9/11 anniversary--where were you then?

[Mar]

Over in the Steve Irwin thread, SlashFiveTourer said

I'm still not over the spectacle of those two planes slamming into The Towers four years ago next Monday.

Where were you when it happended? What did you do when you learned of it?

I was getting ready for work. A friend of mine called and told me to turn on my TV. I asked which channel and he said it didn't matter... it was on all of them. I sat on my living room floor wide-eyed and slack-jawed and in partial disbelief. None of us went to work that day.

[riderR1150GSAdv]

At 6 am I was out scouting for fish in the Everglades, as Snook season was open and the weather was picture perfect.... I remember coming back to the dock with fish in the cooler. The marina owner came out of his office, his face as white as a sheet telling me to come inside and look at the TV. I asked if we were at war...he told me pretty much. I went inside and saw the second tower collapsing.....
I washed the boat went home dazed and was, like most of us, glued to the TV for a few days.
I still can't believe it happened.

[PUDGYPAINTGUY]

I was in a bodyshop in Lancaster, PA when the news came over a shop radio. When they announced the airports were closing indefinitely I changed my car res to a one way and stayed in town for the next couple of days working until people calmed a little. The drive home was eerie. All the way across 11 hours of PA/OH turnpike I probably saw about 3 dozen cars and some of the toll booths were wide open.

I was lucky, one of the employees invited me to his home for dinner as he predicted that all restaurants would be closed...he was right. For a few weeks the country was one. Sometimes disasters can bring out the best in people...unforgettable.

[manicmechanic]

I'd just gotten home from working the first night of 7 nights. Went to bed. When I woke up about noon I went to take a shower and turned on the radio in the bathroom, hearing about the towers being down. After the shower I turned on the TV and got the rest of the story. About the same time I got a call from work (nuclear plant) telling me to make sure I brought ID when I came in that night. You think airports are bad?

[RatSnake]

I was at work when I got an email news alert that the first plane had struck. We turned a televison on in a conference room to watch the second plane hit. After the two buildings came down, joined the rest of Chicagoans who were working in tall buildings to evacuate downtown Chicago.

[dancogan]

I was at work; watched the second plane hit and was in total disbelief. But the most memorable thing was thinking about out kids. Our daughter was teaching but not near home. She called and I told her to keep the car filled with gas, but not to panic. Then our son called. He was going to school in Cleveland, where the plane that eventually crashed in PA turned around. They were on the verge of evacuating downtown. Again, I told him to keep the tank full, but not to panic. Lots of phone calls the next few hours and days, especially with family.

[PAULBACH]

Was on an American Airlines flight just a couple of hours out of London headed to Chicago. Plane was directed to and landed in Goose Bay where all on the plane spend 3 days as the guests of the royal Canadian Airforce.

Thanks Canada. Your hospitality was wonderful and you took great great of all of us.

:heart

[Newstar]

[ A friend of mine called me and told me to turn on my TV. I asked which channel and he said it didn't matter... it was on all of them. .[/QUOTE]


I had the same conversation with a friend who called. My husband was out doing yard work and grouched that he was busy when I told him to come in. We both sat glued to the tv until I had to leave for a work meeting. I remember how eerie it was on the empty roads. Living between Baltimore and Philly , it was strange not having any plane traffic overhead with the exception of fighters flying out of Dover AFB.

[gsjay]

I was at my office in Johnstown Pa. just 30 miles north of Somerset.

We where having a $40.000 peice of equipment delivered that day. It was already a big day!

Once we got wind of the happenings I ran home and brought a small tv back to the office where we watch the events unfold.

Then we got word that a plane had crashed in Somerset! That brought the events very close to home.........

30 miles in Jumbo Jet is like just a minute or two, the plane could have crashed on top of our office in Johnstown, just as easy as it had in a field 30 miles south.

Will never forget.....................

jason
PS. if you haven't been to the crash site you'll want to visit before it becomes a hugh National Park.
http://www.flight93memorialproject.org/

[Belquar]

I was on my way to school. First class was Psychology that day. Heard it on the radio. Talked to my girlfriend (wife now) about it on the phone. I was getting updates on my Palm VII during class. People were crying. The professor said anyone who had family in the city could excuse themselves. She sat on her desk crying during most of the class. We had one more class that day and then all was cancelled. Went home and watched it all unfold on TV. I still have all the papers from 9/12.

