and do a fake around him. He easily stopped me, "Asshole!" he yelled, "Get the fuck out of here! Shit is going down!" I ended up getting past him and then I heard this sound.

It was like a squeal. In the Michael Moore movie Roger & Me at some point he visits a factory worker who has been laid off. Now she skins rabbits. First she whacks them in the head then she rips their skin off.

PuhTANGGGG! and then this squeal as she was skinning them alive.

That's what it sounded like. This metallic sound and then a squeal. Like a rabbit. Then the white smoke was everywhere. You couldn't see shit.

I decided my mother and father must be dead. My wife was uptown in the Empire State Building, which I could still see, so I figured she was OK. I went back to my office. Covered in dust and looking like Hell.

Kenny had gotten my father, he was OK. No one could find my mom.

About 2 hours later she walked in my office, covered in dust and with a huge boot mark on her neck. A fireman had trampled her running from the second tower. She thinks she was around Chambers Street at the time. Everyone in my family was OK. We actually took the Long Island Rail Road home like it was a normal day.

At the time, I was working for an Irish software company out of my home in the USA. When my wife said a plane had hit the WTC. I messaged my associates in Ireland that something had happened in the USA and I would be right back. When I saw what was happening on TV, I messaged them again and somebody there got a TV going. It was about 15 minutes or so, I believe, until Irish TV went live or nearly live.

The Irish have a special affinity for New York. While nobody we knew was directly killed or injured, we were all stunned.

re: #246 Occasional Reader

I was there, but not there, if you know what I mean.

I've had that experience. Your body is somewhere, but your brain and your soul are somewhere else-dealing with difficult stuff trying to process it.

I was driving on the I10 in to work in Rancho Cucamonga and had a music CD playing in the car.

The irony was that usually I would listen to AM on the way to work but had stopped listening in the morning a few days before 9/11 because the news would get me too upset before work.

My cell phone rang and it was my girlfriend at the time. She said, "Do you have the radio on?" When I said I didn't she just told me to turn it on AM and call home when I got to work safe.

In a panic I tuned in thinking tha someone I knew had gotten in a car accident or robbed a bank or something and remember getting so mad that I about broke my steering wheel. I was pounding the dash like a madman.
Everywhere I looked people were just driving in a daze with glassy eyes and tears running down their faces. The rage everyone felt was palpable.

When I got to work I checked in and then drove to WalMart where me and another guy bought a TV so we could watch it in the office.

We canceled all work orders, got everyone accounted for and out of LA, and stopped sending anyone into Los Angeles. We were so scared it wasn't over yet. Everyone expected the scumbags to hit LA.

We stood in front of the TV all day. The office manager at work had family in the towers and family all over NYC. Luckily she didn't lose anyone, but we didn't know for almost a whole day that they had gotten out OK. She was a wreck.

I don't think I have gone a day without checking the news online, on the radio, or on TV in seven years.

I am still as angry today as I was then. I would gladly throw the lever on those maggots myself.

My Sept 11 story has a very happy ending:

I was in the car with a co-worker who had arrived in Atlanta from our Penang, Malaysia office only a week before Sept. 11. She was going to spend 8 weeks in our office. The morning of Sept 11, we were driving up I-85 from ATL to visit the major account that I managed from the U.S. side and that she handled from the Malaysian side. Two days earlier, on Sunday, she had attended a Methodist church service with me because she had joined a small Methodist church in Penang, which quietly held its services in a mundande office building. She had fallen in love with America in just one short week mainly because of seeing the freedom we had as citizens to chose among dozens and dozens of religious denominations.

She was engaged to an atheist back home in Penang. One sibling was Muslim, one was a Buddhist, and both parents were atheist. She didn’t know too many Christians back home. The day was hell for me. One of my dearest friends from my hometown was working for Morgan Stanley. I never saw a TV until about 7:00 pm that night once we returned from our business trip back to ATL. I spent all day on the cell phone in my car trying to find out if anyone had heard from my friend. I kept getting calls from family asking if I had heard about that plane that crashed into the Pentegon or into the fields of Pennyslvania. Without a TV, it truly felt like being in the middle of an Orson Welles film. We didn’t bother with the radio. She was asking me too many questions. Was the next plane going to land in the middle of I-85? I cried and cussed all day long, yet tried to not frighten my Malaysian co-worker too much. (I learned late that night that my NYC friend had made it out safely.)

My co-worker’s family and fiancée insisted that she fly back to Malaysia as soon the air space restrictions were lifted. She did. We stayed in touch constantly by email after she returned to Penang. She told me then that she was going to do her damndest to make it back to the States. She just had to live in a country where religious freedom was not taken for granted and where the people from all walks of life had bonded together after the worst day in its history. She had traveled throughout all of Asia and Europe and knew that only Americans could have pulled together with such a deep bond.

It took her about a year to make it to the States. She got her work visa so she could work in our NJ corporate office. She had broken up with her fiancé. She’s been married to a nice, young Chinese guy she met in NYC. She’s an active member in her Methodist church out in Long Island.

An addendum
My daughters were 5th grade and 9th grade at the time. Both of them had classmates removed from class because a parent had been hurt or killed at the Pentagon.

