where were you 9/11 ?

[Lathum]

I was at my best friends, I saw both towers go down, please share your thoughts and memories.

[samifan24]

I had just woken up from a nap in between classes and the kid who lived across the hall told me to come in here, telling me that "the WTC towers blew up." I remember telling him not to joke around about a thing like that and I walked around to where the TV was (you couldn't see it from the hall) and sure enough there were the two towers ablaze.

I still remember walking into my Intro to Lit class and we all just sort of sat there, unable to concentrate. I will remember those first few hours and exactly what I did for the rest of my life.

[General Mike]

I was laying in bed listening to the radio when the 1st plane hit. I wasn't really sure what was going on, but then woke up and turned on CNN. A very sad day for me. I couldn't stay here, so I went driving around New Jersey.

[Nyarlahotep]

I was at work with no radio or tv.

[SackAttack]

I was at work for my first-ever 6 am shift.

6 am doesn't agree with me under the best of circumstances, but when my boss, whom I barely knew at that point, walked up and told me a couple of planes had crashed into the World Trade Center and another into the Pentagon, my first reaction was, "you have to be fucking kidding me."

He went into the breakroom where the big screen TV was, I followed a moment or two later, and walked in just in time to see both towers crash to the ground.

The single most sobering moment of my life.

[TredWel]

I was coming out of my Real Analysis class (I never liked 8:30 AM classes) at 9:45, when I saw that the TV was on in the opposite class, telling us about the news.

[VPI97]

It was my son's first morning home from the hospital after his birth on 9/8. Having the week off of work, I was laying half-asleep in bed when I heard my wife say something about a plane crashing...and I thought that I could hear the TV talking about the World Trade Center. So, I sat up and watched the reports coming in on NBC about the first plane while my wife continued to breast feed next to me. After a few minutes, I went downstairs to make a pot of coffee and turned on the TV just to see the second plane hit. My parents were in town for the birth and my mom had fallen asleep on the couch the night before, so the "HOLY SHIT!" that I screamed as I saw the second plane woke her immediately. We both just stood there and watched the reports and speculation for a while before either of us could do anything else.

What a horrible day that was.

[JeeberD]

I had just gotten out of the shower and was getting ready for work when a co-worker called me and told me to turn on the TV. I asked him what channel and he told me any channel. My first thought was that our OG must been on fire or something, so I asked him what was going on. He told me that the WTC towers were gone and that a plane had hit the Pentagon. That's when I turned on the TV and saw the huge cloud of dust over New York City.

I had to go to work that morning and wait tables. It was incredibly difficult to put on a happy face. My usual greeting to tables is "Hi, how are y'all doing today?" but that just didn't seem right to ask. Our boss turned on a TV back in the kitchen so that we could watch the news coverage.

I was actually a double that day, so I had to go back to work at 5pm. We got the word aroun six that we were going to close early that night, at 8pm (instead of the usual 10pm). Around seven pm I got a large group that came in to celebrate a birthday. The table was joking around and laughing the whole time, and it felt totally inappropriate. The worst part was when we had to sing our OG birthday song, which starts off with "Buona Festa, what a joyous day..." I've never had such difficulty singing a stupid song like that before.

I remember when I finally left the building. My manager walked me out to the front door and told me to look at the sky, that I would see someting that I had never seen before and would probably never see again. And sure enough, I looked up and there wasn't a single object moving in the night sky (which is VERY strange considering how close we are to DFW airport)...

[GrantDawg]

I was working in the office (I work at home) and was watching Today. Matt Laurer was interviewing somebody, and I didn't really care so I wasn't paying attention. What did catch my attention was a sudden break in the conversation with a "we'll be right back" kind of segue-way. I perked up because I know that generally means breaking news and they need to get it together.

I flipped it over to Fox News to see if anything was going on. They were breaking with a fire a WTC. They didn't know much more. They were trying to get pictures. I flipped back to Today and they said a small commuter plane had hit one of the towers. I can’t remember how long it took to get pictures, maybe five minutes. Once I saw the size of the hole and the smoke, I decided to wake up the wife because I felt like this was something big.

We sat on the bed, flipping between Fox and NBC. Both were starting to get good feeds on the building. I told Steph then that it was going to be hard to get people of the upper floors. We watched feeling sorry for those people trapped.

One of the Fox commentators said something along the lines of "I know it is early to say, but you can't help but think of terrorism when you see something like this" and began to talk about the WTC bombing that had happened ten years before. I told Steph that was just irresponsible to bring up. There is nothing suggesting that here, even though they kept mentioning it was a clear day. It was about that time the second plane hit.