At the time I lived about a mile from a nuclear plant. Wasn't long before the iodine pills were getting handed out.

[RebeccaV]

I was in DePere, WI working on a video shoot. We kept hearing that something was going on - people around us were visibly upset - but we didn't know what was happening. Then one of the people we were interviewing told us that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.

It was frustrating not to have any access to radio or TV and not to know what was happening. Eventually I was able to call friends and family to check in and get information.

[Hodag]

I was at work heard it on the news, watched the video's on cnn. continued to work

went home hugged my family and cried

pandora's box had been openned, and knew Bush was not the leader to close it

[rdalland]

http://reid-dalland.smugmug.com/photos/93387926-M.jpg

I was at my desk when I heard the first plane hit, looked out the window in horror. Saw the second plane hit, watched both towers crumble. Watched the exodus of people walking out of Manhattan on the bridges. Saw fighter jets protecting the skies over Manhattan for the first time. Saw a city come together as never before.

I still see "ghosts" of the towers when I look out the window, it is hard to erase the imprint these towers have made in my memory.

http://rdalland.com/page2_files/image029.jpg

I was part of a team that donated a temporary shelter for one of the memorials that appeared for the victims. This memorial, in Battery Park, was for the Police and Firefighters.

I work regularly near ground zero, live near a NYC water supply reservoir, and have just come back from a project at the Capital Building in Washington, DC. My world has changed significantly since 9/11, the abundance of security is a constant reminder of the tragedy.

[MCMXCIVRS]

Sitting at work in the fire station watching as over two hundred brothers died trying to save thousands.

[The_Veg]

I was at home in an apartment in Plano TexSux. In those days I was working night-shift in mainframe data storage at EDS, and I had been home from work for maybe 90 minutes and was sleeping very lightly as it was a sunny day and the window-blinds were doing a poor job of hiding this fact. I was roommates with a couple I knew from work (Jenn and Matt), and in my barely-asleep state I could hear Jenn talking on the telephone, I think with her mother (who lived in Colorado but both of Jenn's parents grew up in NYC and her grandma is still there). As soon as she hung up she came into my room and gave my toes a shake through the sheets and said "you need to come watch the news..." I'll never forget the way her voice sounded...
If I remember correctly, the first tower went down shortly after I groggily stumbled into the living room. Jenn and Matt and I were glued to it for hours, pretty much all day. Around 9 that morning I remembered that I had a friend who'd moved to Jersey City the year before- and his office was on the 29th floor of one of the towers. I didn't have his number but I sent an email, hoping...and around 11 he sent one to a mialing list we were both on, full of incredulity and disbelief- I remember him opening with something like "I'm OK! WTC is destroyed!" As it turns out, he was not in the office that morning. I'll also mention that he is an immigrant from a troubled nation (NOT middle-eastern though) so I'm sure his perspective is slightly heavier than most who managed to avoid being there.
I think I was off for three days at that point for unrelated reasons- my memory is a bit foggy- but when I got back to work, security was much tighter, since my department did data for lots of HUGE corporate clients as well as government. We already had to pass through four badge-points- the inner two with keypad-codes- to get into our work area, but now we had to keep the loading dock locked, and password control got much more strenuous (and everything we worked with had passwords). Campus security drove around a lot more, and while I don't recall anybody getting searched, we were told it could happen. I remember one co-worker asking me all these questions about how much fuel a 767 carries, weight, range, etc., all sorts of things useful to a copy-cat terrorist...I was tempted to turn him in to the FBI but I knew we was merely morbidly curious.
The reason that co-worker asked all those questions was because on September 3 I had passed the check-ride for my Private Pilot License. I had been training in hopes of making a career as a pilot. That morning as I watched the news I had a sinking feeling that I could kiss that dream goodbye- and not to diminish anybody else's misfortune, but it felt like a perfect example of my typical luck with things. I kept up with aviation for a while, but it was a couple of months before I was able to train further for unrelated financial reasons, and that further training didn't amount to much. I'm still just a private pilot with 110 hours (I did fly some post-9/11), and if I could afford to resume training right now (which I can't), I still wouldn't expect my prospects to fly for a living to be very good, based on my age and the state of the industry.
Speaking of aviation, I remember how quiet the skies were afterward. Here in the Dallas area, there's ALWAYS something buzzing around up there. The calm quiet overhead was eerily noticeable.
My current business-partner has an extensive background in emergency medicine, law enforcement and military, so he was quickly called to the scene and was there for many days. That was before I knew him and he doesn't talk about it.
I also remember that two weeks later a very sweet girl and I fell in love. I don't know if there was a subconscious urge to be very alive at play there or not, but I know it helped keep my mind in the world of the living (we broke up two years later, but remain friends). About seven months after 9/11 I got a job that involved heavy travel, often by air. I remembered how just the previous summer my dad and I hugged at the gate in an airport and I boarded a moment later, and how I wondered if I'd ever hug at the gate again.

