As is tradition on this site, I would like to post my story of 9/11. It’s important to share our stories because everyone was affected by that day. Don’t ever forget that day. Feel free to share your story in the comment section.
I remember the day like it was yesterday. I woke up and got ready for class as if it was like any other day before it. On the way to my class, I stopped in the UC, one of the only places open for food in the morning, to get my usual breakfast, a blueberry glazed Krispy Kreme donut and a bottle of Minute Maid cranberry grape juice. It’s not the best breakfast in the world, but when your options are limited, you take what you can get. After paying for my food with a magic card called a cat card, I was off to class. I say it’s magic because it certainly seems that way. You simply scan it and they let you have your food. It’s as if the food is free and they are merely verifying your identity before you consume it.
The class I was on my way to that morning was a computer programming class. I had considered dropping the class at the beginning of the semester because it was a harder class than I needed but I decided to stick it out. The class began at 9:30 and went until 10:45. As I sat there through the class I began to think about all the things I still needed to do that day. I made a mental to do list in my mind. I had to go back to the room after class, get some things cleaned up, head over to Smoky Mountain High School for my first observation for EDCI 231, and then go to work that evening. What a jam-packed day. I was a little nervous about it because I had only talked once with the teacher whose room I was supposed to be in. On top of that, I wasn’t even sure exactly what my role was supposed to be. I had no clue where to go or what to expect. After all, it was my first semester at Western Carolina. I daydreamed and stared at my watch; 10:45 seemed to be so far away. Why is it that it always works out that way? When you want time to move slowly because you are having a good time, it always seems to move at the speed of light. When you want the time to go fast, as in my case this morning, the clock seems like it is out of batteries because the hands move so slow, almost not at all. After what seemed like an eternity, my watch finally said 10:45, which meant it was time for this class to be over. I gathered up my books, put them in my bag and headed back to my room. I had about an hour before I needed to be out the door, heading to Smoky Mountain. I wanted to get there early to make a good impression because it was my first day there. Also, I hate being late anywhere. I get very nervous when I am late or when other people are late.
As I walked back to my room, my mind couldn’t help but wander to thoughts about observing at the high school later that day. I was nervous. I had never had the opportunity to be in the classroom before. What if I made a mistake? As I got back to Scott Hall, the dorm I was assigned to, I walked passed a television in the lobby and noticed that it was tuned to the news. I don’t generally watch the news, it gets me very depressed, but I happened to see that there was a breaking news story on CNN. I made a mental note to check it out as I was cleaning so that I would know if it was anything important. More often than not, those breaking news stories are nothing. It is like the news station that cried wolf. They make little stories seem so big and get my attention and then I watch and they’re nothing. Normally I would not have even checked it out, but for some reason, that day, I did.
I got up to my room and started straightening up. I continued with that for a few minutes before I checked my e-mail and looked on some sports websites. Basically, I wasted some time because I wasn’t in the mood to clean. Really, come to think of it, there are very few days that I am in the mood to clean. Then I remembered the news. I turned the TV on and flipped to CNN. What I saw was one of the scariest things I had ever seen. I read the caption at the bottom of the screen and it said that the world trade center tower had been hit by an airplane. I was amazed. I didn’t know the extent of everything yet. I just thought that it was an accident by a pilot. I sat glued to the screen as if we were joined together by some invisible rope. I could not look away. Picture after picture flashed on the screen of the plane flying right into the tower. It was unbelievable. Finally, as I listened to what they were saying on the broadcast, I came to the full understanding of what had happened. We had been attacked. I wasn’t sure by who or why, but I knew that it had happened. I began to feel all kinds of emotions all rolled into one, emotions ranging from fear and anger to sadness and confusion. It was all too much for me and I began to feel the tears well up. At that point, right there in my room, I began to cry. I cried for our country. I had never seen something like this before so I guess that was the only way I knew how to process it.
As the news continued to replay the incident over and over it sunk in more and more how vulnerable this country was after all. I had always thought that our country was immune to everything, invincible. All the wars that we had fought had been fought somewhere else, somewhere far away. I think everyone sort of had a bit of smugness: about themselves and about our country before this happened. This definitely woke us all up. The phone began to ring and it probably was the only thing that could have brought me back to reality. I answered it, my voice reflecting the shock I was experiencing. It was my mom. She called to see if I was OK and to tell me that she loved me. I think everyone in the country must have made at least one call that day to someone they love. I told my mom that I appreciated it and told her that I loved her too. We talked for a few minutes about what had happened and if it was going to happen again. At this point, I wasn’t really sure about what was really going on. I started to worry about my family back home after that call. I am from Chicago, which is a very large and important city. I started to have scary thoughts about if the bombings continued in Chicago and other big U.S. cities. So much had already happened on this day and it was still only 11:45. Was there more to come?
