where were you 9/11 ? [Archive] - Front Office Football Central

VPI97

09-11-2003, 01:02 AM

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

09-11-2003, 01:06 AM

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

09-11-2003, 01:14 AM

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

09-11-2003, 01:20 AM

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

09-11-2003, 01:47 AM

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

09-11-2003, 02:09 AM

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

09-11-2003, 02:49 AM

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

09-11-2003, 03:01 AM

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

09-11-2003, 03:31 AM

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

09-11-2003, 03:51 AM

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

09-11-2003, 04:17 AM

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

09-11-2003, 04:46 AM

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

09-11-2003, 05:38 AM

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

09-11-2003, 06:12 AM

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

09-11-2003, 06:16 AM

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

09-11-2003, 06:17 AM

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

09-11-2003, 06:18 AM

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

09-11-2003, 06:23 AM

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

09-11-2003, 06:27 AM

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

09-11-2003, 07:24 AM

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

09-11-2003, 07:38 AM

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

09-11-2003, 07:40 AM

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

09-11-2003, 07:56 AM

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

09-11-2003, 08:09 AM

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

09-11-2003, 08:12 AM

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

09-11-2003, 08:36 AM

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

09-11-2003, 08:38 AM

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

09-11-2003, 08:54 AM

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

09-11-2003, 08:55 AM

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

09-11-2003, 08:58 AM

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

09-11-2003, 09:07 AM

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

09-11-2003, 09:14 AM

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

09-11-2003, 09:19 AM

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

09-11-2003, 09:22 AM

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

09-11-2003, 09:35 AM

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

09-11-2003, 09:40 AM

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

09-11-2003, 10:33 AM

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

09-11-2003, 11:10 AM

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

09-11-2003, 11:57 AM

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

09-11-2003, 12:28 PM

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

09-11-2003, 12:32 PM

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

09-11-2003, 01:01 PM

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

09-11-2003, 02:05 PM

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

09-11-2003, 02:08 PM

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.

Poli

09-11-2003, 02:38 PM

Onboard USS Nimitz. I was supposed to leave early that day for a going away party for my best friend on the ship. Turned out I spent the next two nights onboard.

edit: I then spent every other night onboard until we changed our homeport from VA to San Diego.

Roberto

09-11-2003, 04:21 PM

It was said of my parents’ generation that everyone could remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard JFK had been shot. For my generation it would have been John Lennon; for the next generation perhaps Princess Diana. But our memories depend on our time zones. Save for the latest night owls and the earliest early birds, the West Coast slept through the events. Here in Europe, it was the afternoon of a normal working day.

It must have been about 2pm London time when a colleague rushed into my office to tell me a plane had crashed into the World Trade Centre.

Never having been to New York, I did not grasp the possible implications of this. In those last, sweet, moments of innocence it seemed one of those strange things that only happened in America, and/or only in movies.

Soon after, he rushed in again, to tell me a second plane had crashed.

This sounded more serious.

I work in what Americans would call a law firm. We have one TV in the office; that afternoon it was being used for a training video for the new trainees. Nobody brought radios to the office; nobody left the office to seek information outside. So we sought out information on the internet. Only to discover that we could not log onto any of the obvious news sites "due to volume of traffic".

Another colleague thought of the Guardian Online website. There was less demand for that - it did not offer pictures. So most of us logged onto it, and read with increasing disbelief headlines about another plane crash at the Pentagon (true), a car bomb at the State Department (false), a fourth plane crash (true, though only later did we learn it was the one in Pennsylvania), a fifth plane heading for Washington which could not be contacted from the ground (false), evacuation of the offices at Canary Wharf (true), an attack on the Sears Tower in Chicago (false), and the fall of both towers (all too true).

Even then I don’t believe we really grasped what had happened. We knew what had happened, but we had not seen it.

About 4pm the training session ended. By public demand (a rare thing in a law firm!), the TV was moved from the main conference room back to its base, in the one room fitted with an external aerial connection. As many of us as could squeeze in did so.

At that point even the BBC was running a continuous loop of the first tower burning, the second plane and then both towers falling, with voices behind speculating about the number of deaths.

Everyone was very quiet and very pale. A secretary who had family members on the East Coast began to sob.