As I wrote all this I wondered how that day will seem after many many years of hindsight and remembrance...what I'll tell when I'm 90...I don't think I've wondered that before this morning.

[kbasa]

I had just woken up and turned on the news. It wasn't 7 yet, so I was surprised when Katie and Matt turned up on the local NBC affiliate. Then I started to hear the reports that a plane had hit one of the towers. I went in and woke Tina up and we watched in horror as the second plane hit.

Neither of us could do much more than sit and watch in horror. As a guy that's spent a good portion of his life working in buildings like that, I could almost picture what was going on. The fire marshalls in each business were trying to herd people down the stairs, the older folks were having a hard time. It had to be awful in those buildings.

Then the buildings fell down and we both almost wept. We just sat there in our kitchen saying "Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God."

I wound up riding into work that day, not knowing if another attack was coming. Part of my route was over the Golden Gate Bridge and I felt distinctly uneasy when I crossed. When I got to work, people were walking around in a sort of daze, so we called it a day and knocked off early. Most folks were just refreshing cnn.com, hoping for some new information. People just couldn't focus or think. Downtown San Francisco had a wierd sort of Sunday feel. There weren't many folks on the street. Traffic was almost non existent.

I rode home and when Tina got home we just sat and watched the news for hours.

[rlonstein]

Where were you when it happended?

Work, four blocks away, windows facing the towers. Heard/felt the first plane and mistook it for construction, saw the second, no mistaking it.

What did you do when you learned of it?

This is a typical story... Called my wife. Everything seemed okay. Office building executed what amounted to a fire drill as everybody walked the emergency stairs to the lobby and returned by elevator. Called her again then ran like hell to meet her at her office, six blocks north of the WTC. Tower fell just as I got to the street. Found her and walked to home at the top of Manhattan.

- Ross

[Crow18]

I was on Santa Cruz Island, off the coast of California, taking photos.

When I got back to the beach, the person who rowed me back to the boat told me about the towers. He was a guy with a lousy sense of humor, so for the first five minutes I thought he was making a colossally bad joke.

Once on the boat, we listened to the radio. There was no TV. By then the towers had collapsed, but the radio coverage was little more than a repetition that planes had flown into the towers and that nobody had any idea who had done it. Somehow I got it into my head that the towers had fallen over like trees, crushing entire blocks of other buildings beneath them.

We headed back to the mainland. Listening to the VHF, we learned that the Coast Guard had closed Long Beach and San Diego. The shipping lanes were full of container ships, adrift, locked out of port and trying to conserve fuel. The guy with the lousy sense of humor was convinced that the PLO had staged the attack. When we got home, none of us felt like making dinner, so we went to a restaurant. It was empty except for six people at the bar determined to get drunk and a guitar player who didn't feel like playing anything. On the TV above the bar, fourteen hours after the fact, I finally saw the footage.

It was three days before we could get seats on a train back up to Portland, and we ended up with a compartment to ourselves. I remember looking out the windows, seeing people at railroad crossings standing outside their cars, watching the red, white and blue train go by them.

Some photos, and some more text, are here:
http://homepage.mac.com/ericgibbs/photos/911/index.html

[mandypants]

I was at the University of Kentucky in my dorm room when the phone rang. It was my roommates mother, who called incessantly, and I didn't think anything of it. She had woken me up to tell me to turn the TV on...I did and girls came into my room in pairs, wanting to see what everyone was so upset about.