It was time for me to go to Smoky Mountain for observation. I sort of wondered if there would even be students there. Would they have sent them home because of such a tragedy? I wasn’t sure, but it was still my responsibility to go and find out. As I drove the six miles to the school, all I could think about was what I had witnessed that morning. I searched every radio station on the way to the school, which is about 3, trying to find out all the information I could. I pulled up to the school and found a parking place. Everything about the school was quiet. I walked in and the halls were quiet and vacant. I was beginning to think that the students had been sent home. I made my way to the classroom that I was supposed to be in and found a teacher in the room watching the news. She seemed to be in the same state of shock that I was in. I said hello and she snapped back to reality. She stood and I told her my name. She introduced herself as well, and our conversation immediately changed to what had happened. “Do they know anything new?” I asked. “No, still the same stuff,” she replied. It was frustrating. The two towers and part of the Pentagon had been taken out, and a plane was down in Pennsylvania. How could this happen? Before we knew it, the kids were filing into the room. Normally I would expect the students to be rowdy and loud, and this would prove to be true as the semester would unfold, but on this day the students were somber and still. They walked into the classroom and quietly took their seats. My teacher had told me that they had basically had the TV on all morning and she planned to have it on the rest of the day. She told the class that we were going to be watching the news for this class period. I could tell by the students’ faces that they were just as scared as I was. They watched the TV trying to sort everything out. There was miscellaneous conversation here and there and then all of a sudden a boy raised his hand and asked very seriously, “Mrs. Danner does this mean there is going to be a draft, because I’m 18?” My heart sunk. I had not ever considered the possibility, but it was a real one. I began to get just as scared. I was only 23 so I was also a prime candidate to get drafted in the event that there was one.
After my time at Smoky Mountain was done, I drove home quietly. I turned off the radio and just drove home in silence. Too much had already happened today. I just needed some time to process everything. I got back to campus and went back to my room. I immediately went back to the TV. I had to be at work later that day for a short shift. I decided to take a nap because I was physically and mentally exhausted. I woke up around 4:15 with plenty of time to check the latest developments and get ready for work. Everything in me wanted to call in sick and stay home. Part of the reason was because I wanted to watch the TV and part of the reason was because I was still scared. I didn’t know if there were more attacks coming. Rumors were everywhere. There were people saying that the next hits were going to be close to where we were in North Carolina for some strange reason. I guess it was just conspiracy theory, because I have no clue why someone would want to bomb Cullowhee. Nonetheless, I was still scared. I went to work at Subway and had a hard time concentrating because the attacks were that all every customer wanted to talk about. So many people asked me if I had seen the latest news as if I was standing there watching the TV with them. I don’t think they realized that I was at work and not able to see the news. It was very frustrating.
Mercifully, my shift ended at 8 and I was back in the dorms. By this time my fiancée was with me and we were talking about what had happened. It just didn’t seem real yet. In the days ahead there would be news about terrorists and a hunt for Osama Bin Laden, but this day, September 11th, 2001 would be a day that will live in my memory forever. It is a day where lives were lost and heroes were born: A day that has changed our country forever. A day that I will never forget.
I had just arrived at work, as a lowly mailroom boy at that time in my career. I had just sat down and was trying to access the Tribune sotry about Michael Jordan coming back, again. I just kept getting the "could not connect" error page. It was really irritating me, when I saw my boss run past while pushing a TV cart. She wasn’t fleet a foot, so I knew something was up.
I ran into the large conference room, and watched as the second plane hit. There were about 30 of us just standing and sitting in stunned silence. Our office is just across the river from the Sears Tower by a block or two, so my concern was if it was targeted as well. I looked at my boss and told her it was time to go home. At that point most businesses had released everyone, and Union Station was a mass of people. Except for one thing, it was dead silent, and completely orderly.
I got on the train, and immediately tried calling my girlfriend (now wife), to see if she made it into work. The entire system was down. No one could make calls. We all sat in silence for the entire ride, with the random call that would make it through.
It wasn’t until I got to my apartment that I saw the clips of the two towers collapsing. The office was closed the next two days, and I think I spent most of those 48 hours glued to the couch.
This is going to be a bit long and fragmented, but truly, that’s what that day was like.
