What do you remember about Sept 11, 2001?

[Intense]

I was on the phone ordering a computer, getting ready for a funeral Mass for a close Neighbor, when the first plane hit. I had FOX on. When I went into the Church, the first tower had already fallen. 69th Street and Grand Avenue in Maspeth, Queen's has a clear enough overview of the area. My Son watched the events unfold from the roof of Brooklyn Tech High School with fellow students. My Step Daughter, made it back from Hunter College, on foot over the 59th Street Bridge. Queen's Blvd was loaded with Pedestrian traffic heading East. First time in My life NYC went into lock down.

 

[AquaAthena]

If you care to, please share your thoughts and feelings about that day.

What were you doing? Who were you with? What did you feel? What did you think?

Awakening to a phone call from my fiance in another timezone, encouraging me to quickly turn on the TV. I watched in horror and surreal disbelief.

 

[Wry Catcher]

After the shock, I had a brief period of denial, then real anger. Then I wondered how would we respond. Then, I wondered where the fuck is the commander-in-chief.

 

[Gem]

I was driving to graduate school listening to the radio when the news about the first plane hit. I remember vividly thinking about what a gorgeous day it was, making plans for after class, and thinking "What kind of idiot flies his plane into the tallest damn thing in NYC - what a moron." It never occurred to me to think that it was a jet.

By the time I got into my class it was on the tvs. We all just sat and watched in silence. Classes were eventually cancelled and I started to drive home. I was in Pittsburgh, and all the major universities (Univ. of Pitt, Carnegie Mellon, Duquesne, Carlow, Chatham, etc.) had cancelled classes at the same time....so thousands of students were just milling around the streets. It was eerie...like a warzone with people not sure where to go.

The plane that crashed in Shanksville was still in the air when I reached my apartment and the rumor in Pittsburgh was that it was headed our way - perhaps the US Steel Building, the Cathedral of Learning (tallest educational structure in the US), etc.

My uncle was working in the Pentagon so I immediately called home to find out of he was ok - he was. My fiancee (now husband) was stationed in California with the Air Force, and I remember thinking - he is going to war...Oh my God, he is going to war.

My roommates and I sat in silence, some of us crying off and on...and watched the tv for about 48 hours straight....wandering out to the front porch to smoke a cigarette, sit away from the tv for awhile....it was like the world had stopped in the most horrible way possible.

 

[Toro]

In late Spring 2001, I had dinner with a guy about joining his firm, which was based in the WTC. I decided that I didn't want to join. When I watched that morning, I thought I had escaped death. It was a weird surreal feeling. Fortunately, they were all on the 31st floor, and all got out alive, but for a day, I thought I was given a second chance at life.

If you want to know how it affected places far away, the day before I took a ferry from Vancouver to Vancouver Island where my parents live. On 9/11, and the next few days, no ferries ran in British Columbia because of 9/11. My parents live near an airforce base, and two 747s flying from Japan to the US had to land at an isolated airstrip on Vancouver Island.

 

[random3434]

Like Channel and Annie, I too was at school on that sunny Tuesday morning. I pulled into our parking lot just as the news reported a plane had flown into one of the twin towers. Didn't think much about it but that it was a tragic accident.

Of course then the T.V. in our office was on, and we found out more of what was going on.

Parents started coming to the school to pull their kids out, wanting to be with their children in their homes, because nobody knew if we were next.

I remember the gas stations have lines out into the streets, because people were worried the gasoline would be cut off.

Teachers crying, getting home and getting my daughter from school and holding her tight, she was in first grade, and so it was hard to explain to her what was going on.

I still have her first grade pic they took that Friday, September 14th. She is in braids, with her two front teeth missing, and an American Flag pin on her dress.

The teachers in our school gathered in the gym every morning before class started and prayed for the victims of 9/11, holding hands in a circle.

Later on today I'm going to a tribute here in downtown Indy.

 

[Intense]

After the shock, I had a brief period of denial, then real anger. Then I wondered how would we respond. Then, I wondered where the fuck is the commander-in-chief.

Maybe He should just have told us he wouldn't rest until, like Obama, and then go back on vacation, like Obama?????

I think Bush handled the Crisis well. I give Him a AAA+++ on it.

 

[Si modo]

Funny, I didn't shed a tear. At all. Just quiet anger. And, that is still present at the same level.

The memorials do touch me, and I will cry at those, but not out of sadness, but out of beauty and pride.