The students on campus were stunned. Everyone actually showed up at class that day (American History), mostly just to have other people to talk to. I was in a big lecture hall that morning, after walking through crowds of stunnned, cold-faced and crying students. I was sitting there listening to about 20 kids going on and on about what they'd seen on TV and how horrific it all was. One girl showed up late for class (our professor never showed) and took her seat. She started listening to the other students talking about New York and the towers, and she asked what had happened.

"Oh wow! You must be the last person earth not to know...the towers in New York are down...they were bombed by terrorists...", etc.

She immediately grabbed her books and ran out of the room.

We found out later that her father had been working in one of the towers and that he died in the attack. She never came back to class, and eventually dropped out of college to move home and be with her family.

Many students and faculty lost loved ones, and we held candlelight vigils all over campus for several days after...

I still miss seeing the American flags everywhere. I still miss how friendly and considerate everyone was in the days following. It's so sad that it takes a tragedy like that to make people realize what's really important.

[robsryder]

I was out in the garage working on my 77R100RS "restoration" project. I turned on NPR on the radio. Initially I couldn't tell what was going on, but the announcers were very excited.

I looked at the TV, but still couldn't exactly figure out what had or was happening. Soon it became clear.

I called the wife and suggested that she come home. Her whole office (as well as many others') left work early that day.

Subsequently I've had the opportunity to be involved in some interesting work as a direct result of that day. From time-to-time I've been able to ride one of my bikes to the work location. Another colleague worked in the Sears Tower in Chicago - he said that after the 2nd plane crashed into the WTC, everyone in the Sears Tower got out very rapidly.

Alas, I fear that we are still waiting for the other shoe to drop... :(

[Visian]

it was our 25th wedding anniversary (and we've subsequently changed our date....) and i was driving to get a haircut in preparation for going out that night.

i turned on the car radio to hear the news of the first plane, and no one knew what was going on. went into the hair place and asked them to change the radio station and the guy refused. :mad

came out, got back into the car just after the second plane hit.

it was bad enough that a special day for my wife and i was spoiled, but man, what a sad day for the world. :(

[Rob Nye]

I was here at work in Bristol.

One of our accounting staff came in my office and said a plane just hit the WTC.

I took a look on CNN and told her this was no accident. My godfather used to be CEO of Fiduciary Trust but he had retired. Many people I knew from sailing or growing up in Greenwich, Ct. (suburb of NYC) worked for Morgan Stanley or some of the other firms in the towers.

By the end of the day we were being informed of revised port security measurers.


Best,

Rob Nye

[Mika]

In bed at the time it happened.

At that time I worked nights in a cardiac computer area of a local hospital. Shortly after 1PM central time I woken by a call into work. I showered and drove in. I did not have my radio on. I stoped a drive through Starbucks to get a cup of coffee. Figured the girl that served me had been crying for some personal reason. I got some basic confused information when I got to work then shuffled off to a work area that we could not have radio, tv or internet and worked a double shift with people as uniformed as I was.

Went home the morning of the 12th and crawled into bed and went to sleep. I was awoken by the sound of jet fighters scrambling from the MSP airport and flying down the river valley. That NEVER happens.

I got up to go to the bathroom and notice the newspaper stuck under my door. I picked it up and that is when I found out about 9/11.

[92Bearkat]

On the 35th floor of the Enron Building in DT Houston....

[cjack]

Home. And I stayed there for the day.

[Pat Carol]

I was installing an outdoor wood furnace at our home. My wife called me up from work and asked if I had the T.V. or radio on. I stated that I did not.
She then told me that I should make sure that my military uniforms are together. She began to cry and stated that we are going too war.
I was in total dis-belief of what I was seeing. My wife came home and we both held each other and cried. It tore my heart out not only the death of civilians but the loss of life of my brother firefighters.
Shortly after 9/11/01 I was ordered too actve duty and served for three years until I fractured both ankles and then had a heart attack at 38 years old.
My military unit took good care of me. I am alive and enjoying my retirement from the military. I would do it all over again. I have several personal friends that are sitting in the desert as I tap these keys.
I appreciate the support from MOA members while I was on active duty. I want you all to know that Rob Lentini was instrumental in helping me get paid after waiting for seven months without pay. I was living on credit cards and loans from friends.

