Twenty-one years since 9-11. We are now as far away in time from that unforgettable day as Americans in 1962 were from Pearl Harbor. Anyone today under 24 has no first hand knowledge of the event. Where were you on that day, assuming that you were alive then? It was a Tuesday and it was a cloudless magnificent day in Central Illinois. I was at the law mines. The husband of my late secretary Chris was the first to inform us that a plane had hit one of the twin towers in New York. We attempted to carry on with our tasks, but we got little work done that day. My main memory of my mental state that day was one of rage, angrier than I had ever been, before or since. A bit of that anger still comes back to me each anniversary. Those are my memories. Tell us yours.
I was washing dishes and packing up my apartment to get ready to move back in with my folks for the next few months. I had signed enlistment paperwork two weeks prior and was set to ship out on Jan 2, 2002. My recruiter called me the next day to renegotiate my contract.
Tempus Fugit. Can’t believe it’s 19 years. I thought I was too old for that s**t, even then.
Was going to work. I was in a NYCTA IRT Number 3 Downtown subway train which stopped under Chambers Street (WTC) but happily started up again.
When we got out at Wall Street, a construction worker was running down the stairs and yelling, “Go home!” We didn’t.
Got out at Wall Street and already debris was floating down.
Quickly went to the office in 20 Exchange Place and stayed there – about a quarter mile from the WTC. My buddy was in hospital for tests with the TV on. He called, said he thought the second plane was flying into our building – it went right over us.
Not much work got done. Our computers were steaming live news coverage we were in.
I knew staying in the building was safest. When the towers came down, looking out my window, it was like we were under water, I thought.
They finally told us to leave about noon – I stayed later. They had shut down and closed the office ventilation system, which saved us from breathing all that smoke and toxic dust. I stayed until the dust settled outside and hooked up with my wife’s brother-in-law who had a car parked under the Brooklyn Bridge (cheap parking – couldn’t get cars out of underground parking). We brushed it off and headed north – picked up two lost souls and dropped them off near Grand Central Sta. USAF had fighter planes over NY and first time my bro heard one, he thought it was coming after us.
When we got north, people were walking around as if nothing big had happened.
Every time we got close to a police precinct or hospital they made us detour around it.
We drove local streets across the Harlem R. and over Throgs Neck Br to Queens. They weren’t letting any traffic (opposite direction on TNB) into NYC.
When we got back to office a week later, I was speaking with a young man with a dot.com company in the building. He had been spectating from the 52nd floor when the second plane hit. He said he was having nightmares about a jumbo jet chasing him in the street.
I’m still apologizing in my heart to my lovely Muslim brothers for we Americans being so evil as to force 19 pious young men to fly jumbo jets into the WTC and Pentagon and kill 3,000 of us.
I flew in the night before. I was supposed to land at JFK, but for some reason I can’t remember flights were being diverted to La Guardia. I was going to take an expert deposition the next day. I was about to leave for the depo when my office called to see if I knew what was going on. I looked out of my hotel window and saw smoke pouring out of the World Trade Center from the first plane. It was surreal. My opposing counsel and I did the depo in Long Island but all hell had broken loose while we were doing so. We ended up stuck there for 3 days before we finally were able to rent a car. Driving out we literally went by the still smoking ruins. I was confused as to who hated us that much. So, rather quickly I began to educate myself and knew Pres. Bush was lying when he told me it was adherents of the “religion of peace”. I never had another case against that lawyer but, to this day, on the anniversary he and I call each other to catch up. I guess it’s a bond of sorts, one I hope no one else ever forms.