 

[Sherry]

My first graders were doing their morning work, and I happened to be standing near the door. A fellow teacher went running past and I stepped out to ask her what was wrong. She was at the door to exit and turned and said, "Terrorists have attacked New York City and they're now evacuating the White House." I felt numb and I turned back to look at my students working, and felt an overwhelming rush of sadness that a certain sort of innocence would be lost for them on this day. I remember going home and hugging my children, and then we went to a church service.

 

[Si modo]

(Just a bit off topic...I think it is way cool that we have so many teachers who post here. They are heros every day.)

 

[Luissa]

My mother and I had stayed up all night watching a documentary about a town where a factory had been it's big employer. The documentary followed I believe three or four families for over ten years.
Also we had been having small earthquakes all summer, and my mom had woke me up a few times to ask if I had felt them. I never felt one.
Anyways, my mom came down and woke me up at 8, and I remember saying I didn't care if there had been another earthquake. When she told me what happened I got right up.

I watched the news for awhile, then tried to reach my best friend from childhood who I knew worked near the towers, to make sure she was alright. I was actually able to get hold of her, even though phones in New York even though phones were not working well due to heavy traffic or something.
She told me that she had been class in Brooklyn when it happened, and that I should call her mom to tell her she was alright.
Later on, I went to work, and I remember everyone was pretty quiet. I think everyone was just in shock.

 

[Nosmo King]

I was working in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania just a few miles south and east of Pittsburgh. I taught hazardous waste materials handling at a technical college. My supervisor had a Labor Day picnic at his home in Shanksville, Pennsylvania for all of us on the staff just the week before.

Just as I went into the classroom, the receptionist said a small, two engine plane had crashed into the WTC. I told the students that "if there are any news junkies in the room, today's headlines will feature something about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center in New York." Little did I know.

At 10:15, there was a scheduled break. The class was going well and the afternoon was to feature some hands on demonstrations about overpack barrels. I walked past the conference room where most of the staff gathered around a television. "What's up with the World Trade Center?" I asked. "The towers are gone!" said another teacher.

I called the class in from the break as channel 4 WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh broke the story of Flight 93. The phone rang. It was my supervisor advising us to cancel classes for today and get everyone out of the building as the doomed United flight had screamed to its death over his farm. Two days later, when work resumed, he told us of the debris that had blown into his front yard. Bits of newspaper, business letterhead, scraps of cloth were stuck up against the rhododendrons and privet hedges.

WTAE said the Fort Pitt, Squirrel Hill and Liberty Tubes tunnels were going to be closed and evacuation from the US Steel building had begun. I relied on both the Squirrel Hill and Fort Pitt tunnels to make it home. I had to take the PA turnpike some fifty miles out of my way to finally get back home. I remember paying the turnpike toll with tears welling up in my eyes. The turnpike toll taker was crying too.

I passed the Greater Pittsburgh airport on my commute back to Ohio. There were cops and security all over the place and not a plane in the clear blue September sky.

 

[Jon]

I was a senior in high school. I remember coming out of first period Calculus and one of my friends told me that someone had "bombed the Pentagon." I laughed at her and said that no one could bomb the Pentagon, and then headed to home room. During home room, we were all called to study hall to watch the news unfold. When the bell rang for home room to end, no one moved. We spent the entire first half of the day in study hall watching the TV, until the principal finally came and made us go to our classes for the second half of the day. I remember watching with my classmates as the towers collapsed. Everyone was really silent for the most of the day. Even when we went to our classes, all our teachers did was discuss the attacks. It was just a very somber day. Of course when it was announced that bin Laden was the suspected culprit, some of the more obtuse students in my classes were talking about "killing all the ragheads." I remember getting into some very heated discussions with many of my classmates on how ignorant and racist they all were. I don't know what was sadder, the terrorist attacks or the realization that most of my peers were fucking stupid.

 

[daveman]

(Just a bit off topic...I think it is way cool that we have so many teachers who post here. They are heros every day.)

Indeed.

 

[Luissa]

I was a senior in high school. I remember coming out of first period Calculus and one of my friends told me that someone had "bombed the Pentagon." I laughed at her and said that no one could bomb the Pentagon, and then headed to home room. During home room, we were all called to study hall to watch the news unfold. When the bell rang for home room to end, no one moved. We spent the entire first half of the day in study hall watching the TV, until the principal finally came and made us go to our classes for the second half of the day. I remember watching with my classmates as the towers collapsed. Everyone was really silent for the most of the day. Even when we went to our classes, all our teachers did was discuss the attacks. It was just a very somber day. Of course when it was announced that bin Laden was the suspected culprit, some of the more obtuse students in my classes were talking about "killing all the ragheads." I remember getting into some very heated discussions with many of my classmates on how ignorant and racist they all were. I don't know what was sadder, the terrorist attacks or the realization that most of my peers were fucking stupid.

