9/11: What Do You Remember?

[sonny]

It was the one day I didn't watch any TV or listen to Radio while I ate breakfast and got ready for work. When I got to there, everybody was talking about the planes and whatnot, and I had no Idea what they were talking about. The rest of the day we were glues to the TV. I'll never forget that day.

[wally post]

I was florida - doing a music tour. phone call woke me: "Billy, I'm sorry but you have to get up. They're attacking your city".

Calling my wife and reaching her was powerful. She said it was a war zone and was trying to find some friends. I think she walked a LOT that day finding some pals - and not finding others. Mostly, I wanted to post to show my avatar, which needs to change (admittedly. I feel bad subjecting you all to it when I post).
But I DO miss the WTC. It was a fun place to take relatives from out of state for a bevy and snack and incredible sunset view of the greatest city in the world.

I have police friends (drummers) who worked the site for months and months afterward - overtime. LOTs of hours overtime. They have yet to receive their pay for their work. My hope is their health holds up as the years pass. Many have experienced sickness and death as a result of working at Ground Zero - a sight that our government declared safe.

[Degenerate39]

I remember being in English class and hearing people talk about how it was a bomb and all that jazz. I remember coming home and turning on the news for the first time in my life.

[VR]

I remember hearing it on the radio as I drove to work very early....I remember the exact spot on the street I was driving. I had meeting downtown at the Hilton Hotel, and everyone was pretty freaked out about being in a tall building.

The hotel I worked at had housed many United crews (40 ppl). Many of them had good friends that were on the planes, many had flown with them very recently.

They were stranded for nearly a week, and hardly heard a thing from United. Just a helpless feeling. Then they were told they could get back on a plane....a whole new round of panic ensued.

[Roy Tucker]

I was on a job interview that day. It was the kind where you go into a conference room and people keep coming in to interview you.

About 9 am, one guy said "have you heard what's going on?" and then he told me about the first plane. I remember talking about a Tom Clancy book where a 747 hit the Capitol building. And then as the morning went on, each person said "have you heard what's going on?". By about 11 am, chaos was setting in and they said "that's enough, we'll call you".

I got into my car and turned on WLW who were replaying the radio reports of the falling of the 2 towers. I remember sitting there for 15 minutes or so, just in shock as to what had transpired.

We went to a cross-denominational outdoor church service at Heritage Park that evening in Mason. Everyone had candles. I'd never seen such a large group of people be so quiet.

My kids were pretty shook up. All the schools had gone into lock-down. As I put each one to bed that night, they all wanted to talk about what happened. Each of them asked "why did they do this to us? what did we do?". I didn't have very good answers.

[RedsFan75]

Originally Posted by wally post

But I DO miss the WTC. It was a fun place to take relatives from out of state for a bevy and snack and incredible sunset view of the greatest city in the world.

Going to NYC years later, and working where you could see the area, seeing the crater and the chain link around it, looking at the buildings that were being repaired, still seeing pock marks in the ones near there, and being in a meeting where you looked out into ground zero are still haunting memories.

[Blimpie]

Originally Posted by Roy Tucker

I was on a job interview that day. It was the kind where you go into a conference room and people keep coming in to interview you.

About 9 am, one guy said "have you heard what's going on?" and then he told me about the first plane. I remember talking about a Tom Clancy book where a 747 hit the Capitol building. And then as the morning went on, each person said "have you heard what's going on?". By about 11 am, chaos was setting in and they said "that's enough, we'll call you".

Okay Roy, I gotta ask...

What happened with the job?

[Roy Tucker]

Originally Posted by Blimpie

Okay Roy, I gotta ask...

What happened with the job?

Actually, I got a job offer out of it, partly because they said they liked how I handled all the confusion of the interview.

But I was coming out of a start-up (chaos++) so I declined it and took another more stable job.

[Blimpie]

Originally Posted by Roy Tucker

Actually, I got a job offer out of it, partly because they said they liked how I handled all the confusion of the interview.

But I was coming out of a start-up (chaos++) so I declined it and took another more stable job.

Thanks, I was just curious....

[cincrazy]

I also remember a trip I had to NYC in 1999. It was a class trip with my 8th grade class, and we were able to visit the Empire State Building, but were only able to drive by the WTC. I remember thinking to myself, "When I come back, I'll make sure to stop there." I remember thinking on that day that there would be no stopping by to see the WTC. Upon going back to NYC in 2005, I remember looking at the skyline, feeling absolutely sick to my stomach.

I remember trying to picture what it must be like for the people that were there. I remember visualizing what if there was another school on a trip, and what if they were driving by that tower when that plane hit? Or worse, what if they were inside of the tower, sight seeing?

So many thoughts of horror ran through my head for weeks. What a surreal moment in life, one I hope I never experience again.