Several things went through my mind as my wife was screaming beside me. First, This is an attack. Second, where is my daughter (she was at school). Third, I just watched hundreds of people die, live. I was shocked. I kept repeating, "we are under attack" while my wife was crying, "why would they do that?"

My wife and I sat and watched in horror as the scene progressed. The mention of a fire at the Pentagon (which followed with fires at the Capital building and the Treasury building, which didn't exist) made everything total chaos. I told Steph that if they didn't get the fires under control that the top of the tower would fall. I was wrong. The whole tower fell as we watched.

Nothing has ever came close to that feeling of horror and hopelessness that I felt on that morning. I hope nothing ever will.

[GrantDawg]

Originally posted by JeeberD

I remember when I finally left the building. My manager walked me out to the front door and told me to look at the sky, that I would see someting that I had never seen before and would probably never see again. And sure enough, I looked up and there wasn't a single object moving in the night sky (which is VERY strange considering how close we are to DFW airport)...

Yeah, I remember about lunch time going in to Conyers to pick stuff up at Walmart (mostly just to get out of the house. Trying to pick up some normal feeling). As we drove, I told Stephanie to look up. You can't drive through Conyers without seeing 3-6 planes lining up to land at Hartsfield. There was absolutely nothing.

I also remember after the planes started flying again. It was so hard not to just stare at them as they flew over that I was almost always on the verge of driving off the road.

[RPI-Fan]

I was in school, at health class. We turned on the TV after the teacher got a phone call from the office or something.

I didn't think much of it at first.

When I heard about it, it was a bit shocking of course. And also, I had thought my dad was flying to Washington (from Albany, but this was when they didn't know where the planes had taken off from). So of course, I was a bit concerned. As it turned out, he left on Monday, but nevertheless, it was a little worrisome.

After that we sort of went on with our day, and had a soccer game that afternoon. It was scheduled to play, until like 2pm when they cancelled it.

[Chief Rum]

Fell asleep on the couch in my apartment in Anaheim the night before (as I sometimes did when it was hot at night--and it's always hot at night in California in September).

My brother (my roommate at the time) walked in and woke me up at around 9 a.m. PDT (12 p.m. EDT). He told me a friend of ours called him on his cell and said planes had hit the WTC and they were gone.

He told me this as he turned on the TV (in the same room I was sleeping). I basically said "no fucking way", then when he turned the TV on, we were seeing shots of the WTC. It took us about an hour or two to piece together the WTC was indeed actually gone (had been for an hour or two before we woke) and that we were looking at old, pre-fall shots of the WTC.

Then, of course, the planes into the buildings, over and over and over again, courtesy of CNN. We spent the whole day watching TV (I still remember it was a Tuesday...how weird, unless my memory is leaving me).

Every time I think my support for a war on terrorism is lagging, I think about that plane flying into the second tower. It's burned into my memory forever. That usually does the trick.

CR

[TroyF]

I had went to bed the previous night after watching the Denver Broncos open Investco Field with a big victory over the Giants. I went to bed thinking about how horrible Ed McCaffrey's injury was and wishing they wouldn't replay it until the end of time.

I woke up and got into the shower. I heard the phone ring, saw it was my dad on the caller ID and decided not to answer. I was headed over there anyway and then to a couple of job interviews. (I had just moved to Denver 2 weeks earlier) Driving to my dads I was listening to a CD. I decided to listen to some sports talk. When I flipped it over to radio, the first words I heard were "The second tower has come down, the second tower is down"

TroyF

[Honolulu_Blue]

I was in Washington, DC. I had come into the office early that morning, before 8:45 or so, because I had been on vacation the last few days. I had actually flown into National Airport that evening around 10:0 pm (returning from watching a NHL prospects camp in Michigan).

I was sitting at my desk, drinking coffee, and surfing the net. You know, getting warmed up for the long day. I think I was reading some ign.com review of Transformer toys or something intellectual. A co-worker walked by my office and said "Some just flew a plane into the WTC." My first thought was "What kind of jack-ass flies a plane into a giant, fucking building? It's pretty hard to miss. Maybe he passed out or something." I was thinking a small plane. One with propellers and such.

Co-Worker walks by again and says "A second plane just hit." At that point I thought "One, maybe a mistake. Two. No fucking way." I walked over to a conference room where a TV had been set up. I stood there stunned, watching the smoke and flames billow-up from the towers. We stood there watching for a moment and I looked out of the window in the room. The side of the conference room is all windows and looks out over the Potomac.

That's when I saw the smoke.

It took me a second to realize and then I said, at work, "Holy shit. They bombed the Pentagon." Everyone looked over and saw the thick, dark cloud of smoke scarring the clear sky. Some people said that it wasn't the Pentagon, but I was pretty sure. This was all before anything was reported about the Pentagon.

