Remembering 9/11

[Texsox]

I was leaving for work later than usual, I needed to stop by the airport and pick up co-workers that were flying down from Milwaukee. I was watching the Today show and trying to comprehend the first plane. At first I thought it was a single engine, solo kind of thing. As it was sinking in that a large jet accidentaly flew into the WTC, I was blaming it on malfunctioning autopilot type of thing, the second jet hit.

 

The next couple hours was a bit of a blur. Wondering what was going to happen next.

[DBAHO]

My parents are in New York over the weekend at the moment. Talking briefly to them yesterday, they went and saw the site of Ground Zero and said it was truly a sight to see.

 

As for that day, well it happened about 10:30PM down here and I remember watching it on the TV in my room just in shock.

[greasywheels121]

I was in the middle of the ISTEP testing (a standarized test you take your sophomore year, that you must pass to graduate). We were closed in our homerooms taking these tests for the first 3 hours of the day. I didn't get to hear anything about the attacks until about 11 that day. We had the coverage on in all of our classrooms the rest of the day.

 

I remember going home and watching hours of that coverage. It was just wild.

 

Also, a watch I ordered, came in the mail on that day, so the watch kind of reminds of 9/11.

 

It's crazy to think it's already been 4 years.

[DBAHO]

It's crazy to think it's already been 4 years.

^^^. It's gone so fast since then for sure.

[Brian]

I woke up and went straight to the shower and turned the radio on. The Score was on and at commercial but they came back and think it was Bernstein saying that they were going to immediate coverage because a plane crashed into one of the WTC building.

I went and turned the TV on just in time to see the 2nd plane hit.

 

Not just the day, but the weeks that followed were so surreal. I wanted anything to get back to some sort of normalcy. To me it was weird not seeing any planes flying for the first week cuz I live near an airport.

[Yoda]

I was in 6th grade and in my 1st hour class which was my Social Studies class and I remember that the teacher told us disaster was taking place as he spoke in the city of New York. He turned on the TV and we watched the whole hour. All of us saw the second plane purposely crash into the 2nd tower LIVE.

 

Amazing how its been 4 years since that Black Tuesday.

[Jake]

I was sitting in class and our administration didn't want to say much for fear of scaring the kids, but our teacher said a plane crashed into the WTC and it was a huge building in New York and no one is sure why it happened. She then said "I hope it wasn't a 'suicide sicko.'" Her fears were later proved correct, as we know.

[Chisoxfn]

I was laying in bed asleep and my mom came running down stairs and woke me up. She was like, Jason, a plane crashed into the World Trade center. At first, I didn't think much of it (I thought it was an accident and while sad, I figured it was a small plane and the building was meant to handle that).

 

I then got up (had school in the morning) and turned on the news and saw them talking about it being an accident and than pretty much right when I turned it on the 2nd plane hit. Thats when everything sunk in that this was no accident. It was just surreal, everything was in slow motion, 2nd plane hits and than they are talking about the plane hitting the pentagon and than eventually about the plane heading for the white house, which was the plane that went down in Pennsylvania thanks to those brave men and women.

 

I think I watched coverage for hours, drove to school (radio on), got to school (classes were cancelled) and went over to my dads work and we all just watched news and talked about it pretty much the whole day.

 

Truly a horrific day and one I'll never ever ever forget.

[FlaSoxxJim]

I had just gotten in to work and sat down at my computer when my wife called and told me about a plane that had hit one of the twin towers. I also figured it was a small plane and a tragic pilot error until i turned the TV on to see the second plane hit.

 

The eerie thing for my wife was that she had te TV on and it was our toddler son that first saw the station break to coverage of the crash. We had just taken him to his first space shuttle launch a couple of weeks before that, and I remember how much he loved it and screamed "ROCKET! ROCKET!" when the boosers fired and all that flame filled the sky. Well, my wife is doing dishes or something on thw morning on 9-11 and when my son started yelling "ROCKET! ROCKET!" in seeing all the flame coming out of the WTC my wife looked up and just froze in shock.