I was at the James FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant in upstate NY. After the planes hit the WTC, except for on-watch personnel, we were all gathered together in the Training Bldg Auditorium for a briefing by senior management. We thought that since the WTC towers in NYC had been hit, the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plants (my Alma Mater) just 30 miles north would be next. Truthfully, I was scared because at the time we didn’t know who attacked us nor why. Security the next day coming into work was so intense that it felt like we were entering a state prison. Every car was individually checked, every person was given a pat down (even though we walked through bomb and metal detectors to gain entry). Every package, lunch box and brief case was opened (even though everything got x-rayed). Within months there were security guard towers and men armed with automatic weapons everywhere on site. Everything from the control rod drive hydraulic system in the reactor building to the air compressors in the turbine building to engineering offices in the admin bldg to classrooms in the training bldg were subsequently subjected to monitoring. And the security force increased three fold. Huge stone barriers were installed all around the owner controlled area, and from the time you arrived in the parking lot till the time you left, you were on candid camera or being monitored by infrared sensors (except of course for the bathrooms). Existing security such as card readers, hand geometry readers, etc., recording entry into and exit from protected and vital areas was beefed up with new technology. And all around the plant – double barb wire with an in-between no-man’s land all monitored by sophisticated perimeter intrusion detection systems. It’s that way to this day.
I had just started as pastor of a local church in the area. It was bi-vocational, so I worked at a company in Columbus as well. I was working there when I heard people whispering about things like war and the Pentagon. I had no clue what was happening until a coworker came up and asked if I heard the news about the attacks. I went to the breakroom where there were a couple phones we could use for outbound calls (heh). I called my wife, who was a stay at home back then. When she answered, I told her to turn the TV on (we tried to keep the TV off so the kids didn’t just sit and watch it all the time). She asked why, and I told her just do it, if what I’ve heard is true, she’ll see why. And, of course, she did. I was able to get myself leave to go home and get the Church ready since I knew people would want to be there that night. On the way home I turned the radio on and heard as the first tower collapsed. I remember that night, after the prayer service, looking up at the clear sky and seeing no sign of flights anywhere.
I was working on the 28th floor of the 52 story Pru(dential) in Boston when the first plane hit. After the second plane hit we knew this was no accident. We could see Logan Airport from the 28th floor. My manager made the decision to exit the building and work from home. It was surreal, suddenly we were at war. Home staring at the television I prayed that the first tower would not collapse and it did, our children were 7, 5, 3 and 1. Today the 1 year old is a 20 year old National Guardsman.
Sitting at my desk at work. Got an e-mail from a co-worker at about 9:00 am phrased as a question, something along the lines of ‘why has a plane just hit the World Trade Center’?. Quite poleaxed when someone else sent out another e-mail that the second tower had been hit. I had a temp assistant in tears that my office mate sent home. Someone set up a television on the upper floor of the building. I poke my head in to see that one of the buildings had collapsed. I shuffled through the rest of my tasks that day, somewhat distracted. Had a co-worker who enlisted in the Army just weeks earlier. He had at least one tour in Afghanistan, in a non-combat role.
Navy boot camp.
Our Master at Arms had a dental appointment and saw something about it on the TV, came back right before a big uniform inspection and spilled part of it to her best buddy, the recruit leader.
QM1, our head RDC, tried to keep us from finding out ANYTHING about it because it would mess up our concentration. (Yes, he was that…argh.)
BM1 ended up giving him what-for about it (speculation, but I’m pretty dang sure) and we had a big “everybody stand here and get the bare bones” of “planes it the World Trade Center and Pentagon’s Army section.”
At which point my bunk-mate started having issues, because her dad is an Army chaplain and they were having a BIG chaplain get-together in the Army section. (He twisted his ankle helping the office secretary out of the building.)
Didn’t hear anything more about it until AT2 smuggled in a video tape of the week in review. Which really pissed off QM1, but to heck with him.
One of the guys we graduated with, his mom’s family owned and operated an eatery in one of the towers. She’d run out to get something they’d run out of, really quick, so she survived. They offered him a free out of the Navy– all he wanted was to be able to graduate with his division, even if he had to skip the funerals.
He didn’t skip the funerals.
My mom was out inverting hay. Dad walked out to tell her we were under attack, he’d caught it on the radio.
I’ll never forget because I had stayed up late the night before booking a flight to visit my girlfriend.
Was at college the next day, finishing up our first class when someone came in and said something was happening in New York. I think they said planes were hitting buildings because it didn’t register at first. I thought someone was playing a prank, or there was a misunderstanding. I was walking downhill to my next class when I passed by a car with its windows rolled down and the radio new reporting on the attack in New York and that’s when I knew it was real. I don’t think there was much learning going on that day, a lot of classes were discussions about it. I don’t think I actually saw any footage until I got home that night or if I had watched it with my grandparents (who lived close enough I would park at their house to walk to the college).