I was one stop-light away from my office, listening to my normal morning radio show while waiting. They were talking about the first plane, when the news director broke in to say that a second plane had hit. I was just stunned, and all that was registering in my brain was that something bad was happening.
I got into the office and called home–letting my mom know she needed to turn on the news. At this point in my life I was also in a long-distance relationship with my high school sweetheart–he lived and worked in NYC. I knew he was safe, because although his train passed under the towers, he would have been at work before this happened. I called to check in, though, and was the one who told him the second plane hit. He went silent, and then I could hear him telling his boss.
At this point my brain started to catch up to what was going on. I remembered that his step-mom lived in Battery Park–the very southern tip of Manhattan and only blocks from the towers. I remember saying, "You need to call Nancy." We hung up quickly. And then I saw the news that the Pentagon was hit.
Everything is fairly blurry after that. I wandered over to a few people nearby and talked for just a moment. I went down to the cafeteria to get some breakfast (purely out of routine). I came back to my desk to find a message from my boyfriend with his step-mom’s office and cell phone numbers. He asked me to please keep trying her. I got a hold of someone in her office, who informed me that she had not come into the office that day. You could hear in his voice what neither of us wanted to say–that she could be gone.
I had to call and tell my boyfriend this news, which was one of the hardest phone calls I’ve ever had to make. His update was that his step-brother in Chicago had been talking to her when the second plane hit. She was out on her balcony watching it happen–the brother could hear it all happen on the phone. At some point I wandered down to get lunch, which I didn’t eat, and watched the tv they had set up for us. I could see her building in the pictures of the collapsing towers, and I knew she could be in serious danger as those clouds rolled over the island.
It took several hours for a relative in Boston to finally get a hold of her again. Like so many people in that area, she had gone to the park to watch everything unfold. They were stuck, as there was no way to go North, and no one expected the buildings to fall. She was literally running for her life when they did. A number of people broke the window on a restaurant to seek shelter. She spent the day there, bringing people water and trying to help. She could not return home (or get her clothes or anything) for over a month. Some organization took care of all the animals left alone in the building during that time–three of them her cats. But she was alive. In fact, despite some very close calls, my boyfriend did not lose a single friend or relative that day.
So much of that day is foggy in my memory. I know I was in touch with Matt and my mom constantly (Dad was safe at work but couldn’t call home as he worked in a school). Mom let me know that Matt was on his way home. Matt called me once he was there–letting me know he was okay, that his girlfiend (now sister-in-law) was safe, and giving me tv updates since the Internet was bogged down. I remember him telling me to call whenever I needed to know something, because he was going to be glued to the news.
I have no idea why I even stayed at work that day, even though being in a familiar setting with all those people was probably not a bad thing. I was glued to the tv for several more days whenever I was home. I remember mostly feeling numb. On my way to work maybe a week later, a local business was covering an advertisement with an American flag. The workers were out there putting it up as I was stopped at a light. For whatever reason, that is what finally got me to cry.
I saw Ground Zero almost six months to the day later, and I was just as stunned then. There was still paper in the trees that had flown out of the office windows. Dust still covered awnings and window sills blocks away. Occasionally I show a friend the pictures I took, and inevitably they thank me. They say with those pictures they really understand more what it was like.
It was a horrific day for all of us, I’m sure. But for me it has become more and more surreal as the years pass. I’m no longer with that man, and I haven’t seen or talked to his family in several years. Yet somehow, as much as our lives diverge and move on, I will always on this day remember them. It is very strange to share something so monumental with someone that I am no longer close to.
The phone woke me up about 10 that morning. It was my mom asking me if I’d been watching the news. I told her no, I’d been asleep, and that’s when she told me that someone had bombed the WTC. As soon as I got off the phone with her, I tried getting online to get some news about what had happened, and to check on some friends that lived in NYC. After failing to access any of the US news sources, I finally pulled up the CBC website and was reading the news there when the phone rang again. This time it was my roommate calling from work wanting to know if I’d seen the news. I told him mom had just called and told me. We hung up, and as I grew frustrated with the lack of updates over the internet, and the virtual lack of friends online to talk about the event with, I went out into the living room to watch the news on TV. I had just turned on CNN when the 2nd plane hit. Then I watched in shocked horror as both towers fell.
At the time, I lived just a couple miles from Mid-Continent airport in Wichita, and every time I went outside for a cigarette, I could see at least 1 plane circling around waiting to land. And then, just before I left for work about 11, silence. That was probably the most surreal thing about that whole week afterwards was the silence in the skies in the "Air Capital of the World."
Once I was at work, I regretted going in. I spent the whole afternoon waiting on customers at Taco Bell just wishing I could go home and watch the news.