Looking back, I remember my mind trying to rationalise those scenes in terms of Hollywood. The burning tower was Towering Inferno. The street after the fall of the first tower, when everyone was running away from a cloud of white debris as if pursued, was Independence Day. But there was no corresponding reference for the second plane. That forced us to confront that what we were seeing was real. Impossible to imagine three hours earlier, but real.

I cannot imagine what it can have been like to see those images live, particularly for those who had friends or family members in the planes, the towers or the Pentagon.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

A few weeks later, I met an Australian who told me that in Australia and New Zealand (and, presumably, in Japan, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and all points thereabouts) the events had been shown live in the evening viewing peak - what Americans would call prime time. She had been terrified by what she had seen, and so had everyone she knew.

tucker342

09-11-2003, 06:35 PM

I was in school watching it on TV.

very sad day:(

korme

09-11-2003, 07:00 PM

Everyone keep sharing, I have read each one. I'll probably end up bookmarking this thread.

Buccaneer

09-11-2003, 08:51 PM

Lots of good stories here.

With my usual morning routine, I was unaware of anything until I got to work about 7:30am (I don't do radio). And as usual, I went to foxnews and cnn websites but for some reason, I couldn't get through. No big deal, it's just the typical political blather anyways. So it was onto the important site, FOFC.

And then I saw it...

The incomprehensible news in a thread (it had been about 30 minutes now since the first attack).

I think I did manage to get to a newsite and saw more of the details, including the rumours about many buildings in DC on fire. Then my wife called from her gym. I told her, it's probably bad. But there was an unspoken question that we were afraid to ask amidst all of this...what will happen to our vacation? I told her, I don't know, I don't know what's going on. When others in the office was getting around a TV they wheeled in, I asked to go home and find out.

We were both at home watching TV and very soon, we saw the towers collapse. It was then that we fell apart. It was so shocking. As best as we could, we tried to determine our plans. You see, we had this 10-day vacation planned to take Sean to California to visit my folks and then for my wife and I to spend a week in New England. It was the most anticipated trip we had planned. I told her I have to go to the travel agent and see what our options are (we were scheduled to leave in 2 days). Well to make a long story shorter, I spent the afternoon watching our little boy play in the front yard. It was his joy that got us through the day.

And now it comes full circle...

For tomorrow, we are taking that trip that was postponed from 9/11/01. We spent today thinking about the events of 9/11 and what our country went through. We will never forget.

Have a great week, guys.

FrogMan

09-11-2003, 08:55 PM

Great story Bucc, enjoy your trip!

FM

Killebrew

09-11-2003, 09:06 PM

Working from home, waking up on the couch with CNN still on from the night before, something I never usually do. The biggest emotion I felt after shock was dread, if either of those are even emotions.

evil homer

09-11-2003, 09:23 PM

long time lurker here. i felt compelled to respond to this thread.

i walked into my office in fort lee, nj (this is at the foot of the George Washington bridge that connects northern new jersey with manhatten) that morning at about 8:50. my phone was ringing, and when i picked it up, a co-worker told me to look out my window. i saw the smoke and flames coming from the first tower. by this time, everyone had heard about it, so we started moving around the office. we congregated in an office that had a TV hooked up to cable and we had CNN on. as we were watching the screen, we saw the explosion as the 2nd plane hit. we looked out the window and saw the huge ball of flames. we sat stunned for a minute, and then we tried to contact our families. my wife was at home in staten island with our 2 year old, and was scared. i left work to try to get home, but by then, all of the bridges had been closed. i drove around for a while looking for someplace to go. i stopped at a rest stop on the NJ turnpike, and it was packed with people trying to use the phone (cell service was spotty). i finally reached my wife's uncle, who lives in southern NJ. i drove there and spent the night. i don't think we said more than 10 words to each other the whole night as we watched the coverage. the next morning, the bridges were finally re-opened, and i was able to get home to my family.

i will never forget the events of that day. to make this even more personal, i had worked in the WTC during my college days 6 years earlier. i was able to contact some of my ex co-workers, and was relieved when all had been accounted for. i guarantee you that i will be able to re-tell this story for the rest of my life.

kcchief19

09-11-2003, 09:56 PM

I was on my way to work listening to the news when the local station reported that there had been an explosion at the WTC. After the commercial, they said that it was not reported a plane had hit the building and they were switching to NBC Radio News. My initial thoughts were that it had to be a small plane that went off course and lost control.

I was still about 5 minutes from work when they were interviewing a guy on a cell phone when the second plane hit. His reaction to seeing the plane hit was gut-wrenching.