I walked into the kitchen of my restaurant at about ten ’til nine, and my baker was already there making the desserts, buns and scones, as usual. He said “The first plane just hit.” I answered, “The what what just what?”
Now, this guy was a bit of an odd duck, who, despite my adherence to Catholic teaching, I truly believe was gifted with “second sight.”*
He said, simply, “It’s an attack.” and went on about his work. He had turned the kitchen radio on to the local talk station and so we listened to the newscast describing the situation.
Not quite ten minutes later, the second plane hit. I looked at him and he just shrugged. Needless to say, we decided to close, so I called all the staff and told them to stay home and close to family and friends.
We went to my folks’ house for dinner in north suburban Indianapolis that evening, and I remember seeing a solitary airplane fly over while we were on the patio talking about the day’s events. Dad said that it had to be AF1, since all flights had been grounded.
*In the early spring of 2002, a close friend and restaurant associate, while powering through his 12-step addiction recovery program with the zeal of a True Convert, was killed in a car accident. He was neither driving nor impaired.
On the day of my friend’s funeral, the baker came to the sliding glass window of the office, visibly shaken. He asked if my friend was tall, blonde and wore blue. In fact, he was 6′ 6″, very blonde and always wore his “uniform” of jeans and a blue denim shirt. Since the baker lived 30 miles out in the country and had never worked in commercial kitchens before, there’s no way he could have known this.
When I answered “Yes,” he said that “Well, he just stopped by to tell you that he’s OK, not to worry and that he’s standing in the light.”
There are other examples but that’s not what this is all about. Nonetheless it all made for a very surreal day.
That morning was surreal.
I had a scheduled day off and was able to watch the live reports via television coverage.
By 11:00am I walked to our Church, St. Henry’s in Watertown Wisconsin.
Prayers for all the souls suffering and dead were being offered before Jesus in the Tabernacle.
That afternoon I walked around the park, noticing the absence of contrails in that beautiful blue sky.
Watertown is between two major airports, Chicago O’hare and Minneapolis. Complete calm on a day of complete chaos. Surreal indeed. No air traffic and before 5pm lines started to form at the Speedway Gas station.
Disbelief had trumped the American way of life that day. A wake up call of sorts. Planned Parenthood of Manhattan couldn’t make $ for a few weeks aborting the innocents…so they offered the killing for free, temporarily that is.
What will it take for complete respect of life in the womb?
Another catastrophe. [?]
In the car dropping kids off at preschool. Turned on the Catholic radio station to hear the Rosary. That’s odd. It’s not Risary hour.
.
Went to Dad’s and there’s the news. I thought for sure it was a domestic terrorist like Oklahoma City. Took quite some time to sink in.
The day was beautiful and clear.
My mother watched Regis Philbin every morning and caught the breaking news. She called me at worked (several times) with updates. When Peachtree finally finished its update, I went home for ‘lunch’ and stayed there watching the TV reports with mom. Grew up with a friend who worked on Maiden Lane nearby and waited until I heard his I’m alive – just covered with soot call. He and friends walked to Grand Central Station as soon as they could. The end of the plain and simple good old days must have begun then.
I was driving to an administrative hearing and heard news about the first strike on the North Tower on the radio. There was speculation that maybe it had been a small plane. When I got there I went in to see the magistrate and asked if she’d heard the news. She had a TV monitor to record hearings and turned it on just in time for us to see the second strike on the South Tower live, at which point we immediately knew it was a terrorist attack. We all watched in horror as the events of the morning unfolded. No work was done that day. It is still a time of shock and sadness every year. A time and moment one can never forget, nor should they.
I’ve yet to visit the memorial at the World Trade Center site but my wife and I did visit the Flight 93 memorial in Somerset County PA. Very moving and I’d recommend a visit for anyone passing along the route on the PA Turnpike.
I haven’t visited the real 9/11, but the Las Vegas memorial– at New York! New York!– was started up spontaneously, and the casino did right by it. Last time I visited was ’04 or so.
I cried the first time I visited, and noticed a lot of other folks did, too.