I stood there for another few minutes and decided "Fuck it. I am going home." I grabbed my laptop and walked home. As I left I kept hearing reports of another plane coming towards DC (the one that crashed in Penn) and a car bomb near the State Building.

I walked home and it took about an hour. It was incredibly surreal. People wandering around the streets, trying to use cell-phones, the streets grid-locked with cars trying to get out. My walk home took me through the National Mall, past the White House, Congress, Supreme Court. The roads were all blocked off, so I had to walk way out of my way to get home.

I finally got home at sat in front of the TV all day, stunned. It was hot. I was exhausted. I fell asleep every few hours for about 15-30 minutes at a time. Not sure why. Just overwhelmed I guess.

[JonInMiddleGA]

I was here at home, sleeping in after staying up late with some paperwork.

My wife woke me to take a look at CNN after seeing the footage of the first tower strike. I got up in time to see everything that followed.
And I remember staying in front of the TV until after 3 a.m. the next morning.

What I remember most from the day though are three things I did that day -- a round of telephone calls to radio stations to get them to pull one of our client's commercials off the air (it was a military-themed humor spot, inappropriate under the circumstances) -- trying to explain to my then three-year old son what had happened & why mama & daddy kept crying -- and trying to reach a close friend of ours who normally used the WTC subway stop on her way to work and whose fiance often had to go to the WTC for work (both were fine and were elsewhere at the time as it turned out).

[MIJB#19]

I was at school and surfing the FOFC boards on a public pc. (Actually, this forum was the place were I heard about it at first.).
I figured it was a joke, went to class and amazingly I didn't notice why a group of about 40 people were staring at the tv hanging about over my head. Then class basically got cancelled, hardly any students showed up (but I had no idea why, the teacher didn't tell anything.)
When I went back into the hallway, I finally noticed the tv showing smoking towers and continues replays of air planes flying into the towers...
Within 10 minutes, I went home by train (usually nobody in the trains talk, but this afternoon all was different) and when arriving home, I decided to get back to FOFC (interested in news about FOFCers supposed to be at the WTC area) and listen to the radio as well. (In between I went up and down the stars in house to watch tv).
I completly forgot about the annual meeting for the volleyball club, by the way, that was planned for the same day.

[Dutch]

I had just returned from work (It was around 4 pm in Turkey....and about primetime TV viewing in Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan/Saudi Arabia.....btw) and a Turkish TV guy was just fixing my cable when the scene of the first tower was on tv ablaze....

We live in a guarded American only security compound here and my first reaction was to close all the curtains in my apartment. My family and I had just arrived in Turkey a few months earlier and were pretty nervous for a couple of weeks afterward.

But as it turned out, the Turks were highly sympathetic as they had seen their share of uneccessary blood spilled in their own country due to terrorism.

Well, I think it was 4pm.....I can't remember...

[ice4277]

I was in my Broadcast and Cable Law class, and had just come from a class beforehand, so I hadn't heard anything. A couple friends walked into class after me and told me a plane had hit the WTC, but no other details were known. We basically went through class oblivious to the situation; when class was over we walked down the hall to the TV station to get more news, only to find out all at once that both towers had been hit and fell, another plane had hit the Pentagon, and there may be more. Talk about a body blow, that is a lot to digest in 10 seconds.

[CamEdwards]

I was in Enid, Oklahoma to begin shooting a documentary on the military in the state. I woke up around 7:00, got to the coffee shop around 7:35, and was talking with my photographer when my phone rang. It was my boss calling from Oklahoma City, telling me to find a television.

Hours later, when I finally left work (ended up cancelling the shoots at Vance AFB when they went to maximum security), I drove to the babysitter's to pick up my son, then just a year old.

I remember holding him so close. I remember hanging on to him, as if he somehow needed to be comforted. Of course, it was me that needed the human contact.

I remember the gas lines, people charging 5 bucks a gallon. I remember feeling helpless because I wasn't working at the radio station and so I had no special access to news.

I remember feeling so angry, so sad. The heartbreak's never really left either. As Chief Rum said, all you have to do is think about what you saw that day... really think about it... and the heartache is still there.

[FBPro]

Family and I were on vacation, wife and I were driving around sight-seeing and we began to hear news of it over the radio and assumed (as most others) that the plane that hit was a small commuter plane.

