Sept 11, 2001 - What were you doing when you heard the news?

[Agravan]

I was in Allentown, PA - building mail-stuffing machines. I had my radio on and was listening to a talk show when I heard the announcement that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I stopped to listen. At first they thought it was an accident. Someone said that they heard that it was a small commuter aircraft. I remember thinking "This can't have been an accident." Then we heard about the other plane crashing into the other tower, at that point, management got on the intercom and sent everyone home since our plant was right next to the Allentown airport.
I remember driving home listening to the reports on the radio and wondering what was going to happen next. I got home and remained in front of the television for the rest of that terrible day. I will never forget.

[Trinnity]

I was watching it live. I was having coffee and watching Fox and friends. I was working second shift at the hospital then, so I didn't go to work til 3pm. I saw the second plane hit on live TV. I was on the phone with my mom just chatting at the time.

I said "mom, how are they gonna put that fire out?" and she said "honey, they can't".

I'm still traumatized by the event to this day and I'll never get over it. I always get teary on 9/11.

[Calypso Jones]

I was home too. I had a tv in my exercise room and had just finished. Fixed a small breakfast for myself and was sitting in front of Fox and Friends when they cut in to announce the first hit. I saw the second hit as i was watching. I was stunned. My son and husband were on a golf course somewhere in the south. Someone came out to tell everyone.

I put in a tape and proceeded to record the events for the next 4 days. My daughter was working in DC. I wanted her home after we heard of the pentagon attack. She couldn't get out of DC to get home. We were on the phone lots. Friends had a daughter (flight attendant) that was scheduled to be on one of the planes but she missed the plane and was grounded. Long hours before finding out if she was on the plane or not.

[Venus]

I was at work trying to get the Today show online to see what was going on, my mother called me, ended up in a conference room watching live when the towers went down.

I had a hard time accepting what I was watching as real.

[Trinnity]

Friends had a daughter (flight attendant) that was scheduled to be on one of the planes but she missed the plane and was grounded. You mean one of the hijacked planes?

[Smartmouthwoman]

I had been laid off from a good-paying job on July 1st and decided to take a month or two off before I started looking again. On 9/11, I had a scheduled an appt with a phone repair guy and when he came to the door, the first thing he asked was, "Do you have the TV on?" I didn't, but turned it on and he sat down on the sofa and watched with me as the second plane hit. That morning and the next few days were surreal... especially when President Bush issued a no-fly order and the skies were silent. I live about a mile from a busy municipal airport and not hearing planes overhead was eerie.

Oh and as an aside... the job market for those in my profession dried up completely after 9/11 and I ended up going to work as a dispatcher for a logistics company for a couple of years until the market loosened up again.

It was a sobering wake-up call for Americans. We must never forgot the 3000 innocents who lost their lives that day.


http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Gz7Z11J0DDU/TIpxPbmfM_I/AAAAAAAABXs/t3_pMik0Faw/s1600/911-god_bless_america.jpg

[Trinnity]

That morning and the next few days were surreal... especially when President Bush issued a no-fly order and the skies were silent. I live about a mile from a busy municipal airport and not hearing planes overhead was eerie. Tell me about it! It was SO weird not to see any planes in the sky. First and only time in my entire life.

The day they started flying again, I was so happy. A couple years later, I flew to Columbus to pick an Acura RL I'd bought, and I remember having to take off my shoes, thanks to Richard Reid.


BTW, I'll never fly again. Nope, never. No way.

[Goldie Locks]

I was home getting ready to go to work. My step son and his girlfriend at the time lived in Queens. We had just got back home from staying with them and going to the US open tennis tournament.

While there we visited the trade center and some of the shops next door, which is where my step sons girlfriend worked part time. I was so worried she was working that day and I could not get through on the phone to check. Both hubby and I tried and tried until we finally got through and found she was not working that day....thank God!!!!

It was an ire feeling to think we were just there at that very spot.
I will never forget!!!!

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/399008_10151004077641829_1370079780_n.jpg

[Smartmouthwoman]

Tell me about it! It was SO weird not to see any planes in the sky. First and only time in my entire life.

The day they started flying again, I was so happy. A couple years later, I flew to Columbus to pick an Acura RL I'd bought, and I remember having to take off my shoes, thanks to Richard Reid.