The high schoolers were told what happened. Th elemenary school children were not. When my younger got home, she was met at the step by my oldest who had been crying and told about the attacks.

The previous week, my oldest was in New York for a Girl Scout trip. They had visited the WTC. She brought me back a little figurine that had the skyline of New York with the WTC, the Empire State Building, and the Statue of Liberty. I still have that as a reminder of what happened.

I was at work in suburban Philadelphia when a coworker came in with the news of the first plane. I thought it was a small Piper type aircraft but learned shortly afterwards it was a large Jet. When the second hit I knew the crap had hit the fan. There were several of my coworkers bordering on hysteria and I tried to calm them and put things in perspective knowing all along life was forever changed. We shut the office and sent everyone home who wanted to go.
My brother is a photographer who was scheduled to be shooting in the Towers for Cantor Fitzgerald that beautiful morning. Fortunately they had called earlier to reschedule. I can't tell you how glad I was to receive that phone call.
When I got home, I marveled at the empty sky and the quiet as all traffic seemed to have stopped.
I am still PISSED

I live in Las Vegas, and still remember that day clear as a bell. I lived alone at the time, and didn't have a TV.

Monday night, I came home from work late, and looked forward to a day off on Tuesday. There was a message from my mom asking if we could get together on Tuesday, since I had the day off. It was late, so I figured I'd call her in the morning.

The next morning, I got up about 9 (noon in NY), had breakfast, and was preparing to log on to my dial-up connection. I remembered that I needed to call my mom, so I did that first.

I called her up, told her today would be fine to get together. Her only reaction was, "And . . . ?" Confused, I asked her, "...and what?". She replied, "You haven't turned on your computer yet, have you?" "No," I replied, "But how could you possibly know that?"

Now, you have to understand that my mom often describes things in a confused way, and that I've learned to "translate" this into something more coherent.

She says, "The World Trade Center towers have crashed! It's like a war zone out there!" At this point, I'm thinking she meant that there was a serious stock market crash, and there were a lot of people fighting to cash out.

After trying to explain, she said, "I'll pick you up later, just look on the computer, and be ready when I pick you up."

I finally logged on, and saw on my homepage a headline about the World Trade Centers crashing (I'm still thinking financially, at this point). I click on the story to learn it was physcial! But why? Planes? Not just planes, but commercial jet airliners?!?

I read every story I could find on the net about the World Trade Center towers, and eventually learned about the Pentagon, and Flight 93, too. I was dumbstruck. I almost didn't get ready in time to be picked up.

At 11:30, my mom picked me up, and drove back to her house, which entailed crossing the Strip. As we crossed the Strip, I was amazed. I had never seen the Strip just completely devoid of people. Seeing a place like the Strip bustling with its usual large crowds one day, and completely the empty the next was a little spooky.

When I got to her house, I turned on the TV, and saw the first video footage of what had happened. I had a hard time taking it all in, and we just spent the day talking. A close friend's husband was supposed to fly back to Vegas on that day, but couldn't make it back due to all the flights being grounded, so she joined us later that day to watch the news and have dinner with us.

It was just a day of talking, reacting, and taking it all in.

I was in Calgary, Alberta. I was at my computer (just finishing off an irate letter I intended to send to CBC about comments a CBC "journalist" had made with respect to that United Nations Racism conference in Durban, S. Africa.) There was a phone call -- my son -- saying, "Quick, turn on the television! There's been an attack on the World Trade Center!") I turned on the tv -- CNN -- and watched in utter horror...the first plane had just flown into the tower -- it was too big to be a private plane -- unlikely it was an "accident" -- in roughly 20 minutes the second plane hit -- I told my son -- "This is an act of War!" I knew/suspected it was Islamist terrorists and said so...(intense anger, grief, disbelief followed...).. Never forget, never forgive...

I was going to say I remembered the quiet from the lack of planes flying, when I finally got out of here, but that's not true.

I live near an AFB, and what I remember is the planes flying out of there - normally we get the big cargo ships and some fighters, and it's all pretty low-key (lots of guys shooting landings, trying to keep it quiet flying over town) - not then.

Every jet that went by that day was a fighter, and they all sounded pissed. No messing around, afterburner at low altitude. I had the thought that we were not on the same footing we were when I left that morning, and that I had no idea who we were at war with.

That and the feeling that nothing was going to be the same on the 12th.

re: #211 Ward Cleaver

Point taken. In retrospect, I shouldn't have even thought of kidding around on this thread.

re: #149 Ford_Prefect

I also remember where I was when I heard the first commercial airplane flying overhead many days later. How odd it seemed to hear that plane after so many days of quiet in the sky. I just stood there and watched as it flew across the sky.

I was just thinking the same thing. My house at the time was about 10 miles from St. Louis' main airport and depending on the wind, under the flight path. It was eerily quiet not to have the dozens of planes a day going overhead. A few days later, several F-15s from our Air National Guard flew over and I was jazzed to see them. It was a while after that before the first commercial jets started to fly. There were just a few a day but I remember feeling proud they were back.