Sincerely
Pat Carol

[OUTBACKUFO]

I was writing my master's thesis at 1-2am in my flat in Byron Bay Australia... my neighbor comes down to my flat and says i need to see something... I did not have a TV.... i go up to his flat sit on his old brown couch and said... "here comes WW III... " he just looked at me and nodded his head... sat at watched buildings fall until daylight... all my aussy friends thought at first it was a tv joke and were calling me in the morning saying.. your country is blowing up... then later they were all red faced when they realized it was real..

[crazydrummerdude]

I was in Sophomore (High School) year computer class. At that school, all they used were Mac's. Our teacher thought she was so high-tech, and tried streaming news from CNN. Too bad everyone else in the world was doing the same thing. For a few hours, I thought some Cesna's crashed into a radio tower. Then, in my next class, the teacher came in with a b&w really pixelated rectangle with a pixelated blob (I guess it was the tower and the smoke/explosion?), and said what had happened. It wasn't until I got home after school that I actually found out the details.

[Motor31]

I was at home and was just starting to shave. I turned on the radio for some music and the morning news and heard the start of the coverage., I then went into the other room and turned on CNN and watched the towers fall. I spent the day partially in shock and very very angry. I still get super mad thinking about it today. I lost brothers at the scene of the towers who placed themselves in danger for others sake.

I also called Army milpercen and asked if I could come back in spite of my retirement the year before. The offer was refused then, during GW1 and GW2. They would take some retirees but not at my rank and specialty.

[CustomSarge]

Normally a news junkie, I was in "project mode" (you code writers know..); the Morons putting new siding on my house said "some plane just went into one of the Trade Towers". This was from a morning FM show Known for spoofs (& worse). I said I'd go verify on Today (etc)... had 20 minutes to see the 1st conflagration onto the 2nd (so Very) graphic impact.

Horror, disbelief, fear of sequence & consequence; I can't describe what mix of those were the rollercoaster from then on. Seeing the collapse(s) gave me a visceral resolve that we've been So Polyanny-ish (isolationist) and that we're Not immune.

What's been done & how we've behaved are, properly, areas of debate. However, IMHO, the 1st significant strike of the 3rd world war was 9/11/01.
The stakes have never been greater... <<<)))

[BradfordBenn]

I was travelling for business. I had gotten in LA on the 10th. I was staying at the Sportsman's Lodge. I was still on east coast time, so I was up at 5AM PDT or 8AM EDT. At about 6:45AM I was checking e-mail when the today show came on. So I figured it was time to get ready as I was meeting people at 7:30 for breakfast. Then I realized it was not the normal opening.

That afternoon was just plain surreal. I was in LA for two projects that trip, one was rehearsals for a concert tour that was taking place at Sony Studios. We got a call at 8AM saying that the Studio was shut down indefinitely. I was also supposed to visit a major theme park client that week also. Those meeting were cancelled also.

I ended up spending an extra three days in LA. It sucked, cause I just wanted to be home. I was with a two other people so we hoarded a car and got a single hotel room. I was schedule to fly out on Friday or Saturday morning, I forget the date but it was the first day the airports were open. I was on the first United flight out of LAX. It was surreal at the airport, the lines were horrible, but everyone was calm and cooperative people were helping each other. If we were not able to get out on flights, we were going to drive from LAX to South Bend, IN and the two other people were going to continue to NJ.

In one of those moments that could have been bad but turned out good; I had a Leatherman in my briefcase I had forgotten about. So at security they asked me about it and all that stuff, I was ready to surrender it and just as they were about to throw it into the bin I said stop. I looked at the National Guardsman and gave it to him instead and said thanks.

[PacWestGS]

I remember it well, like yesterday in fact.

(I have read this thread several times and this is my reply)

I was on my way to school that morning trying to finish up my degree. ( I was deeply in the process of retiring at this point.) I don't know why but I took the wife's car and did not turn on the radio. I got to the back gate of Fort Lewis and it was closed. It had never been closed. I called the MPs and they said it was closed due to the incident this morning. Strange. I started to drive around the base to go in the front gate and for some reason called my wife along the way. I asked her to turn on the local news and see why the post had shut down. I decided at this point that I would be too late for class and drove home. My wife called me back and told me that a plane had crashed, she was excited and said two planes had crashed. I said that would be a good reason for them to close the post and that I was less than a half mile form the house. By the time I got home (and I still don't know why, but I never turned on the car radio). I walked into my house and she was glued to the TV. I turned the corner into the living room saw the TV and sat down. The first words out of my mouth (after about five minutes) was "Well, they finally did it". I called my unit and asked what they wanted me to do. They said get here, I asked why? (If the post is closed and the only gate is the main gate it would take me hours. As it turned out I-5 was pretty much closed between McChord AFB and Fort Lewis that morning). I spent the day watching the TV, packing everything I ever knew or had for WWIII and planned to be gone a long long time.