[LowerCaseRepublican]

I had my huge block of classes that day. So I had no TV in the morning since the roommate was sleeping. My TA told us that somebody had flown a plane into the WTC and my first reaction was "What kind of dumb f***tard softheaded pilot would do that?" Later I found out about the 2nd plane.

[Soxy]

I had 8am Spanish that day, and it was in the top floor of the farthest out building on campus. When I got out, at like 9:30 we were all walking down the steps and when we got to the ground floor of the building we couldn't even stand on the main floor because everyone was just standing staring at the tv and the plane in the building. I was really shocked, and I felt really odd about it. But it didn't make any sense to me at all. I felt like it totally wasn't real. So, I pushed through the crowd and walked to my next class (I didn't really understand the enormity of what happened). Anyway, the professor had the tv in class running and was just standing there crying and watching it. I would say I was one of maybe 3 kids out of 60 that actually showed up. But she said that there wouldn't be class, but if we wanted to we could stay and watch the coverage. I didn't stay, and I think I still didn't really understand. I think it only really sunk in when I was walking to the Commons/Student Union and I saw my friend who was running College Democrats, and he was just crying, flat out full scale crying. And I talked to him and gave him a hug and I think that's when I realized it was real. Anyway, went back to my dorm room, but I didn't have tv so I walked aorund the corridor until I found an open door with tv and just sat down and watched it with a complete stranger. We both just sat there in utter silence. I remember watching the first tower fall, and I was really scared then.

 

I called my dad and I asked him if this meant we were going to war and he said, Yes. Definitely the most surreal day of my life.

[AngelasDaddy0427]

I had just woken up in the morning... It was like 4 apartments ago for me now...

I woke up turned on the TV... I was actually watching the Today show before the planes hit...

I saw the entire thing... It was my first year of college and I couldn't miss class so I just went... I also went to work that day... It was like a normal day for me except most of my class mates ditched...

 

Anyway the thing I remember most was that people we're freaking out thinking gas was going up to 4 or 5 dollars a gallon... It was one local chain called Casey's that had jacked up the price and they got sued two months later...

[Texsox]

http://www.911digitalarchive.org/

[SnB]

I was in 2nd period spanish in my soph year of HS. I remember we had a sub that day. At the beginning of 2nd period, all the day's announcments are on the PA, at the very end, they said that they'd be making an imporant announcement at the end of the period. No one thought anything of it and then right before class ended, they announced it. The way they said it, it almost sounded like a hostage situation or something. We all passed classes wondering what was going on, 3rd period, the TV was on and we watched it for the rest of the day, in awe. Except for my history class, i remember that teacher well, he said we all needed a break from it and we learned about ancient rome. That day was the only day in high school my mom picked me up, i remember walking to the bus and she was there. The rest of that night was all a blur. I remember not wanting to go to sleep because i thought something else was going to happen.

 

Like greasy said, hard to believe that was 4 years ago.

[Soxy]

I forgot. As a religious school we had (optional) daily chapel. I decided to go, partly to get a reaction from the school pastor and president (both of whom are really wonderful men whom I really respect). Usually daily chapel has less than 50 people, but that day it was packed. People were sitting in the aisle, the choice loft in the narthex was completely full, the hallway outside the church was also packed. I just remember sitting there surrounded by my classmates and feeling so blessed to be part of such a really storng and caring community. It was a very sad service, but it felt really good to be with other people who were just as confused and scared as I was. . .

[Rex Kickass]

I was scheduling music for the Oldies station I worked on at the time. Streaming the last day of WNBC on the internet (from 1988) while I was running Selector. I heard something on the overhead radio about a plane hitting the World Trade Center from our wacky DJs. There was no TV in the studio, so they didn't know THAT much yet. I decided to see the wreckage so I walked into the breakroom and saw the second plane hit.