BTW, I'll never fly again. Nope, never. No way.

We had a trip to Vegas planned for October. My family wouldn't fly... so they drove and I flew and met them there. I still remember the long lines to get thru security at Las Vegas airport. They suggested arriving 3 hrs before your flight time. It was crazy... but at the same time, there was a camaraderie among those in line I've never seen before or since. Seems it was both the best and worst of times for Americans.

[shaarona]

I was at work trying to get the Today show online to see what was going on, my mother called me, ended up in a conference room watching live when the towers went down.

I had a hard time accepting what I was watching as real.

Yep.. one of my boys called me.. the actor.. He was incredulous saying that he was stunned because it looked like a horrid special effects.

[coolwalker]

I was in the shower and my wife yelled tht I had to come right away, so I did...completely naked and dripping thinking there was an emergency. There was, but it wasn't exactly personal and at the same time it was personal. I sat there, naked, watching the events unfold thinking that I must be having a really bad dream. That was a day I'll never forget but I wish I didn't have to remember it.

[Venus]

http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/03/0903/091103.html


When I was a kid I was terrified of the End of the World. Kids heard things; older kids who’d read that ridiculous end-times tract, “The Late Great Planet Earth” said it foretold a struggle between the “bear” and the “eagle” and we all knew what that meant. One summer at Bible Camp I asked one of the pastors if this bear-eagle end-of-the-world stuff was true, and he said “we know not the day or the time.” You know, I thought, but you just won’t tell us.

It was 1968. On the night before the last day of camp, a counselor named Charlie Brown interrupted our sunset meeting by the shores of White Bear Lake to tell us the news: Russia had launched their missiles and they would destroy America before the night was out. It was time to get right with God.

Silence; crickets; small sobs. I’m sure no one thought much about Jesus right then. We thought about Mom and Dad and Spot and our room, where we really, really wanted to be right now, with the familiar smell of the goldfish bowl, and -

Charlie Brown guided us through some prayers. We all said Amen, and I’m sure for some it was the least heartfelt Amen we’d ever said. Then Charlie Brown said he had made up the story. Russia hadn’t launched the missiles. But what if they had? Were we right with Jesus?

Back at the barracks we were quiet and unnerved. No one wanted to go to sleep. No one wanted to talk, either. Finally John Larson, the bunkhouse bully, broke the silence. He was the mean kid. He was the one who tormented me at home, and had bothered me at camp. Nelson Muntz without the charm. John Larson expressed his simple wish to stab Charlie Brown in the stomach.

A dozen little Lutheran campers nodded in the dark: ya sure, you betcha.

I’ve thought about Charlie Brown’s clueless cruelty whenever I think of summer camp. It’s a good story; give me an audience and five minutes and I can spin quite the yarn. I don’t know what effect he had on my fear of the Apocalypse, but for decades afterwards I got that bright silver sluice of dread in my gut whenever international tensions “flared up” or US-USSR relations were “frayed.” The very words in the headlines made me feel slightly sick, and pitched back to the shores of the lake, sitting on that long painted bench. My future was an either-or thing. Either some stupid event destroys the world . . . or not. Stick around and find out which.

Now I am resigned, in advance, to the loss of an American city by a nuclear weapon. The End of the World now looks like a comic-book premise, a Heston-movie conceit. We feared it would all be gone in a day, our world upended like an Etch-A-Sketch. What we never considered was a long, slow war, a conflict that burned and sputtered, skittered from one spot on the map to the other. The old wars were simple: the other side had accents, uniforms, nations, cruel habits and urbane sneers. The old wars took years. The old wars were in black and white. The old wars were monophonic, scored by Max Steiner, released by Warner Brothers, and the only proof they really happened at all was the small battered box in the back of Dad’s sock drawer, the box that held some oddly colored metal bars. The next war would be horrible, total, and short.

Two years ago today I was convinced that every presumption I had about the future was wrong. This war, I feared, would be horrible, total, and long.