[Ben E Lou]

On Tuesday mornings, a group of Moms from Lakeside High School meets in a home at 9:30am to pray for the school, kids, administration, etc. A year or so previously, they asked me to start attending. So, I was about to leave my office to go to Moms in Touch when my intern arrived. He told me that a plane had crashed into the WTC. We had a brief conversation about it, and I continued out the door. Neither of us thought about terrorism at that point. However, I had been in my car for less two minutes when they announced the 2nd plane had hit. I was on Henderson Mill Road. Before anyone said "terrorism", I picked up my cell phone to call Drew (my intern) at the office and tell him, because we didn't have a TV or radio in that office. Before he could answer the phone, they announced "the Pentagon is on fire." (It was before they determined it was a plane). I was particularly disturbed for Drew at that point, because his father works very near the Pentagon. When he answered, I told him the news, and to take the rest of the day off.

I quickly decided that being with a group of people praying was exactly where I wanted to be during that time, so I continued on my course. When I walked in the door, the hostess was on the phone with her husband, who was calling to tell her. None of the ladies knew of the news yet, so I was there as pretty much all of them (around 6 or 8) burst into tears. We turned on the TV for a few moments and watched in stunned silence, and then someone suggested that if there EVER was a time to pray, it was now. We prayed with our eyes open and the sound turned down on the TV.

I'll never forget this: Someone had the wisdom to pray "Lord, there may be other planes out there with hijackers on them. If there are, I pray that their efforts would be thwarted right now!" I have to believe that prayer made a difference over Pennsylvania.

I watched the coverage at the home with the ladies. An hour or so into it, her husband, who is an architect, came home from work. He commented that he was afraid the buildings were going to completely collapse from the structural damage, and about 10 minutes later the first tower fell.

At some point in the late morning/early afternoon, my wife, whose office didn't close, went home to get a TV to take it to her office. She said it was SO surreal to drive on I-285 and see virtually no traffic, and to see the traffic signs with the message: "NATIONAL EMERGENCY. ALL PLANES GROUNDED. AIRPORTS CLOSED."

I think I went home to watch the coverage around 2pm that day. At some point in the afternoon, I got a church to open up their youth building for a special gathering that night. 50-100 high school kids showed up to process and pray. The first question I was asked by one of them was: "Are we safe? I mean, is it over?"

[Bee]

I had taken a week off before starting my new job. It was (and is) the day before my birthday. My wife was in Denver and was scheduled to fly home that day and be back to celebrate my birthday with me on the 12th. I was on the couch flipping through the channels, when they broke through with the news. The first thing I did was check on when my wife's flight was supposed to leave Denver. She was still at the hotel when I called. I remember just sitting in front of the TV all day (usually on hold with the airlines trying to find a way to get my wife from Denver to D.C.) and seeing the constant replaying of the videos.

[illinifan999]

I was at school. Didn't even hear about the attacks until I got home. Teachers didn't tell us a thing. One person found out, but she was the school idiot, and she said Iraq is attacking the Pentagon, so no one really believed her.....

[Easy Mac]

At school in a health class. That got over, so I went to Math. A girl in the class said planes had flied into the WTC's and the Pentagon. We were all shocked. Then the teacher came in and said "You have probably all heard the news." Then, he just went straight to teaching for the next hour. Then went to my World Politics class, where we talked about it for the whole term. First day of my Sophomore year.

[Ben E Lou]

The schools here in Atlanta went into lockdown pretty quickly. The high schools just watched the news all day long. They tried to shield the younger kids from it, but it didn't work in most instances.

[Ksyrup]

I was right here. At the time, we had no TV in our office, and all of the internet sites were swamped for at least 30-45 minutes after it happened, so I was getting my info from this board and from my wife on the phone. In fact, I can still remember my wife calling me to tell me about the first plane, and being on the phone with her when the second plane hit and her screaming and crying.

[oykib]

I had just gotten home from work and turned on Sporting News Radio on the Internet. Scott Wetzl was talking about the first plane after the stream finished buffering (I was still on 56k at the time). I turned on NHK News just in time to see the second crash.

[Fritz]

the day the towers went downI was laying out of work. THe TV was on ABC from the night before, andI had just turned it on and was going to flip over to sports center when Good Morning mentioned a fire in the first tower.

As the day started to unfold a bunch of us in the FOBL started talking back and forth to each other. A few guys were in DC and another few were in New York. Most of the day was spent doing the normal jibberjabber. But it was a little different because sence of anxiety in the air when one of our guys had to go off-line or if we couldn't track someone down.

The part of the day chatting with those folks is etched in my mind more strongly than watching the towers fall, or watching the tv stunned and shaking with with more anger than I could imagine a person was capable of.

[Leonidas]

I was on a deployment in Italy in a NATO job. It was about 3 PM we had CNN World report on the tube. They had the initial shot of a smoldering tower and the report some plane had run into it. My intial thought was of the bomber that hit the Empire State Building during WWII, but that was under foggy conditions. I could see there wasn't a cloud in the sky in NY.

