Where were you? 9-11-01

[pgriz]

Was doing the usual mundane acts of regular life - reviewing work to be done, sales orders to process, and manpower to allocate. My wife called - said a plane hit a building in New York. Turned on the internet, in time to see the second plane hit. And so witnessed another chapter written about man's inhumanity to man.

I used to think that having strong convictions and beliefs worth dying for, was noble. I no longer think that.

 

[Forkie]

I came home from work for lunch and saw it on the TV. I was late back to work.

 

[momo3boys]

I was walking my daycare kids with my grandmother to the post office when someone came up to us and told us that there had been an accident in NYC. I didn't think much of it but decided to look at the TV when I got home anyway. I just sat down with two infants on my hips in shock. I don't know how long I was there, but I remember that miraculously the babies were so quiet. Like they knew something was wrong too. Later that night I prayed at church with some other people in town for the whole scary situation.

 

[SCraig]

Watching it live on the TV in my office, ignoring my boss's instructions to get back to work, wondering if the whole thing was some sort of a hoax or accident, and then realizing that it was not.

There are a lot of things in my life that I'm willing to forget or forgive. This is not one of them.

 

[usayit]

Woke up and saw the news of the first plane. I turned to my wife and said "WTF? How in the world did a small plane end up there?" (I later regretted my first reaction) Headed off to jump start my jeep and make my way to the local garage. Arriving at the garage, the mechanics were huddled around the radio and informed me that the 2nd plane hit and the Pentagon too. Got the battery and made my way to work holding back the emotions. At work, I walked to the conference room just in time to see the first building collapse.... it was that moment that suddenly it became "real".

Our regional director closed the office. No work was to be done anyways as the entire office was on last 2 months... facing a massive layoff. Immediately headed to the highest point in my home town.... I just had to see the smoke for myself. At that point, I started to make phone calls to my friends and family to make sure everyone got out of NYC.

The numerous funeral processions we saw in the area over the next few weeks was very difficult to bear witness.... it connected human loss to the whole ordeal.

 

[KenC]

Working here in Philly not far from some other potential targets, so we were sent home in the middle of the day. We also heard something about a small plane at first, then the actual horror slowly unfolded, although I didn't see any film until I got home and turned on the tv. I remember worrying about someone blowing up the train I was on, or some bridge it went over.

 

[mishele]

I was in a classroom w/ 4 and 5 year olds when someone came in and told us that a plane hit the a building in NYC. We turned the radio on in time to hear when the second one hit. I don't what is worse, seeing it or hearing that voice over the radio. The horror in the reporters voice sticks w/ me. You can't see what they are seeing but you know that it must be horrific. We kept the radio on long enough to hear the towers go down. We were then asked to turn it off, so we wouldn't scare the kids that were catching on to what we were listening to it.
After that, all concern turned to my sister-in-law that worked in Manhattan. As you can imagine it took a long time to get a hold of her. She had to walk across the bridge to Queens to get home.
I didn't actually get to see anything til my lunch break, where I went to a local bar just to watch the tv. (man, did I want a drink)
It was a very long day.

 

[MLeeK]

I got a voice mail from my husband during my first period class saying that he didn't know what happened but they believed the US was being attacked and he wouldn't be coming home for he didn't know how long-days, weeks... They actually knew less than the public at that point. A bit ironic.
I went for my morning break in time to see the second plane hit in the teacher's lounge. We ran business as usual until lunch that day and immediately after the kids had lunch they locked down every classroom. Being an art teacher I was in a portable building with no facilities in it. I remember having boys nearly in tears because they weren't allowed to go to the bathroom. After a debate with our principal for several minutes I told her I was bringing the kids out of the less than safe double wide trailer they were in and bringing them into the building. She wasn't happy with me, but I was much relieved and so were those boys.
By then I had talked with my husband a couple of times and there was serious fear that Ft. Hood or the schools around it would be hit. Hood because it's our largest military base. The schools because of the desire to hit American's where it hurts-our people and what hurts more than losing children.
We were not allowed to tell the students anything that had happened. I thought that to be the stupidest thing I'd ever heard. Did they really think that these kids weren't going to see, hear or that their parents weren't texting them to be sure they were OK? The gossip and rumors among the kids were INSANE.
We didn't know if they were even going to put the kids on the buses and let them go home or how long we'd be there.
Someone got it together because by the end of the late bus schedule the kids were loaded and the walkers gone. It wasn't very wisely done if the school system was so "worried" but we were headed home and everyone was gone.
I lived in military housing at the time. I picked my kids up from their respective schools and headed home. It took me HOURS to make the 10 minute in rush hour drive house which wasn't on the base proper. It was one of the outlying housing developments. As I FINALLY got to the entrance they wouldn't let me in. I hadn't brought my purse with everyone's ID's in it. They held us there for another hour COMPLETELY searching my vehicle, verifying my ID with my husband's unit as well as our kids...
There were sometimes checks going on to the main post back then, but rarely. And never for the kids. I had never needed an ID to go into our housing area. Forgetting my purse was nothing. I rarely carried it unless we were going onto the main post. I carry it without fail now.