Two years later I take a certain grim comfort in some people’s disinterest in the war; if you’d told me two years ago that people would be piling on the President and bitching about slow progress in Iraq, I would have known in a second that the nation hadn’t suffered another attack. When the precise location of Madonna’s tongue is big news, you can bet the hospitals aren’t full of smallpox victims. Of course some people are impatient with those who still recall the shock of 9/11; the same people were crowding the message boards of internet sites on the afternoon of the attacks, eager to blame everyone but the hijackers. They hate this nation. In their hearts, they hate humanity. They would rather cheer the perfect devils than come to the aid of a compromised angel. They can talk for hours about how wrong it was to kill babies, busboys, businessmen, receptionists, janitors, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers - and then they lean towards you, eyes wide, and they say the fatal word:

But.

And then you realize that the eulogy is just a preface. All that concern for the dead is nothing more than the knuckle-cracking of an organist who’s going to play an E minor chord until we all agree we had it coming.

I’ve no doubt that if Seattle or Boston or Manhattan goes up in a bright white flash there will be those who blame it all on Bush. We squandered the world’s good will. We threw away the opportunity to atone, and lashed out. Really? You want to see lashing out? Imagine Kabul and Mecca and Baghdad and Tehran on 9/14 crowned with mushroom clouds: that’s lashing out. Imagine the President in the National Cathedral castigating Islam instead of sitting next to an Imam who's giving a homily. Mosques burned, oil fields occupied, smart bombs slamming into Syrian palaces. We could have gone full Roman on anyone we wanted, but we didn’t. And we won’t.

Which is why this war will be long.

The world will not end. It will roll around in its orbit until Sol expires of famine or indigestion. In the end we’re all ash anyway - but even as ash, we matter. The picture at the top of this page is a sliver taken from a 9/11 camera feed. It’s the cloud that rolled through lower Manhatttan when the towers fell. Paper, steel, furniture, plastic, people. The man who took the picture inhaled the dust of the dead. Somewhere lodged in the lung of a New Yorker is an atom that once belonged to a man who went to work two years ago and never came back. His widow dreads today, because people will be coming and calling, and she’ll have to insist that she’s okay. It's hard but last year was harder. The kids will be sad and distant, but they take their cues from her, and they sense that it's hard - but that last year was harder. But what really kills her, really really kills her, is knowing that the youngest one doesn’t remember daddy at all anymore. And she's the one who has his eyes.

Two years in; the rest of our lives to go.

[Shoot the Goose]

I was actually sitting with a reporter and photographer for the Baltimore Sun, watching it on TV, as it unfolded.

Was in Baltimore for a big annual trade show coming up that weekend, where I had booths. The Sun would often run a front-page Section-B story on the show in the Saturday edition, with lots of pictures. I was one of several vendors asked to bring some wares to a facility where we could do photos and interviews. And there was a TV. The first "commuter plane" hit as I pulled up. So we had it on TV right away, and I was setting up talking with both reporter and cameraman, but we could not look away. Then the second plane hit, and as all our hearts sank at the unfolding tragedy, the reporter looked at me and said "you won't be in the paper this week". So we just sat together and watched. Then he got a call "Go to the Pentagon", and off they dashed.

[Calypso Jones]

You mean one of the hijacked planes?

exactly.

[Calypso Jones]

That's for bringing back that memory Venus. I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. Never been so frightened. And in the end, Russia backed down. I had totally forgotten that, except in the deep recesses of my mind about how frightened i was. Thank God i had no Charlie Brown. I wonder where that little sadist is today? Then i remember the shame and embarrassment of the failed Carter attempt to rescue our captives from the Iranians. damm. And now that i think about, what about the political ad of the little girl in the field with yellow flowers and suddenly there's a nuclear explosion.

[Canadianeye]

At work, when a friend in the area came and told me. Closed up and went to his place to watch in awe, anger and compassion.

[Calypso Jones]

I don't know where my mother was, i assume at home? i'll ask my brother, but exactly one year and a day later...9/12/02 she had her first stroke...and i really do think there is a connection. She was so angry and so upset about 911 that my brother still talks about it to this day. She and i had planned a little get away. SHe had never seen the Northeast and i had travelled there for work right after college. October 2001, we briefly thought about cancelling it but then decided....WHY should we let these murdering fools change our trip plans. I am glad we went. BUT, going by NEw York City on interstate, she was very upset and even in october, the smoke was still rising from the site of the attack. I briefly thought about going into the city and then bagged that. I'm glad in light of the number of illnesses that have stricken those involved.