Then a few minutes later they had a guy on the phone across the street from the WTC who saw the plane hit saying how it was a big jetliner and it appeared to be deliberate. Then during the interview the guy on the phone starts yelling "Oh my God there's another one!" And the next instant the other tower has a fireball coming out of the side. My very first thought was hoping maybe it was a news plane or something accidentally hitting the other tower while filming, but the guy on the phone was adament that it was another jetliner and it was deliberate.

My next thought was, "Oh shit, we're at war." Then there was the whole agonizing period with the Pentagon attack, the rumors of planes flying for the White House, etc. I couldn't get a phone call through to my wife so I emailed her. I recall telling her I was literally shaking with rage. I then told her to stay home (we lived in military housing) and do whatever the Security Police tell her. I then had to go outside and just pace for about 15 minutes to gather myself. I then went back in and watched the towers fall with my European friends in NATO.

We had British, German, French, Spanish, Danish, Italian, and Turkish military in our office. All extremely supportive in the dire hour. It was real hell knowing I was on a military deployment overseas and I was in a safer location than my family back home.

[cuervo72]

I was at work, just like I am now. Someone came by and said a plane has flown into one of the WTC buildings, so I made my way to the the lunchroom to check out what was going on on TV. I figured it must have been a small plane that had veered off course...then the second plane hit. I watched for a while, then at about 10 or so they announced they were going to close the building. That was the strangest drive home ever.

Right around 10:00 a delivery truck pulled up to our loading dock, and one of the staff here freaked out and told everyone to leave the building, that a strange truck was out back, and that it could have a bomb. We're a gov't facility, but we're in Gettysburg, so I knew she was probably overreacting (the poor driver was REALLY confused). But by that time the pentagon had been hit, so many were fearing attacks everywhere.

[Maple Leafs]

I was sitting at work when a girl came by and mentioned that the guy in the cafeteria said a plane or maybe two had hit the towers. We assumed they would be small planes. We joked about it.

The office I work in had no TVs, but we all had high-speed internet. I remember going back to my desk and deciding to check the CNN web site to see what was up. It wouldn't load. Niether would any of the other news sites I usually read. That's when I started to realize that something big was happening.

I remember one guy in the office, who didn't even work there (someone's friend from another floor) running around in a panic after the Pentagon plane hit. He was convinced we were all going to die, that planes would just start falling from the sky.

Maybe the oddest memory from that day was reading a headline on a Canadian news site saying "WTC Tower Collapses" and not understanding what it meant. It seems strange now, but at the time I just couldn't comprehend what that meant. Did something fall off the roof? Did some siding come down? What does "collapse" mean?

[Radii]

I was "working from home" at the time and we had nothing to do at work, so, I didn't wake up that day until about noon. I called work and found out everyone else had gone home, and I just stayed glued to the TV all day.

[Calis]

I had just got into work, and saw a group of people huddled around our training room watching the news.

Needless to say, I worked a very long couple of days following that.

[sturmie]

i was unemployed at the time in michigan while my (then girlfriend) wife was in grad school--i didn't really know anyone else in the area. i remember getting a few phones calls in the morning while i was still in bed, but didn't answer b/c it was her friend each time.

finally, i got out of bed around 11am and check the answering machine--her friend sounded really distraught (for obvious reasons) and said "i just wanted to make sure u guys were OK". the message sounded a little weird, so i called her back to see what was up.

she told me to turn the TV, so i did...i watched for the next week or so straight--tearing up every time i'd see someone on there looking for their friends/family....matter of fact, i feel a few comin' on right now *sniff*...i think i'll always fight 'em back when thinking about those people that lost someone close to them.

dammit--i'm at work now and need a tissue.


jeff

[WussGawd]

Ironically, I got back home from my brother's wedding on September 10, 2001 in Colorado. 1 of my brother-in-laws works in a building just a few blocks away from the WTC. So my sister-in-law spent much of her second day as a newlywed worrying about him, until she heard from him.

At the time, I worked a 9:30 to 6 shift, so I didn't have any reason to get up too early. I logged onto Usenet, a newsgroup I visit, and somebody had posted a short article about a plane crashing into the WTC. At first, I honestly thought it was a joke, but out of curiosity, I turned on CNN, and by then, both planes had hit the WTC and the one had hit the Pentagon. I heard about the crash in Pennsylvania only later.

Anyway, not knowing whether I was working that day or not, (I work in the financial services business), I went into work. It was like attending a really bad wake. After a couple of hours they sent us home. I spent the rest of the day watching CNN and shortly thereafter my wife joined me. I later found out that a coworker of mine had a cousin who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. He didn't make it.