Flight 93 was supposed to be on our summer trip this year. :/
On the 10th my husband and another fellow from the company had taken the train from Union Station to NYC for a 2 day business trip. (He’s a retired navy pilot, a test pilot, and he won’t fly into NYC. Always takes the train.) Since the 11th was our youngest son’s 19th birthday my husband had reserved a seat on the train to ensure he’d be back in time for the birthday dinner at a restaurant with three generations of family.
That morning I was in the kitchen tidying up and listening to a local radio station when I heard about the first plane. All I knew was that my husband was in Manhattan visiting an engineering firm. I called him on his cell. Of course all the circuits were busy. So I called his office in Pentagon City. No answer. The third call someone finally answered. “Your husband called and he’s fine. They are all okay up there. The engineering firm is 12 blocks from the World Trade Center. I’m the last one in the office, maybe in the whole building. The Pentagon has been hit and all of Crystal City is evacuating.” I had the TV on and watched the news and fielded calls “Where’s dad. Is he okay?” from the birthday boy and his older brother who worked at a brokerage firm in Old Town Alexandria and my parents who lived locally. Finally about noon my husband called. ” Hi Toots, I’m walking 4 miles to the train station. No taxis. I should be on the first train once they start running. Good thing I have a reserved seat because of Lawrence’s birthday. We were in the conference room waiting for the briefing to start; having coffee. We looked out the window and saw the second plane hit the Tower. The briefing went quickly. It’s ironic… the briefing was on bomb blast deflective material for building exteriors.”
My husband was home in time for dinner but the restaurant in Crystal City was closed. He rescheduled for the 12th. It was located on the top floor looking out over Reagan National. We had a window table. Of course the airport was closed for days. Maybe closed for weeks. There wasn’t a commercial airplane or human in sight. The strange thing was that the empty metro trains were still running in a loop. It was like the Twilight Zone looking down on the abandoned airport.
My parents said you all will remember where you were on September the 11th for the rest of your lives. Then they started to tell us where they were on December the 7th.
I was at work at the law firm. I remember someone passing my door saying that a plane just hit the WTC. Everyone was running upstairs to the lounge to check out the news coverage on the TV. We were all speculating that it was a small plane. I’ll never forget watching that second jet hit the tower . . . or the towers collapsing . . . and, especially so, the people jumping from the upper floors. We were stunned; standing there watching this in complete dismay. Then came the rumors that other areas of the country might be under attack . . . Washington . . . Chicago . . . Seattle. Seattle? My daughter and her family were in Seattle. I called them – they were asleep . . . I told them to turn on the TV . . . utter silence. They had no words. I will also never forget our church being filled to the brim that night . . . is it only in tragedy that many people remember God and give Him any room in their lives?
is it only in tragedy that many people remember God and give Him any room in their lives?
When things are dark, you look for a light.
That was a lot of very obvious darkness.
The day started well. I was on the phone with a tower manager when his secretary handed him a message that their was a “failure to maintain separation”, a Boeing 737 hit a building in New York The day went down hill quickly and kept going.
I never thought I would see the day when the Day Care Center would be moved out of the building because we do just enough business with the Defense Department to be military target.
http://eclecticmeanderings.blogspot.com/2011/09/911-hustlin-up-stragglers.html>
When Flight 11 turned off it’s transponder, did not answer the radio, and turned towards New York, the air traffic controllers at New York Center assumed it was a mechanical problem and the crew was trying to get Kennedy International with the best recovery resources. They moved every thing out of the way so the there would be a clear path to New York. Doing the job right, and it was so wrong.
I moved to Finland in summer 2001. I was teaching my first class at a Helsinki university on 9/11. It ended at 5:30. A minute or so before class ended a student looked from his computer and said a plane had hit the World Trade Center in NY. 1) I had never heard of the building 2) I figured it must have been an accident. After class I went to my office, began surfing the Internet for news, and found that the world had changed in a heartbeat.
I was at Franciscan Univ Steubenville. I had an 8 am calculus class, by the time I took my seat I was starting to feel something was wrong. During the class it got worse until I was jumping out of my skin, the professor kept looking at me trying to figure out what was going on. After class I almost ran to the cafeteria for breakfast, ate as fast as I could, and went back to the dorm room to take a nap hoping that would help. I woke up a while later to the TV blasting in the common room, went to ask them to turn it down, and then saw what they were watching.