As it turned out, I did go home about 4 that afternoon, and I sat, glued to the t.v. for hours upon end, until I finally shut it off because I could feel depression setting in.
The things that are most important in life…
I was sitting in my eight grade history class when I first heard the rumblings among the other students. I was typically skeptical at first. I did not believe that something so asinine was possible, and yet, if it were, it was one hell of a coup by those responsible. And more importantly, a coup that would be their last.
That was my Pearl harbore. My JFK assasination, my unforgettable unreal moment.
God Bless those who died, and those that are still dying for every breath I take in this beautiful country. And God Bless America..
I posted my thoughts on my basketball site…
http://www.scacchoops.com/f...
I have a artist/friend, Kellyanne Hanrahan, living NY that made a strong flash impression of her experience on her website: http://www.koolass.com/sket...
It was chilling…
if you wish to skip to the flash part: http://www.koolass.com/sket...
I was visiting a friend that day. She went to school there. I walked her mom to work, she worked in the first building, and she asked me to come up with her so I could take some stuff home for her so she didn’t forget. I said to hold on because my shoe was untied, and boom. We were hit with a ton of debris and scared as hell. We finally realized we needed to move and as we stepped back we saw body parts flying out of the building. Thank God for shoe laces.
Thanks for the thread Joe, It allows us to learn a little more about each other. For instance, most of you are younger than I, and Joe once worked at my favorite restaurant.
My story is also long, feel free to skip it.
I was attending the first day of a medical conference on coronary interventions… in downtown Washington DC. About the second lecture in, the organizers became obviously disorganized, and around mid morning made a statement that he figured we all knew what was going on in the outside world, but that they would try to press on. Several of us looked at each other and it was obvious that essentially nobody in a room of several hundred had any clue. A guy next to me went to the hotel lobby to a bank of computers they had set up for us and got the scoop. Word slowly filtered thru the room.
What was supposed to be a 6 day conference was shortened to a day and a half. The organizers were from a hospital in Manhattan and were visibly shaken for the duration, many of the speakers had yet to arrive and would not as there was no air travel until Sunday. My wife was asleep in the hotel room and our daughter called her from Washington State and told her to look out the window where there was now a police state. Neither of heard anything when the pentagon was hit, though we could see the smoke.
We were stuck in DC with no way to travel out, and no conference to attend. We saw every inch of the Smithsonian, walked the mall, and toured DC. Small houses, way too close together. Cops with machine guns on every corner. I’ve not been back to DC and don’t plan on it. Not because of 9-11, but because the most honest people in town are the street walkers.
We were scheduled to fly home on Sunday. As luck would have it, that’s the first day the skies were opened back up. The news said to get to the air port early. ( by the way we saw Newt Gingrich in the airport on the trip in, woo-hoo). We got there 4 hour early to cope with the enormous lines. Delta had signs posted over their counters to get in lines according to your connection, Atlanta, Cincinnati, and Salt Lake City. The first 2 had enormous lines. Salt Lake, where we were going, had 2 people in front of us. We got on a flight 2 hours earlier than originally scheduled.
I never felt threatened personally, and it was too early in the investigation to get mad at any particular group of people. Nobody I knew personally was injured or killed, so it was mostly a surreal week from my perspective.
I remember a very few things vividly and everything else is a blur. I worked from home and was listening to Spike O’Dell on WGN Radio as I did every morning, and I remember him sounding flustered saying ‘ummm, there’s something going on here that we think you need to know about … ‘ and went on to tell about the plane hitting the first tower. At that point they thought it was a commuter plane.
I then flipped on the TV and I think it was Tom Brokaw talking when the second plane hit, and he CLEARLY thought they were replaying footage from the first plane. It seemed like forever (and was really about 15 seconds) before it sunk in for the newscasters and for me that it was a second plane and a second hit. Very odd feeling that everyone was figuring it out together.
Another vivid memory I have is of afterwards, the absence of planes (as Jerry mentioned above). At the time we lived in Griffith, Indiana and it was an arrival path for planes heading toward Midway. There was always a Southwest plane overhead. So often that we never even noticed them. Until they were gone.
Just some little vivid tidbits. The rest gets blurrier and blurrier as each year passes.
This morning’s coverage of the anniversary disturbed me a little bit, particularly when they read the names. It was as though I was being slapped in the face by man’s inhumanity to his fellow man, the sheer lunacy of people trying to achieve political ends through mass murder. One won’t hear me paraphrasing Ayn Rand very often but it made me question again what differentiates rational man from suicidal animal.