The most poignant moment for me came about a week later. The department I was working in called on a select group of brokerage firms as clients...some of which had their main offices in lower Manhattan. For some reason, it was very creepy to be going down a list of clients and stating who had and probably had not survived on our contact list.

I haven't watched any of the 9/11 coverage after about the first week. I won't today. I just think life is too short to mourn something like that forever (particularly since I didn't have a close family member affected). I feel for the victims, and particularly the victims families. I remember having a very hard time dealing with holidays and my dad's birthday every year after he died for a number of years...and I didn't have the media pounding on my frickin' door the last week before it happened every year for interviews either. I really wish the media would start to let go of playing up the tragic part of things and let the survivors deal with what has to be a very poignant day by themselves. I have to admit that if I had lost a child, or spouse, or sibling, or what not in that disaster, that I'd probably kick the sh*t out of any moron from CNN, NPR, Fox News, ABC, et al. who wanted to stick a microphone in my face to do an interview on the second anniversary of the death of a loved one.

[Marmel]

I was in Daytona, FL, on my honeymoon. In fact, we must have just left the hotel for breakfast at IHOP when it happened. We had a long breakfast and stopped in a little convienence store on the way back to the hotel. I remember the line was moving slow in the store, and when we were finally next in line I also remember the cashier telling some old guy in front of us that her sister works near the top of the WTC. I thought to myself, who cares?, just get this line moving already. I was still unaware.

We get back to the hotel, and I tell the wife I am going to take a shower. A couple minutes later she comes into the bathroom and tells me somebody bombed the WTC. I said What the fuck? And came running out to see. It was already like 11am at that point, so I was trying to piece together what happened. When they showed the footage of the collapse, I remember just lying on the bed, and asking my wife this question, which I will never forget: "They are fucking gone?"

[Celeval]

My girlfriend's (fiancee's, now) father was in the hospital in Atlanta, and I was already taking the day off work to go in with her. She left early with one car, I was finishing up some work-at-home when she called and told me something weird was on the radio. I made a mental note to turn it on and went back to work - called my boss on the phone to go over some things. He said a plane had hit one of the towers, turn on CNN. I did, just after the second plane hit - watched the replays of that. Immediately shut down all work for the day, found a non-highway route to the hospital, and spent the rest of the day there.

[FrogMan]

I was at work, just like I am today. No radio or TV, limited contact with the outside world, as I'm a production planner. Word started coming from the sales department that a plane had hit the twin towers, but more like a rumor than anything. At first I thought it was a cessna kind of plane. Was able to get on CNN and got the confirmation. Then the shock...

Forever, whenever something big will happen, terrorism will always be in the back of my mind. Before 9/11, never would I have thought this was possible in America, I've learned. And it sucks...

FM

[EagleFan]

I was at work and a group of us were joking with a Giants fan, whose team had just lost to Denver the night before. Someone came up and said something about a plane hitting the WTC but thought it was a small plane. One of us said "Man those Giants fans are taking that loss rather tought." As that point someone had come in late and told us what he heard on the radio and the office fell silent.

I went and turned on a radio and that's when we found out that there were fires in the Pentagon. We all just kind of stayed frozen in disbelief as we listened.

It was a casino that I worked at so many of us headed downstairs to one of the pits, there was a wall of TV's that always had news or sports on at that time. We couldn;t believe what we were seeing.

We tried to get back to work and then we heard about the first tower falling. Some of us went back down to see the news and saw the second tower go. I can remember a woman standing there with tears streaming down her face telling us that she lived in New York and was hear with friends on a bus trip and that her husband worked in that building. I will never forget the sick feeling in my gut when she said that.

The day continued without much work getting done and later was one of the most annoying feelings ever. Simulcasting had stopped and they had the news on those TV's as well. An older gentleman comes up to us complaining about them not having the horse racing on, very angrily. That is another feeling that I will never forget, pure hatred for someone for being so callous.

That weekend I went up there with my brother to help out, in whatever way we could. It was a total war zone up there, I can;t think of any other way to describe it. It must have been complete hell to be there that day.


Side note: A few ex-coworkers worked in the area. All were okay except for one that was killed. I don't know his entire story but I know that his shift was ending at 9 that morning and he worked on one of the floors that took the direct hit from the first plane. For his sake I hope it was over quick without any suffering.

[Samdari]

I was at work, on an Army base near DC. I was in the middle of preparations for an upcoming field test, so was quite busy. My supervisor and I had a meeting with the head of the metal shop, so I met him at his office to go to the meeting. He mentioned something about "a couple of planes crashing into the WTC" Not many details had made it to cnn.com yet, so thats all we knew. While we were in the meeting, a shout goes out from the break room, "they just hit the pentagon" Watched the tv in the break room for enough time to be watching as the towers do down.

