Where were you on 9/11/2001?

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TheRealJuliane

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10 years have gone by. I need to read/hear other’s stories. Please share yours.
 
I was around 24 years old, living at home in the basement, unemployed at the time. I had been unemployed to that point for several weeks and I had been somewhat lazy in actively looking for a job.

So, early that morning of Sept. 11th, 2001, my basement door is violently opened by my father with him yelling down the stairs “SON!! GET UP HERE RIGHT NOW!!”. From my slumber I almost quite literally jumped out of bed with my heart beating, I thought “this is it, I’m probably going to get ‘the talk’ about living at home unemployed and not searching for a job”.

So I slowly walk up the stairs anticipating that I’m about to get completely berated, maybe even thrown out and soon as I got to the top of the stairs I saw my father sitting on his couch calmly completely focused on the television, not even acknowledging my presence.

I move into the room and look at what he was focusing on, the television, to see the smoking tower. He never said a word, I began to gather all the information off the television, from the verbal report, from the headlines scrolling at the bottom of the screen. A plane had (accidentally?) flown into the tower. I guess it could have been plausible, some pilot, mechanical or computer error. But within a minute I witnessed the second plane collide. Something was seriously wrong.

I sat next to the old man and watched the television in complete silence, seeing the entire event unfold. The people jumping from the towers, to the towers themselves collapsing.

After the second tower collapsed I walked out to the front porch and lit a cigarette and stared at the empty blue sky, my emotions just twisted and my thoughts were on the fact I knew at that very moment in time, the world I had lived in for the past 24 years would never be the same.
 
Hope you have time to correct the title, because unless people here are traveling around in the Tardis, we haven’t been ANYWHERE on 9/11/2011.

Now, for 9/11/2001 I was working at home, turned on the TV to check Headline News for my morning tea break around 10 a.m… . .and sat there STUNNED to see the Towers shortly come down. . .knowing the about-to-be ex was working in NYC at the time and my best friend lived in Manhattan. . .both turned out to be all right but it was just incredible to experience.
 
I was in Newark, New Jersey, doing some work in the Rutgers library. I heard someone whispering something a few feet away in a solemn voice and a terrible feeling of dread came over me. I rushed to another room of the library where a television was on and it showed the first tower burning. I was very alarmed because my wife worked on the 87th floor of what turned out to be the other tower. Luckily she got out safely because they evacuated as soon as they heard (and felt) an explosion.
 
Sleeping.

It was a Tuesday and my first class on Tuesday was at noon, so I could sleep in. By the time I woke up, it was all over, in a manner of speaking.

Oddly, when I did wake up, I just knew something was wrong. I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if 3,000 voices cried out in terror, then were suddenly silenced.
 
I was at work and talking to my mom, and she told me her kitchen TV went out (they still used an antenna). She was watching the Today Show on NBC New York. She went downstairs, and the channel was out there too. Then she told me the news.

What still haunts me is that my husband and I stayed in the Marriott WTC just 5 weeks before when we were in for medical treatments. I still have the pen that I took from the room. That day, I was awaiting a call from my doctor, who was at New York Hospital on the Upper East Side. The day after, he called me back. I said, “Dr. Davis, I thought you would be swamped.”. He replied, “Sandy, they just didn’t come this far north.”. He elaborated by saying that after the collapse, it was purely a recovery mission and not a rescue mission.

My husband’s hall mate at college worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, and he didn’t make it.
 
I was sitting in History class my senior year of high school when the vice principal announced it (both the WTC and the Pentagon attacks) over the PA system. It got kinda crazy after that because of the rumors flying around. Most of the teachers tried to conduct classes as normal. A handful kept the news running. Unfortunately, none of those teachers were mine so I was utterly clueless as to what was going on over there. A lot of kids went home early and all after school activities were cancelled. I’m really fortunate that there was no loss in my family or in the families of those I knew. But I, and all of my friends, had at least one relative that was either in or around the towers at the time.

I didn’t know the towers had collapsed until I saw the video on the TV once I was home. That was when it hit me *hard *and I just couldn’t stop crying.
 