[OldRightHander]

I was living in Colorado at the time, commuting from Canon City to Colorado Springs every morning for work. I was going in that morning at 7:30, which would have been 9:30 our time, and I was driving by Fort Carson shortly after 7:00 when the morning host on the radio came on after a song finished playing to say that a small plane had hit the World Trade Center. She said she was going to try to find more information and then went to a commercial break. Coming back from the break she said it appeared to be more than just a small plane, and by that time I was at work. I got into the office and someone had a tv on. I got there just in time to see the second plane hit.

There wasn't much work done that day. We all just sat at our desks kind of numb and looking at the internet. Then someone set up a tv in the lunch room and most of us spent the rest of the day in there. When the towers fell, I just stared at the tv in disbelief. The numbness gave way to sadness, and then anger. Going outside was kind of strange as well. The whole town was just so quiet, except for the sound of the fighters flying overhead. They just kept circling over the city.

Other things I remember are the military wives I worked with. Most of them were putting up a brave front over the days ahead, but they were also scared as one by one they came into work to tell us their husbands were shipping out. I also remember conversations I had with a Muslim co-worker from Bangladesh. He was just as angry as the rest of us, but he was also scared that he might be targeted by folks who were angry at middle eastern people. We had a few good discussions at lunch time over the next month.

For the most part, that day was one of overwhelming numbness. I had just been married ten days earlier, so I was still a giddy lovestruck newlywed, and then this happened. I got home from work that evening and my wife and I just held each other for a while. We didn't even say anything because it didn't seem there were words to do justice to how we felt.

[Caveat Emperor]

I was in my second year at Tulane.

I remember waking up for a morning class (Industrial Organization Psychology) and walking out of my dorm room -- someone in the hallway told me that the World Trade Center had been hit by an airplane. I ducked back into my room to flip on CNN and watch some of the coverage before class (being on time for class was never a high priority for me). As I was watching, I saw the second plane hit the other building. I ran off to class only to find that it had been dismissed and classes were cancelled.

I spent the rest of the day (and night) watching news coverage.

Honestly, the memory of 9/11 that sticks out in my mind the most was the fact that EVERY cable channel went to news. It was 24/7 coverage of the attacks, sadness, impromptu memorials, speeches by leaders, analysts trying to understand what had happened. It was almost overwhelming. The first channel I remember that went back to regular programming was the Cartoon Network, who started showing old Looney Tunes at some ungodly late hour. I remember my suitemates and I flipped over to that and we both laughed like maniacs at stuff we hadn't seen or taken seriously since we were in grade school. We all just needed a break from the unrelenting storm of death and sorrow that had filled the TVs since the attacks had happened.

Man, I can't believe it's been 7 years...

[freestyle55]

I remember driving from my apartment in Toledo to a class in Bowling Green listening to Bob & Tom and them saying something about a plane crashing into the first tower, kind of like it was a personal plane or something, nothing like what it turned out to be. I remember then going into my international business class and finding out our teacher wouldn't let us turn the tv on to see what had happened as I don't think the info had come out yet that it was an actual attack.

I had to wait 90 minutes until the class ended and we could turn the tv on to see what happened. Don't remember if the first tower had come down yet or not, but I ended up going into work after that and not actually doing any as everyone was glued to tv screens and whatever news site they could get up...

I also remember panicking a little as some of my coworkers were flying that day to Dallas, but were stuck on the runway (never took off) and not knowing what had happened to them for a while...

[marcshoe]

I on vacation for my job at the time at United Airlines, at a hotel in Flagstaff, getting ready to drive down to Phoenix and catch a plane home. I had just watched a documentary on HBO about Ali and Frazier and, switching channels, caught the folks on Good Morning America (which I never watched) talking about what they said was a small plane hitting the World Trade Center. I watched them talking and saw the second plane hit live. It was surreal.

My first thought was that there had been a nuclear explosion that caused the planes to crash. This was silly, but I was trying to rationalize what I had seen. Then it became obvious that something was going on.

We actually began the drive to Phoenix thinking our plane would leave. Denial, I guess. Difficulty coping with reality. When we realized it wouldn't, we tried to keep the car, but they wouldn't let us. We did manage to get a hotel near Sky Harbor.

Meanwhile, relatives at home were panicking. For some reason, it took people a while to reach us, and they didn't know if we were in the air yet.

Two days later we found an available rental car and drove cross country. I could have waited and got a free ticket home, but I couldn't handle flying then (I would fly again just over a year later). Budget charged us $666 for the one-way rental from Phoenix to Charleston, WV.

The whole experience was dream-like, being stranded in a strange city, travelling on the mostly empty roads, with everyone talking about the same thing, everyone wondering, trying to find the right words.

And considering my job, getting back to work was hardly a return to normalcy. Many of us wondered whether we had helped people book one of those two flights. Not a realistic thought perhaps, but there was something that made us all feel as if we'd been targeted specifically, since we worked for United Airlines.

A strange time.

[Yachtzee]

I remember my wife waking me up and telling me I'd better come see something. I got up just in time to see the second plane hit. Then I thought of a trip I had made to NYC back in the early '90s. I remember eating lunch at the Sbarros below the WTC and then going up to the WTC observation deck. All I could think about were those people trapped above the fire.