The next day I went back to work, 14-16 hours a day for the next few weeks (I was for you military types the NCOIC of a Special Forces Battalion S2/Intelligence Section. Although that's a REMF position it was not my choice. A year earlier when the CSM took me away from the A-Team that I led for the previous two-years was a highlight in my career) . Getting everybody up to speed on the Middle-east and the Stans'. Classified intel briefing after another, answering questions and ordering maps. It was a difficult time for all... Everyone was angry. But I have to tell you. Those of us in the know, knew this would happen someday. It was only a matter of when and how.


Doc

[snoone]

33rd street between 9th and 10th Ave. Everyone here in NYC I think is still reminded every day of the personal losses each and every one of us has experienced. I don't think I know of one person from the city or surrounding area who didn't know someone who perished on that day. I personally lost a customer and friend Mickey Rothenberg who from all accounts was the first one killed on the flight that crashed in PA.. I will remember him here. Also i'd like to remember Linda Gronlund who was a neighbor and was also on that plane.

I have gotten the feeling that most of America has been detached from this tragedy as time as gone by but I can guarantee we will never forget that day and the events surrounding it.

[sgtboring]

I was watching this crazy Momento movie and left my apartment to go get a coffee and some smokes. I heard Howard Stern on my radio talking about it with Crazy Cabby on the sceen. I thought to my self he has gone to far, this is not funny. :sick When I got to the store people were crying in there cars and staring at thier radios :eek . I then knew it was real. I heard the next tower fall and reports of a plane going down in my state in a field. I felt like chicken little. Being a vet I started to make sure my supplies were in line and plot possible routes away from 3 mile Island and Peach Bottom Nuculer power plants that are close by.

When nothing esle happened I tried to return to my normal life of wheeling and dealing, cigar bars, and serial dating. At 32 I walked in to a Army Recruters and re-signed up with my brother who was 30. Last December I came home from a year long kick ass deployment in the Middle East. Our birgade motto was "Lets Roll!"; I think you all know where that quote came from..... :usa

[mvscorpio]

I was heading to an appointment in Northern VA, and the quickest route is through the 395 tunnels and past Crystal City and the pentagon, onto 110. I was sitting in rush hour traffic just after turning off of NY Avenue in DC when my partner called and told me to turn on the radio. She was working in downtown DC at the time, at Marsh, which had their HQ in the North tower.
At that time, the second plane had hit, and we all knew this was no accident. I had passed the pentagon building and was nearly to my exit when...I can't even begin to describe the deafening roar that came from behind me...and the feeling of the ground shaking under me. Even now I am at a loss for words. I remember a string of expletives as time and traffic stopped, and the feeling of being under attack as I looked back at the building. Fight or flight (and a side of panic) kicked in, and I got the hell out of there as quickly as I could, driving on shoulders and over curbs to make uturns. I was only slightly ahead of the exodus out of Arlington...

The DC office of Marsh was glued to the TV, over 300 Marsh employees died that day, including some from the Baltimore office in NY for a meeting. The head of the DC office sent everyone home, arranging rides or paying for cabs to keep folks out of the Metro system.

That evening, I drove to her apartment in Chantilly VA. There was no one on the roads, making for an eerie drive on what are usually jammed roads. The 80 mile trip took me less than an hour; I just needed to be there.

I remember the silence of no airplane activity. More memorable is the first day flights started. Kids were playing on the court, and ran inside screaming when they saw the first plane overhead.

[Braddog]

...I was at work. One of my co-workers came over to our cubicle row, and told us what happened (first plane). It was unbelievable. We, too, pulled up CNN. Then the 2nd plane hit, then the Towers fell...

From that instance forward, we went into disaster recovery mode. I worked for a very large banking service/travel company at the time. We had buildings that were evacuated, many employees killed when Tower 7 went down. As a tech support guy, I was one of many who worked almost around the clock to get things as close to normal as we could.