I was at work for a defense contractor in Arlington. After the plane hit the Pentagon, an announcement came over the loudspeaker, telling us to go home. There were a lot of sonic booms for the rest of the day, which sounded like explosions, but they were from jet fighters, breaking the sound barrier…but we weren’t told that at the time. It just sounded like explosions and it was a very scary day.
Wife was in midtown, while I sat at my desk in the FlatIron Building. At the same moment my distraught boss came to me to tell of using binoculars and seeing jumpers, owners of the FlatIron ordered the building cleared.
After meeting up with my wife, we marched with thousands of others across the 59th Street Bridge, trekking to our home in Queens. While on the bridge a jet fighter flew low overhead and the sea of people ducked in unison, uncertain if it was friend or foe.
Most never looked back toward Manhattan, but I did and could see the rising plumes that had been the towers.
I was getting up to go to work. Had the news on. Saw the second plane hit. Then my ex called (we worked for the same city engineering dept). “Don t come in. They’re sending us home.” Watched the news all day with this running through my head: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fG6A6G9uzsQ . (Quicksilver Messenger Service’s “Pride of Man”.) Play it every year in memoriam.
I was at my desk in downtown San Antonio, where SBC (now AT&T) then had its corporate HQ. A friend called from his office on another floor and said “go find a TV, now.” There was one in a conference room around the corner, which I turned on just in time to see that second jet hit the WTC. We stayed at work but not much got done that day.
The spookiest moment related to the attacks was the next morning, as I was driving in to work, very early as was my traffic-avoidance habit. It was still dark, around 6 AM. My route downtown was south on U.S. 281, which passes the west side of San Antonio International Airport. That morning and the next two, IIRC, were the only times I ever saw nothing but a sea of darkness where normally shone the many runway, tower, and terminal lights of SAT. Just silent darkness. Still gives me a little chill thinking about it.
I worked in management in a retail drug chain. I had been transferred to a new store. That morning when I reported for work the entire staff was standing around the counter watching the display TV. I asked what was going on. The General Manager told me to shut up. I looked up at the TV just as the second tower was hit. My wife worked across the street. She came in and said she needed a hug.
A little late to this, but I’d like to share my story. I was in Minneapolis, and just the previous weekend my girlfriend and I had returned from a summer spent working in the Black Hills of South Dakota, my home state. I didn’t have a job but I’ve never had trouble finding work so I was getting ready to go out and put a couple of applications in. I heard on the radio that a plane had hit the north tower in New York and turned in the TV. A couple of minutes later I
The second tower was hit, so I woke up my roommate, who had just worked an overnight shift. He was peeved, but when I told him what happened, he got up and he and I watched TV all morning. My girlfriend chewed my butt over the phone for wasting the day, but I just hung up the phone. We didn’t last much longer. I knew she had a tendency to callousness, but didn’t realize how much until that phone call. Anyway, next morning I went out and got two interviews right away and started working in a mental hospital, which has been my line of work ever since then.
I was teaching my first class in the country of Finland at a university. It was 5:30 pm-10:30am NY time. We were in a computer lab. The class is ending. A student tells me a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in NY. I wasn’t even familiar with the building so kind of blew it off. I went down to my office, checked the news and the world changed for me at that moment.
Hank, thanks for the link. Hard to believe that seeing your former XO memorialized on TV was just a coincidence. Col. C. Richard Rescorla, USAR, RIP. His bio is that of a hero many times over.
Teaching.
The teacher I was helping her husband was a pilot and his flight scheduled to be in NY. They called her to the office. I don’t remember breathing the entire day. It wasn’t until almost dismissal that she found out her husband wasn’t on that flight. They had grounded all planes and I don’t remember where they made him land.
I was on the ninth floor of Fifth Avenue Place in Pittsburgh. Long story short – our manager told us to go home. I went downstairs, jumped on the 31D bus,which was packed, and went home.
The weather that day was clear, a blue sky with no wind or clouds.