 

I started in full freakout mode - plotting to gas up the car and drive somewhere, anywhere to just get away from this. My boss finds me. "We need you now, we're doing local emergency coverage on all six stations - and you're going to run the show." So I did. For four hours. Then I had to do a five hour airshift after we went back to music and be the "happy DJ." I couldn't react for nine hours.

 

I went to bed numb. And I didn't know the whereabouts of three friends in New York City. Fortunately, they were all OK.

[Goldmember]

we were in process of moving into new house. i was at old house sleeping on couch. my mom was at new house cleaning. she tried calling a few times. finally i woke up enough to answer. she was obviously upset and very frantically said we've been attacked. told her to calm down and explain and she just said to turn on tv. turned it on a couple minutes before the second plane hit the wtc.

[Rex Hudler]

The Barons had just lost Game 5 of the Division Playoff Series to Huntsville on the Sunday before. If the Barons had won, they would have been hosting Game 1 of the Championship Series that night.

 

I woke up to a phone call from my roommate telling me to turn on the TV. Like many others, I got the TV on in time to see confused coverage and then the 2nd plane hit. I remember one of the TV guys saying they had no idea what was going on and wondered if it was some kind of major air traffic control accident. I immediately thought, "there is no way, this is definitely intentional". I still am not sure if I really understood the enormity of it at that time.

 

Well I took my quickest shower ever so I could see what else was going on. I got dressed and headed into work with no real new news at that time. I was listening to the radio on the way to work when I heard that they had ordered every plane in the sky to land and that air traffic in the whole country was being shut down. At that point, it hit me as to how big this was going to be.

 

I got to work and immediately went into my bosses office to see if anything else was going on. There are two offices with TV's so everyone was crowded into those two offices. After a couple of hours of doing nothing but watching coverage, the boss called a meeting. He said that he didn't think work was important at that time and that we were free to go. He said we could do whatever we wanted and deal with this however we wanted to, but that we had no responsibilities there.

 

People hung around a little longer talking and then went their separate ways. My roommate and I basically spent the rest of the day and night in front of the TV, watching everything we could.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

I was out at Wal-Mart picking up a few things that I needed to attend the sergeants academy ( a monthlong resident course that started the next day ). When I got to the gate of Ft. Stewart, where I was stationed, I noticed that they were searching cars and checking ID. They never did that before so I though things were wierd. I get home and turn on CNBC to see a huge plume of smoke over NYC. I figured there was a fire or something till I saw that the WTC towers were both down. I was like "oh s***".

[White Sox Josh]

I was going to the nurse on one of those "I feel sick, i might throw up" bs so i could get out of class. I saw a girl that i knew and was friends with crying and her mom was their. she mentioned something about virginia and that's all i heard. During ninth period i found out about the attacks.

[witesoxfan]

I just remember walking into 2nd period history class as an 8th grader, when our teacher said something along the lines of "Oh my God." We watched it the entire period, and I was just frozen in complete shock. I also recall another man who was for some reason in the class saying something along the lines of "It's gonna fall...all that fire will melt the metal, and it will just collapse." Pretty much one of the scariest things I've ever witnessed.

 

IIRC, the White Sox were also in New York at the time...I believe I read an article somewhere about how some of the Sox players witnessed it happen, and I also believe I've heard that they were going to visit it that day.

[White Sox Josh]

I just remember walking into 2nd period history class as an 8th grader, when our teacher said something along the lines of "Oh my God."  We watched it the entire period, and I was just frozen in complete shock.  I also recall another man who was for some reason in the class saying something along the lines of "It's gonna fall...all that fire will melt the metal, and it will just collapse."  Pretty much one of the scariest things I've ever witnessed.

 

IIRC, the White Sox were also in New York at the time...I believe I read an article somewhere about how some of the Sox players witnessed it happen, and I also believe I've heard that they were going to visit it that day.

i believe Buehrle did witness it happen.