After I left the shop, returned to my desk, returned calls to my wife and my mother assuring them I was alive. Did I mention the part about working on an Army base? Well, it went in to full prepare to defend against air attack mode, sending home non-essential civvie employees (that's me, non-essential).

I got to my home (about 12 miles south of the pentagon) to find my friend sitting in my living room. He lived about 6 miles from the pentagon and had access to his home blocked off by authorities.

[Castlerock]

I was in Denver on a business trip. Woke up, and turned on the TV. Normal day. Took a shower and came out of the bathroom to find out that the world changed while I was in the shower.

I was with a bunch of other people from New York and Boston so when we couldn't fly, we charted a bus and left on Thursday AM bound for New York. The smoke was still pouring out of the site when got to NY on Friday night. The remaining 4 of us from Boston rented a car and drove back to Boston.

I have a very unique perspective of the days following Sept 11. From talking to people in line at McDonalds in North Platte Nebraska to seeing the increasing number of American flags every mile we drove east.

[vtbub]

Just moved to where my wife and I live now. Across the street are two Vermont State office buildings, Social Security is our next door neighbor, and the Federal Building is on the same block very visable out our living room window.

I'm sitting right about where I was two years ago today. A friend called us to tell us what had happened. We had just gotten off the phone with my in-laws who had the very happy news that our pre-mature niece, born two months early, was being transferred to a hospitial closer to home. We got yanked from feeling very high, to very low.

While that surreal scene was playing out on television, we could watch them search the Social Security and Federal buildings for bombs.

[Havok]

I lived in Maryland at the time but i was in Delware for a training course for my work. I remember we got a break at around 9:00 and i went outside with a few of the other people taking the training course to smoke a cigerette. I remember one of the girls i was with was talking on here cell phone, then she said her husband said we were "under attack" and a plane had hit the WTC. At the time no one really took her to seriously, but when we walked back up to the training room, everyone in the building was by a radio.

Thats when i started getting worried, we all sat around and listened to the radio for awhile. When the second plane hit, i said fuck this and left. I remember my whole drive home i was trying to find any news station to listen to in my car. But wasn't having much luck. Traffic was amazingly lite for that time of day, anyone thats lived near D.C. knows how horrific the traffic is. Finally i got home and when i walked in my mom was crying her eyes out and was so happy to see me. She gave me a big hug and a couple mins later the first tower fell.

The rest of the day was kind of a blur, but it mainly consisted of us sitting on the coach watching FOX news non-stop. The rage and anger i felt on that day will probally never be surpassed in my life. I still feel alot of that anger today when i see the towers in flames. I wanted to join the military after that, but i have asthma (not bad asthma either) and getting a wavier for asthma is next to impossible.

I will never forget......

[digamma]

I was in Marbella, Spain on my honeymoon. We were renting a villa and had just finished lunch out on our patio. I went back inside to put the remaining food away, and noticed that the power was out. I played with the fuse box and the power came back on, including the television. CNN World was the only English channel we received, so that was what was on television. Incredibly, the first plane had just hit. I called my wife and just as she sat down the second explosion happened--if anyone remembers they were interviewing someone on CNN at the time and they speculated that it was an explosion of the fuselage of the first plane. We both looked at one another and commented that the news helicopter had been really close to the building when the explosion happened. Of course, that news helicopter ended up being the second plane.

We were glued to the television most of the rest of the day, and it certainly put a bit of a damper on the rest of the trip. We flew back to Los Angeles on Sunday, September 16. We were one of the first international flights to leave. Most of the people on our plane had been stranded for several days (it was our regularly scheduled flight). The burst of applause when our plane touched down at LAX is something I'll always remember.

[Franklinnoble]

I was living in Phoenix, Arizona. My girlfriend (now my wife) called me at 6:30 am or so and told me to turn on the TV. I thought she was nuts, and I very nearly hung up on her and went back to sleep. Instead, I staggered out to my living room and flipped on the TV, where they had a live shot of the first tower spewing smoke. Not ten seconds later, another plane flew into the second tower.

It was the most unreal thing I've ever seen in my life, and I think they should play the footage of it at least three times a day on every TV station in America. Too many people have stuck their heads back in the sand since then.

[Swaggs]

I was at work, and there were very few people in the office that day, due to some conferences and vacations. One of our secretaries brought back my mail and told me that a plane had hit one of the towers, and I thought it strange, but believed it was probably a small private plane. A bit later, she came back again and told me about the second plane. I tried to check the news websites for a bit, but they were all overflowing with traffic and not coming up, and then I finally got a picture from MSNBC and most of the folks in the office gathered around to check it out.