I have no idea what went on in my husband's unit that day and I don't know as I want to know any more than he told me. He was on the airfield so I couldn't get to him even if I could get on post-which would have taken hours upon hours. We figured we wouldn't see him for days at the very least. He did get to come home late that night, but when he left again we knew it could be for the day or for weeks, months...

Not only was the shock of the attack enough to rock our world, the sudden realization that our decision to go military-seeing how we hadn't been to war in so long it was pretty safe-was pretty naive. We lived in limbo for weeks as decisions were made soldiers were deployed and the reality of military life set in-deep.

 

[bobandcar]

I was sitting in my automotive class at college my second year. About 1000am they came over intercom and said school is closing in 15 minutes. Get out or the doors will be locked on you.

That's all they said. Didnt know what was going on till I got home that day.
A lot of my wife's family are firefighters and Delaware state police. Some of them went up with some philadelphia units to help with rescue. None of them except 1 uncle will ever talk about what they saw.

 

[MLeeK]

I was sitting in my automotive class at college my second year. About 1000am they came over intercom and said school is closing in 15 minutes. Get out or the doors will be locked on you.

That's all they said. Didnt know what was going on till I got home that day.
A lot of my wife's family are firefighters and Delaware state police. Some of them went up with some philadelphia units to help with rescue. None of them except 1 uncle will ever talk about what they saw.

We have friends who helped at ground zero. One of them is seriously warped from it. Serious PTSD. I can't imagine the horrors. My mind won't let me.

 

[sapper6fd]

I was getting ready for work and caught the news on TV before leaving. Needless to say - I was late for work. For the rest of the day I was glued to the radio listening to what was occuring. I was at the time a Combat Engineer in the Army and all I could think was let me at'em.

 

[KmH]

I was sleeping until my sister called me shortly after the second plane hit the south tower and told me to turn on the television. I was in Arizona so there was a 3 hr time difference from New York.

 

[cguron]

I was driving to work at around 8AM on I-35W North between the Diamond Lk Rd and W46th St exits when I heard the news on NPR and interview with Minnesota visitors in Manhattan who relayed the news to the Minnesota Public Radio morning host. One person described the scene right after the crash on to the first tower. I spoke to my brother who at that time worked in midtown Manhattan, he briefly summarized the sad scene. Moments later, on arriving at work I was terrified to see the buildings on fire and collapsing. Rest of the extremely sad ....

 

[rexbobcat]

I was in either music class or homeroom in third grade. I had no idea what was happening until maybe a year later. All I knew was that it was something bad because all of the teachers were crying and the news was playing on every TV. To be honest, I really didn't care back then as long as whatever bad was happening wasn't happening to me. Heh...

 

[snowbear]

I was at work. When we heard of Flight 11 hitting the WTC, we went into the our manager's office and turned on her TV, just in time to see Flight 175 hit. Flight 77 hit the Pentagon as a coworker and I were installing some software for a Circuit Court judge. When we got back to our office (across the street from the courthouse), we found out about Flight 93.

Not much more work was done that day. Ernie (my coworker) & I just kept looking out the window, towards Andrews AFB.