We did the same sort of thing when Columbine happened my senior year. We didn't do anything the rest of the day, just watched the news.

 

[boedicca]

The first thing I remember is my husband waking me up to tell me that there was a terrible accident in NYC. He turned on the bedroom TV (in CA it was very early). The news showed a live shot of the WTC complex, smoke billowing from one of the towers. Just as I was saying "that's not an accident", the second plane hit.

We each sent emails and left phone messages for our staffs that they could (and should) stay home.

For my company, it was the beginning of the end. We had started recovering after the dotcom crash, but only made it through another year after 9/11 - and sold out in 2002. Economically, 9/11 a was double punch to the gut for small tech companies.

Culturally, it's the Day That Changed Everything for this generation, imo. For many adults, there is pre-9/11 life and post 9/11 life, in varying degrees from subtle to major. We're still in the aftermath and have a long ways to go to heal from it, as evidenced by our societal schizophrenia regarding the war against those who attacked us.

 

[goldcatt]

Funny, I didn't shed a tear. At all. Just quiet anger. And, that is still present at the same level.

The memorials do touch me, and I will cry at those, but not out of sadness, but out of beauty and pride.

I didn't cry either. That came later, of course. But that day it was shock, disbelief, a sort of daze. And yes, that quiet anger when reality set in, a feeling of helplessness, and fear for those I knew were there.

 

[Si modo]

I was a senior in high school. I remember coming out of first period Calculus and one of my friends told me that someone had "bombed the Pentagon." I laughed at her and said that no one could bomb the Pentagon, and then headed to home room. During home room, we were all called to study hall to watch the news unfold. When the bell rang for home room to end, no one moved. We spent the entire first half of the day in study hall watching the TV, until the principal finally came and made us go to our classes for the second half of the day. I remember watching with my classmates as the towers collapsed. Everyone was really silent for the most of the day. Even when we went to our classes, all our teachers did was discuss the attacks. It was just a very somber day. Of course when it was announced that bin Laden was the suspected culprit, some of the more obtuse students in my classes were talking about "killing all the ragheads." I remember getting into some very heated discussions with many of my classmates on how ignorant and racist they all were. I don't know what was sadder, the terrorist attacks or the realization that most of my peers were fucking stupid.

We did the same sort of thing when Columbine happened my senior year. We didn't do anything the rest of the day, just watched the news.

When I got to the lab that morning, we had all the lab computers monitoring the events. We got no research done. My discipline doesn't have many Americans in it, so out of our group of 21, there were only two of us watching (plus our research advisor).

Some of the comments from those non-Americans were out-of-line, way out of line. The other Americans from other research groups (not many of us) all managed to find each other and we pretty much stuck together the rest of the day. We had no tolerance for the insensitivites of the foreigners that day, and we knew we would get into it if we listened to them. That would not have been good or correct.

The university had a lot of Arabs who attended. They sort of just disappeared for several days. A good decision. And, not one incident, so that was refreshing.

 

[syrenn]

I was at work with the radio on when they were talking about a small plane crashing into the towers. Then they said it was a jet. The sioux chef and i went upstairs to the bar and turned on all of the screens and we watched as the second plane hit. I looked at him and said " we are at war" I was worried about my SIL knowing she works in the area and had meetings in the towers all the time.

The restaurant was closed but people on the street could see the screens were on and came in. We didn't say anything to them as the filtered in. We all just sat or stood there and everyone was silent as we watched the towers burn and fall.

 

[nia588]

me and my family were living Cairo at the time and i was watching some show on tv and my brother was sitting next and the phone rang, and it was for my brother. his friend told him 2 planes just flew into the twin towers in new york. my brother didnt believe him at first he thought he was joking.
so then my brother told me to turn on CNN to see if it was true. so I did. we were in shock at what we saw.
i didnt have any reaction at first no emotion because i think at the back of my head i really didnt believe what saw. but later on i started to feel scared. i felt like the world was out of control. i didnt know what was going to happen.

it still feels strange talking about that day. it was one of those days that seemed unreal to me.