I hope that we capture bin-Laden and al-Zawahiri soon. Thusfar we’ve conducted 30 missile attacks this year in Pakistan compared to 10 last year as of this date. I hope we catch them alive and healthy and extradite them to New York for trial. Rather than giving them the martyrdom that they crave I hope we build special glass cells for them in NY where people can come view them like animals in a zoo. A humane death is too good for them.
I was in 8th grade at the time, and looking back I am not happy with the way my school handled the attacks. The towers were hit around 7:45 Chicago time, homeroom started at 8, first class at 8:15. Not told anything. Classes go normal. Now 9, 2nd class, teacher has radio on about what happened, but class was normal. We were working on projects, she kept the radio on while we worked on them. Now 9:45, my 3rd class, they tell us some planes crashed into the towers and the Pentagon, but that’s it. 10:30 now, 4th class I finally find out everything, it was my science class, teacher started acting like a big-shot saying people are idiots if they didn’t know it was terrorism after the first tower was hit, and then he started using these attacks as examples for various things we were studying throughout the year.
Now, the principal came into classes throughout the day she was like there won’t be outdoor recess because of the threat of an attack. Uhm, okay. By this time all flights had been grounded and there were no flights in air in the US. And then 2 months later for science class we planted trees and everyone decided to dedicate the trees to 9/11, teacher said his name means tree man in German, I asked a friend who said his name was absolutely nothing in German, teacher flipped a shit while the trees were being planted, marked me off on my power point for my ideas of commemorating the attacks (not planting trees of NY, Pennsylvania, DC, planting trees in a pentagon shape, planting 2 of the same trees next to each other to symbolize the towers), and then 8 years later those trees are gone
I was supposed to be in the air that day — and for some reason, perhaps the same reason that compelled Cubbiedude’s shoes to come undone…I canceled the trip. Something I rarely, if ever, do. I was headed to the midwest that day from the west coast — so would not have been near the east coast, but would have been stranded somewhere in Ohio, I’m sure, for a day or two while they sorted things out.
I had flown on two of the four flights that went down that day.
Side story. A few weeks earlier, I’d been flying to Washington DC, and had been seated next to a guy who the pilot came to speak with before takeoff. Guy sees my inquisitive look and tells me that he’s FBI — actually counterterrorism — and he’s on his way to DC to testify in something or other. Tells me that he’s armed, and that’s why the captain needs to check with him. Story goes that the pilot is charge when the plane is in the air, but thet FBI is the boss when the plane is on the ground — if anything ever happened. We hit it off nicely and he even gave me his card because at the time my daughter was considering the FBI as a career and his wife was a female agent — he suggested that they talk. Nice flight. We wish each other well and go our own ways. First thought I have on 9/11? Why, oh why, couldn’t those bastards have chosen that flight? All it would have taken was one FBI agent, or sky marshall, to shut down a bunch of crazies with razors.
I remember 9/11 every time I fly. Which is two to four times a week.
Sherm, The shoelaces story wasn’t me. But here’s what I remember.
It was a Tuesday morning. The “Fortunate Souls” do their Breakfast Rides on Tuesday mornings.
The Fortunate Souls are a group of mostly old retired farts like me, who like to ride motorcycles. I should say that the emphasis of the Breakfast Rides is “Breakfast”. We were gathering in the parking area of a gas station/mini mart when it became apparent that something unusual was happening.
Someone said there was a TV inside, so we went into the building. There was a small TV behind the counter, and that’s where I saw the video images for the first time. My thoughts were of a friend from long ago who, the last I heard, was living back in New York City and working in or near the twin towers. As the buildings crumbled to the ground I thought of her.
Eventually my attention moved from the TV screen to the guy behind the counter. He was Middle Eastern in appearance, and he was smiling like this was the greatest video he had ever seen. I remember eyeballin’ him for some time. I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t enraged, I wasn’t trying to act tough or be bad. But I was regarding this guy whose happiness at that time seemed oh so inappropriate.
After a quick breakfast at the closest diner we could find, most of the guys were in a hurry to “go home and watch it on TV”.
Go Home and Watch TV?? Is that the right response to what just happened? That’s not what I wanted to do.
I understand that the Congress of the United States gathered together and sang “God Bless America”. That’s not what I wanted to do either.
I know I was experiencing a lot of emotions the rest of that day, but fear wasn’t one of them.
I was concerned mostly for the safety of my family and friends. Fortunately, as it turned out, none were directly involved. For that I thank my lucky stars.
The Boy Scout motto comes to mind. “Be Prepared”.