I was in a school class, in a French class to be precise, and for this we were allowed the French-language radio stations. Suddenly our teacher raised the volume on a news article and listened in, before telling us all ‘quelqu’un a fait un attaque terroriste contre les Twin Towers’’ (someone has just made a terrorist attack against the Twin Towers) before continuing ‘il y a beaucoup des morts reportées…même des Anglais’ (there are many reported dead…even British people’’

Being in school without any real news sources other than word-of-mouth, rumor began to fly. At the end of the school day, I rushed home on my bike and turned on my TV and saw for myself the footage. It was like being in a nightmare. I couldn’t believe it.
 
TheRealJuliane said:
10 years have gone by. I need to read/hear other’s stories. Please share yours.
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Wow. I can’t believe that ten years have gone by so fast and I still remember that day as if it was yesterday. I was in 5th grade, just getting ready to go to PE with my classmates. As the class arrived to have some fun, we were all sent to the school liberary. I then watched in horror as the two towers fall to the ground within seconds. It was shocking and painful to watch something like that and it has stayed with me and my generation since that day.

But I look at this with hope. While the attack was shocking and evil, what soon followed that was what has given me inspiration to this day to help others. I saw those brave men and women put their lives on the line and go into all that mess to get people out to safety.

They were and remain to be true heros. Saints even. I hope to be like that one day.
 
Tantum_ergo said:
Hope you have time to correct the title, because unless people here are traveling around in the Tardis, we haven’t been ANYWHERE on 9/11/2011.

Now, for 9/11/2001 I was working at home, turned on the TV to check Headline News for my morning tea break around 10 a.m… . .and sat there STUNNED to see the Towers shortly come down. . .knowing the about-to-be ex was working in NYC at the time and my best friend lived in Manhattan. . .both turned out to be all right but it was just incredible to experience.
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Oh, DUH. I wasn’t even thinking about it, sorry. I can’t correct the title - could one of the mods do that for me?
 
Watching Rush Hour in a movie theatre with my parents. Mom gets a text message saying a plane hit the World Trade Center. We thought it was just a small plane. Concerned though because my sister was working in New York at that time and we were in the Philippines. After the movie we listened on the radio, when we got home started watching CNN and just about that time the towers fell down.
 
I was at home with my mom (who was ill with cancer in a bed in the living room) watching the morning news show Canada AM.
 
I was on my way home after leaving a dog at the vet’s for treatment and I heard on the radio that a plane had hit one of the towers. I assumed that it was a small plane and was an accident. My husband was watching tv when I got home and we saw the second plane fly into the second tower. Needless to say, we were glued to the tv the rest of the day and much of the night. Not a few tears were shed thinking about all those lost lives.
 
I posted this in another thread, but it is relevant here as well.
SwizzleStick said:
September 11, 2001 was my middle child’s very first day of preschool. I had dropped him off and was teary because I left my 3-1/2 year old son with strangers for 2-1/2 hours as he started preschool and I always cry at the beginning and ending of school years anyway because those milestones mark the rapid passage of time. My daughter was in Kindergarten at another school, so we had started the morning by taking her to school and then we went back home to get my son ready and then take him to school since he started an hour later than she did. It was a perfect September day, sunny and cool and the sky was very blue with big, puffy white clouds. I decided to run errands after dropping my boy at preschool and taking the traditional pictures of the first day of school. At my first stop, I heard that a plane had hit one of the towers. I thought it was a small plane and just an accident. I was listening to the news in the van when I heard that a plane had hit the other tower. That is when the day took on a surreal quality for me because I knew that it couldn’t be an accident that both towers had been hit. I was horrified, stunned and scared. I knew we were under attack when I heard about the Pentagon being hit too. And the news kept getting worse when the towers fell and the plane went down in Shanksville. I picked up both kids from school and went home to stay glued to the television for the next several hours that day, crying and horrified at what I was seeing. I think I stayed pretty glued to the television and radio for the next several days and weeks after, trying to get as much information as I could, trying to comprehend the evil, just trying to grasp it and process it.
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Art321 said:
Wow. I can’t believe that ten years have gone by so fast and I still remember that day as if it was yesterday. I was in 5th grade, just getting ready to go to PE with my classmates. As the class arrived to have some fun, we were all sent to the school liberary. I then watched in horror as the two towers fall to the ground within seconds. It was shocking and painful to watch something like that and it has stayed with me and my generation since that day.

But I look at this with hope. While the attack was shocking and evil, what soon followed that was what has given me inspiration to this day to help others. I saw those brave men and women put their lives on the line and go into all that mess to get people out to safety.