[kapkomet]

I think I've shared this before, but I worked for an airline at that point in time. I just pulled into the parking lot when I heard about the first plane hitting over the radio. Didn't think much about it, went in and started working... then the second plane hit, and I went over to our control room, the next thing I saw was our FAA contact running into the room and telling us to "get our f***ing planes on the ground, and I don't give a s*** where they land." I was dumbfounded... for about the next hour it was absolute chaos, pilot's family members were calling asking us where their families were, etc. Then, outside our hanger at Dallas/Fort Worth, all the planes were just landing and parking all over the place, no gates were available, people were getting off the planes and being bussed to the terminals and told to leave the airport.

 

During this point in time, I'm watching the screen of where all the planes were in the country... all whittle down from 6000 planes in the air, to 2000 in about 30 minutes to less then 100 in an hour... and at that time the commercial software showed where Air Force One was... we watched the plane fly around all over the place, and about that time on the news all the media people were speculating, and we knew EXACTLY where they were.

 

As I walked from our control room back to my office, the silence at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport was deafning. It was one of the most surreal moments of my life - as I worked at one of the world's largest airports - and it was TOTALLY silent. It was eerie.

[Queen Prawn]

Did anyone watch the Flight 93 special on Discovery last night? That was something else. I ended up staying up for most of the 10 pm showing (saw the last half hour before I watched the first 1.5 hrs). I almost wasn't going to, but I did. Brian was watching what he could until he had to leave for work.

 

The one thing about that day that was really vivid in my mind after watching that was being relived that my dad wasn't going to work and then when Brian said he was (he worked at 18th and State and was on 3rd shift that week) how I really didn't want him to, but he said he had to and they weren't going to keep him holed up in his house in fear. He called me at about 11 that night and we talked for a half hour about the eerie silence from no planes, the occasion fighter jet that was flying above his building and all the guys were watching and about how he didn't want to hang up the phone because of all the "you never know" that hung in the air at that time.

Edited September 12, 2005 by Queen Prawn

[Kid Gleason]

I missed this thread yesterday.

 

I was on my way to work when the first plane hit, and they were talking about it on the radio, confused if it was a private plane or a jet.

 

Got to work and the boss said it was a jet. The second plane then hit, and my first words were "my God, it's a terrorist attack".

 

Our office at the time was a part of the owners house. We worked out of the big house, he lived in the "mother-in-law" apartment he built. We all left work and went next door to watch what was happening. He told us at that point he didn't think work mattered that day. Then the first building fell. I walked next door to where two people were working, told them the building had fallen. They asked what I meant. I told them "it...just fell and collapsed". They ran next door, I sat down on the stairs for a little while.

 

Then a little later, I went back, and then we saw the second building fall.

 

My boss then stood up, said "That's it, everything has changed, you guys get out of here, go get your familes and spend the rest of the day with the ones you love, please, go home". And we did.

 

My daughter was at a Kindercare at the time. Nobody was really on the roads, and the skies were eerily silent. When I got to the Kindercare all of the kids were asleep. The world at the time was being destroyed by hate and misunderstanding, and here I was standing amongst 20 kids, all sleeping because they had spent the morning playing, while their teachers tried getting glimpses of what a nightmare the world was, and tried to hold it together themselves. Seeing all of those kids laying there was probably the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It actually brought a smile to my face to see someplace so safe, so innocent, so peaceful.

 

I got my daughter, who was actually awake and sat up as soon as I got to her. We went home, I put the news on and watched it in and amongst keeping her head out of it all.

 

The next week was the same surreal week we all lived. But on Friday we went out to dinner with some neighbors. The restaurant, normally a pretty noisey place, was actually very subdued, with everybody watching, glued, to the TV sets on the walls. I guess I now forget how long it took for everything to unfold. One week was a LONG time with all of that going on, and for some reason now it seems an even longer time.

 

 

p.s. Anybody remember how creepy Halloween was that year? Fear of activities during the trick or treating? How few kids were out trick or treating. How few people were handing out treats?

Edited September 12, 2005 by Kid Gleason