I remember how eerie it was, even here in the Twin Cities, not having any planes flying over, except the ocassional military fighter jet.

My right hand man was stranded in Vegas while attending a conference. His family drove out and picked him up.

[Xaque]

I was sleeping when the first plane hit...

I was loading my gear into my car as the second hit...

...my self and my 3 closest friends were one of the first out of state rescue crews at ground zero.

The rest of the day I spent on the pile.

:cry

343

-Xaque-

[BradfordBenn]

I was sleeping when the first plane hit...

I was loading my gear into my car as the second hit...

...my self and my 3 closest friends were one of the first out of state rescue crews at ground zero.

The rest of the day I spent on the pile.

:cry

343

-Xaque-

Thanks :cry

[Xaque]

Thanks :cry

I appreciate your thoughts brad, but I don't deserve/want any thanks.

All thoughts should be directed to the 343 who gave their lives that day, the 2,997 people whom lost their lives, the countless family and friends who are left here today with only their strength and all of us around them whom give them their strength.

Everyone in this country (and many other countries) did all that we could that day and continue to do all that we can. No act of "bravery" by any of us is too small.

-Xaque-

[Cliffy777]

I was still at home. (Self employed and working out of the house then). Julie called from her office and I turned on the TV. Unreal. She came home (selling real estate at the time) and we sat in front of the tube the whole day - did not know what else to do.

[AirForce]

I was at Andrews AFB, MD and just finished the first hour of the class I was teaching so I went to the computer to input student info. Someone said a plane had hit the WTC so we turned on the TV and about a minute later we saw the second one hit. Initially, we thought the first one was an accident. When we saw the second one we knew it was deliberate.

Definitely one of the defining moments of our generation...one where you will always know where you were when you heard the news. Just like Kennedy's murder and the Space Shuttle Challenger.

[Holly]

I was in the car when I heard it on the radio. Later that day I got the call that 2 friends I had worked with were on Flight 77. The next morning I found out that a third friend was with them, and our entire head office had been booked on the same flight for Sept. 12th. The anniversaries are still hard to take.

[GeneT]

I also was working, I was on the witness stand in court. A clerk came in and whispered something to the judge. The judge stopped me and excused himself, in a few minutes he returned to the court room and told us what had happened and that this session of court was now closed. Within minutes deputies escorted everyone from the courthouse, all traffic had been blocked from the near by streets. We were all in shock and disbelief, court was closed for the three following days.

[Jamming]

My wife and I were carpooling and on our way to work here in Phoenix AZ. We had the radio on when the news guy came on and said" an airplane has hit one of the World trade center Buildings" I said to my wife, how the hell did that happen. I'm a pilot and have flown into New York and know how ATC (air traffic control) is.
While digesting that, he came on again and said another airplane has hit theother tower, I knew then it was an act of terrisiom.
Being I work for an airline we were grounded, sat at home and watched all unfold over the next 3 days.
A day we can never forget.
Far too many American lives were lost and we can never forget.

Roger

[basketcase]

I recall all of this vividly. At the time I was working with a local consulting group, and we generally all hit the office on Mondays to catch up and swap notes. My briefcase was packed and I was dressed to head out when I remembered I needed to record a note on my home computer.

I made that note and closed Outlook, and then because the web browser was still open and at the GWRRA boards, I absent-mindedly hit refresh to see what was new before closing it out. A new post said, "CNN ... plane hits World Trade Center."

Curious, I went into the living room and turned on the TV, and tuned to CNN just in time to see the second plane hit.

Like many others, I didn't go to work that day. As a former pastor who had helped many people cope with death, I was painfully and acutely aware of the horror taking place -- particularly when the towers began to collapse. Also a former Marine, I find the traumatic influence of 9-11 has stayed with me in ways the impact of other, similar experiences did not.

Finally, I find myself continually juggling a strange emotional tension and the conflicting perspectives that grow out of a diverse life experience.

- For those who lost their lives, RIP. May the memory of your loss motivate us to courage of heart and unity of purpose.

- For the families of those directly impacted, may God touch you in your grief and give you renewed hope and peace in a life that will always be marked by a tender scar.

- And for the hooligans and outlaws who would visit additional such horror upon my country, I hope you are hunted down by our troops, gut shot, and left to die in a pool of your own blood and feces, like the dogs you are.

:usa