They were and remain to be true heros. Saints even. I hope to be like that one day.
Click to expand...
My older son was in the 5th grade, so you are 19 or 20. His class was going on a field trip to downtown Houston, and a bunch of us moms were sitting in the teacher’s lounge chatting before we were to drive the class downtown. One of the staff came in and told us, but they couldn’t get a picture on the only TV, just audio but not good audio. I got enough to tell that 2 planes had hit and that others were expected. I got scared that the refineries would be a target. That would have crippled us for far longer than knocking down the WTC did. I couldn’t figure out what I should do, take my sons (5th and 2nd grade) home with me, or let them stay at school. I was afraid that if something happened, I wouldn’t be able to get to them.

But eventually, I decided that taking them home would cause them too much alarm, because I was panicked. So I left them at school and went home, and saw the towers fall live.

My husband was out of town at a convention and since he drove there, he brought several people back to the area, but he didn’t get home until later in the day. And when he did come home, he wasn’t much comfort. He said something like, “Now you know what the rest of the world goes through.” I was in shock, but his manner was pretty detached. A gulf opened up between us that day, and it’s never been bridged. We see life very differently, even apart from our religious viewpoints.

I didn’t really tell my kids what had happened, for quite a while.

The person that I was on 9/10/2001 died when those towers fell. I can’t go back to that mostly happy, optimistic person. I struggle with hatred and bitterness. It’s hard for me to believe that my sons are going to live anything like my mostly happy childhood. Yet I can’t poison them and their hope for the future.
 
Grace & Peace!

I was in the subway, headed to work. At home, I heard news of the first plane and thought it was an accident. Then the radio cut out and we turned on the TV to see what was going on. Images of the damage–I still thought it was an accident–an amateur pilot doing something disastrous. A horrible mistake. I got into the subway.

The subway car had a strange energy to it–like everyone was uneasy, on edge. After a few stops, I overheard some people talking about a second plane. Clearly, this was not an accident. The sense of unease grew. The train began pausing considerably between stations. Lots of anxiety. No one knew what was going on. The subway conductor tried to tell us that due to events downtown, we were experiencing delays. But that was about all the information we had.

The train slowly lurched into a Chelsea station–I think it was 18th Street. We were told to evacuate the subway, that there would be no more trains running. Emerging from the subway, I looked south, towards the towers–usually, they were clear, obvious landmarks. You couldn’t miss them. Today they were unmissable for completely the wrong reasons.

I called in to work (in Soho, two blocks above Canal Street) to tell them I wouldn’t be in. They told me to go home, everyone was evacuating, the city was shutting down.

People were gathering in bodegas, stores, restaurants, barber shops, wherever there was a TV to see what was going on. I stepped into a barber shop just in time to see one of the towers fall. I saw an ATM, I took out some money. I started walking the 100 or so blocks home with the other masses upon masses of people walking uptown. I’ve never seen anything like it (though the big blackout later came close)

On the way north, I heard people talking about more planes. That DC was under attack. A sense that the world was literally collapsing around us. Strangely not so much panic. Just anxiety. And a barely constrained fear. I could see it in others. I felt it in myself.

I got home. We watched TV. We worried. We prayed. We panicked.

I dreamt of a wave of planes crashing into the city, destroying my home.

Going into work the following Friday, the smell was the most acrid, thick feeling, metallic death smell I’ve ever experienced. To know that I was breathing in two buildings and thousands of bodies constituted a level of horror I will not soon forget.

Pray for mercy, for peace, and an increase of faith, hope, and love.

Under the Mercy,
Mark

All is Grace & Mercy! Deo Gratias!
 
I was sitting in the small chapel waiting, with others, for 8:30 A.M. Mass to begin. When the priest came in, before he started the Mass he announced to us that he had been watching the news before he came to the church to vest, and that there had been an “accident” in that a plane had flown into one of the twin towers, and that we should offer up some prayers.

When I got home and put the TV on, I discovered the whole story! Very sad and shocking! And, for days and weeks afterwards I heard stories about those that survived, and those that did not.
 
I was a student at Duke Divinity School. On the day of the bombings, I was on campus. I remember being in my liturgical studies class and one of my classmates came in well past the time class began, and told us that the World Trade Center had been attacked.
 
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