I called my friend, then in Virginia wotking with the US Capitol Police. His wife answered. They knew nothing of it at the time.
Six months later, he left the Capitol Police for the Air Marshals and left Northern Virginia after 18 years to return home to Pittsburgh.
Made my husband feel old yesterday.
“You know, tomorrow is the first day that kids born after the planes hit can buy a beer.”
“….What?”
“21 years.”
“…it is, isn’t it.”
I was an associate pastor, getting ready to become senior pastor. Because I was still associate, I also worked at a health insurance company. I was at my cubical and suddenly began hearing snippets of ‘did you hear’, ‘an accident’, ‘another plane’, ‘the Pentagon’, ‘had to be on purpose’, and on and on. Finally a friend named Bill came up to my desk and asked if I had heard. I said I hadn’t. He said we were under attack. Both towers of the Twin Towers had been hit by planes and the Pentagon as well. I went to the break room and called my wife (they had community phones then). She answered and I asked her what was happening. She said nothing much. I told her turn on the television (we often didn’t have it on during the days to keep the kids from just vegging). She asked why. I told her just turn it on; if what I’m hearing is accurate, she’ll know why. She ran back and told me what Bill said was true. I asked my boss, as I was sort of ‘acting pastor’, if I could go home since I would need to have something at the church put together that night. He said yes. On the way home, just as I turned on Rt. 23, I turned on the radio the moment news broke that the South Tower had collapsed. To this day I can’t recall how that shook me, as if somehow things wouldn’t be the same again.
I was home with my boys who are now 21 and 23. We turned on the radio for some quiet music because they were a little bit rowdy and My husband (who had served ten years in the Air Force) had worked an overnight shift and needed to sleep. No music… The first plane had just hit, so I turned on the TV to see what was going on. My sister was supposed to fly into Manhattan that morning and meet my aunt at the World Trade center for breakfast but her flight was cancelled. I turned the TV on, just as the second plane hit. My husband didn’t get any sleep. He knew right away that it was an attack.
My sister was safe, thanks be to God, but we didn’t know that until she called my mom to tell her that the flight had been cancelled. She told my mom that she was trying to get another flight (she hadn’t heard what had happened, yet) and my mom told her not to even think about it. My aunt was five blocks away when the planes hit, staying with some friends. She was safe too, but we didn’t know for a few days.
My 21 year old says that he remembers watching the planes hit the buildings. He can describe what we were doing great detail. He claims that it’s because they played it over and over, but we really didn’t let our kids watch TV very often, so maybe it was a combination of repetition and the unusual nature of the situation. Or maybe it’s his photographic memory. He was just under 9 months old at the time.
I was 24, and on Monday had just returned from a summer working in the Black Hills. I was buying smokes, and the cashier was listening to the radio. He asked me what was going on, but I didn’t know. We listened to the radio for a bit, and then I paid and went back to my apartment. I got back just after the second plane hit, so I woke up my roommate, who worked nights. He understandably wasn’t interested after working an overnight shift. When I told him it had to be intentional because both towers were hit, he sat up in his bed. And then he got up and watched TV with me all day, and we both probably smoked about a carton of cigarettes. Probably not, but thinking back it seems like it. He had to work that night too. Next day I woke up and went and applied for jobs, which I was going to be doing on the 11th.
Here where I am right now: same as that morning, however my 85 yr old mother was next to me. We were stunned. I realized it was just too much for her to focus on this all day and the days ahead so I began a series of drives all around this small Pennsylvania town. We were quite and when she took naps I would walk down this street to St Columba Church to pray.
Sitting and praying and weeping out loud, the room full of students one of whose father was in the South Tower. At 4:30 P.M., the father called and said that he had gotten out only minutes before the collapse. There is a quiet joy that needs no voice.
On flight 93 Todd Beamer, another good Catholic out of Cranbury, New Jersey became famous for his “Let’s roll” and saved what was to crash the White House.
Jethro, the Sheik of Midian, Moses’ father in law told Moses that he is the descendent of Ismael, the “obedient of God”. The Chosen People of Israel are the Beloved of God. There is no mention of 72 virgins in the historical documents.
Allah has no son to love and no son to love him.