We then went over to the office across the hall, because they had cable. Myself, another guy and another girl about my age (early 20s) all watched with a group of perfect strangers. I worked in Pittsburgh at the time, and none of the three of us were from the area. When the plane went down in Shanksville, PA, it really hit home, as that small town is not far from our office and we were all thinking if Pittsburgh is not safe, what town is?

After watching the towers fall, we went back to work. It was a strange day. I only received one non-personal call at work the rest of the day (I think we left around 3:00 or so).

[Jon]

It was my second week clerking for a judge in New Jersey and we were on a special kind of duty so I had to come in a little early. When I first started the job, everyone agreed that we had a great view of lower Manhattan. So, I got there just as the first plane hit, and then saw the second plane hit. All of the clerks and judges stood there in disbelief as the rest of the events transpired.
A friend of mine at the place I am working in the City now was beginning her orientation for the new job two years ago and was one building over. They evacuated the building and she left with all of the debris. As she was leaving, she saw someone headed toward the towers that we went to law school with who had no idea what was going on. She grabbed her and told her to leave.
She likely saved her life as many people in the girls's office were killed.

[MJ4H]

I was running late to work that morning. Normally I leave a bit after 7:30, but it was nearly 7:50 and I happened to notice on the TV on my way to shutting it off to leave a very strange sight. There was a shot of one of the Twin Towers with smoke pouring out of it. Well, that captured my attention. I sat down and watched events unfold at home. I called my school and told them Id be late. I just sat in my home office and watched things for a couple of hours. I saw the second plane hit live, but I remember not really understanding. It took a good 4 or 5 minutes to really get anything through to me. I was thinking well there was a big explosion, but that's not the same tower. How strange. Then FOX or whatever channel it was on started showing a replay of it and highlighting what looked like a plane as it disappeared behind the tower just before the explosion. I thought, wow they are paranoid. They are trying to get us to believe it just happened again. Who knows how it actually got through that thick head of mine. I just couldnt believe it was happening. Same thing with the first collapse. I hadnt even considered it as a possibility. I remember they were doing an interview or something with just token footage of the burning going on, and it was pretty close-up. Then there was suddenly all this shaking and the smoke cloud started rolling pretty good and the tower started getting smaller. I really couldnt get a grasp on this. My first thought was that they decided to just go ahead and bring the tower down intentionally somehow but the networks never realized it or just missed it. It took them a good2 or 3 minutes to realize themselves anyway. A few minutes after that I just kind of walked out to my car and started driving to work. Its a 30 minute drive for me, and about halfway there the second tower collapsed as I listened on the radio. I got to school in time for the end of my first period class. They weren't in my room when I got there, so I went around the corner to the next room and they were in there with another teacher watching it on TV. When my second period class arrived, we listened on the radio in my room (they were 6th and 7th grade band students). I remember there were a lot of bibles out in class that day. The kids were a bit shaken and I did my best to console them. By the time 4th period rolled around (last period of the day for us-block scheduling) I had to have a normal marching band rehearsal. That was very rough. I remember as we were having practice in the stadium that day, there were no planes flying overhead. We were getting stories from other teachers that left at lunch to go fill up their gas tanks and they were paying $5 a gallon and the lines were around the block.

My wife had tried to call me at work and was told by the office that "he didn't come in today," which was patently false. I was in, had checked in, and was teaching by the time she called at 10:30 or so. I was pretty angry at my office for messing that up because I found out my wife was rather worried about me all day. She had come up with all sorts of far-fetched stories for my where-abouts. One thing I've noticed about that day. The events are MUCH more powerful to me that to my wife. She did not get to see it happen live, watch it unfold, feel the fear and tension as we wondered where the next plane would hit, etc. She was, sadly, forced to keep working all day without knowing the full story of what was going on and worrying about me most of the second half of the day. To this day, I don't think it impacted her like it did me for the simple reason that I watched as it happened, and she heard about it later.

[korme]

My friend and I were just talking about that in Government today. It's remarkable how we remember those events so clearly.

I was a sophomore and Team Sports I had just ended, and someone was mentioning it, almost nonchalantly and I didn't think it was big news. I headed to Web Design I to then be told to go to cnn.com and read about what just happened. That is when it hit me, this was for real.

I later came home after school to my brother and his friend glued to the TV. That is when I first saw all of the coverage.

Bizzare.

[korme]

Ironically enough in history while watching a taped episode of last night's 60 minutes (which covered Bush's day and days after 9/11), I was thinking of FOFC. Thinking what was discussed here (I draw mostly blanks, and then recalled that I had only been a member for a few months and didn't visit everyday. How weird, already 2 years ago).

Does anyone remember the picture of ground zero rubble and a flag standing with nothing else around except a few firemen. Almost like a sign telling us we would prevail.