[Adelaide]

Sitting in a Canadian middle school class. I'll never forget the day... it stands out strongly in memory. I think the world (with few exceptions) truly wept for the United States at that moment.

[Calypso Jones]

A lot of us are still ticked.

[Peter1469]

I was in Korea in the army (ours, not theirs). It was late at night when another officer called me in a panic and told me to turn on the TV. I did and saw footage of the second plane hitting the towers. She asked me what we should do. I told her, "We are at war now. You better get some sleep. We will likely be on full alert for the foreseeable future." By morning the Koreans had deployed military units around US camps and set up check points to keep us protected. Within days the Koreans rounded up all local Muslims and shipped them off- where I don't know. I was there until May of 2002 and they hadn't been allowed back as of that date.

[Calypso Jones]

really. awesome.

[Goldie Locks]

I was in Korea in the army (ours, not theirs). It was late at night when another officer called me in a panic and told me to turn on the TV. I did and saw footage of the second plane hitting the towers. She asked me what we should do. I told her, "We are at war now. You better get some sleep. We will likely be on full alert for the foreseeable future." By morning the Koreans had deployed military units around US camps and set up check points to keep us protected. Within days the Koreans rounded up all local Muslims and shipped them off- where I don't know. I was there until May of 2002 and they hadn't been allowed back as of that date.


Wish we would do that.

[Captain Obvious]

I was working at UPMC at the time. I didn't want to park in Oakland/Pittsburgh because the parking rates are outrageous there and I was on a walking regiment at the time, so I parked on the South Side on a side street (my old stomping grounds), did my walking regiment which included walking across the 22nd St. Bridge into Oakland. The building I worked in had showers so I showered/shaved there before I started work.

I was walking along Forbes Ave, it's a college town (Pitt) and there was this apartment building, a sort of high rise and smoke was coming out of the top of it. Got to work wondering what that was all about and came the news of the attacks. I first thought that they might have been related but that was quickly dismissed.

[GCF]

I was in Birmingham AL working for Olan Mills doing Church Directories. Wife called me up an woke me about 9 an told me to turn on the tv. Then I had to go to church, which ended up being a Black Church with a strong sense of the Angry Black. All day they talked about it being our fault, most were very well educated but diffently not Pro American to say the least. It was a hard day an I couldn't get out soon enough an I think they understood my rather cold exterior that day.

[Goldie Locks]

I was in Birmingham AL working for Olan Mills doing Church Directories. Wife called me up an woke me about 9 an told me to turn on the tv. Then I had to go to church, which ended up being a Black Church with a strong sense of the Angry Black. All day they talked about it being our fault, most were very well educated but diffently not Pro American to say the least. It was a hard day an I couldn't get out soon enough an I think they understood my rather cold exterior that day.

Must have been one of those black liberation theology churches like Ubama went to.

[GCF]

Must have been one of those black liberation theology churches like Ubama went to.

No, it was that one with two names on it, Methodist Episcopal Church or AME. Had to do a quick search for it, not usually a bad church but this one diffently had a large population of the "Angry Black" sentiment to it. Yea, the Obama's diffently is of that strife, like much of your intelligent mobile black person of the last 20 years. I believe it gives them an edge, something about anger that makes people give you what you want just to avoid haveing to deal with the person.

[patrickt]

I live in Oaxaca, Mexico. I haven't owned a television in almost twenty years. So, I learned about what had happened reading on the internet. When I went out for lunch, strangers on the street were stopping me and offering sympathy.

[GrassrootsConservative]

I was busy in school being a 5th grader. :icon_thumright:
The TVs in every class flashed on and we watched everything that happened. It was insane.

[Calypso Jones]

I live in Oaxaca, Mexico. I haven't owned a television in almost twenty years. So, I learned about what had happened reading on the internet. When I went out for lunch, strangers on the street were stopping me and offering sympathy.

What is it like as an american(?) living in Oaxaca?

[GCF]

What is it like as an american(?) living in Oaxaca?

Cheap living! Cheap drugs! Cheap Prostitutes! What else can an person want? LOL

[KSigMason]

I was heading to school and heard it on the radio.

[Montoya]

I was asleep when my mom called me and told me what happened.