When I got to work, everybody was glued to the TV. When the first tower fell and we saw the sudden cloud, someone said that it looked like there was another explosion. I was the first one to realize that the tower wasn't there any more. I said, "The tower isn't there anymore." It was a few seconds later that another camera confirmed the building was gone.

JeeberD

09-11-2003, 11:21 PM

I would really be interested to hear what Senator would have to say on this subject (if he can get away from the auditors, that is)...

STK

09-11-2003, 11:48 PM

I was sleeping until a "wake up, something happened to the world trade center" came through the bedroom door. I turned on the tv just in time to see the second tower collapse. The rest of my day was spent in a FOBL chatroom with speculation of the whereabouts of other hijacked planes and DC area fobblers.

AnalBumCover

09-11-2003, 11:57 PM

Was on my way to work in Downtown Los Angeles when the story broke on the radio. No one was exactly sure what was going on after the first plane hit. Thoughts of a plane flying out of control, away from the normal flight pattern. An accident, they would say. Until the second hit, then it struck me. It struck everyone... this was no accident.

As I drove up toward downtown, my eyes kept on the skyline... just looking for anything that may happen to any buildings here in Los Angeles. It was a sombering sight. Still dark at 6:00am on the west coast. Nonetheless, I continued on.

At my desk on the 10th floor of one of the shorter buildings, I turned on the radio, and just listened to everything unfold. First tower collapsed. Then the second. Pentagon struck. Then the rumors started flying within our office. A plane was coming toward Los Angeles.

I was the supervisor of my department. I wanted my people out of the building and home safe. But I was overshadowed by upper management. We had to stay. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! My brother called me, who also worked in downtown. He was sent home, and he wanted me home as well. I told him I could not... that I needed to watch over my department. He pleaded me to get out of there. I was torn. I wanted to be home with my family, but I had a responsibility to stay with my department.

Overhearing other conversations, I learned that half of downtown is closed. Everyone's gone. Except our firm. We were locked down. Prisoners. I begged to my immediate manager. My people are scared. They need to be home. I'll be here to hold down the department. Just send them home! My manager told me she had no say on the situation. She was not given the word to let anyone go.

Finally, five hours after the first attack, we were authorized to send everyone home. I stuck around to speak my mind with fellow supervisors and managers. We all had the same issue... and we were pissed.

Once outside the building, downtown Los Angeles was a ghost town. It was completely silent. Reminiscent of a Twilight Zone episode. I drove home, no radio... no news, no music... just my thoughts.

I got home. Hugged my Mom. And turned on the television.

Poli

09-12-2003, 07:14 AM

I forgot to mention the initial thought I had once I saw the television.

I came into my shop after escorting a civilian tech rep through a space and was intent on asking for some help. I opened the door, and it bumped into someone.

That's because the TV in the shop in the corner that the door was...someone was watching right in front of the door.

Now what got me was the time...here it is in the morning, and my supervisor and bunch of others were watching TV. I even joked about it saying it was a little early to have the TV on, right?

I looked at the screen, and saw the burning building, and as of yet, no one had told me what had happened. I didn't immediately recognize the building, and I didn't realize it was live television. I thought it was one of those "action" movies...the ones with the huge explosions.

Then it caught me. I saw the NBC peacock in the lower right corner. Oh shoot, I thought. There's been a terrible accident.

I work on identification friend or foe systems. It's a little different in the military, but the civilian sector has similar systems. I know that should some horrible accident arise, this could possibly happen.

Everyone was kind of freaked, and I mentioned my theory. The horrible accident theory and I believe people bought into it, since I'm an expert in my field. Then the second one hit. I knew then this was no accident...as horrible as it was. Someone was doing this intentionally.

My life in the military certainly has changed. Obviously, I'd be home right now if it hadn't. Our deployments are longer; it's no longer a given you'll be home 6 months after you leave...if it was, I'd have been home earlier this month. As it is, I'm looking to come home next month, without my shipmates :(.

Security also increased tremendously. Even after the USS Cole attacks, I feel ships were easy to attack in port. That's no longer the case, in my opinion. Getting onto the base isn't as easy, either.

I sometimes wonder had we taken the USS Cole incident more seriously if we'd be remembering 9/11.

JonInMiddleGA

09-12-2003, 07:29 AM

I just wanted to add my thanks to lathum for posting this. And to everyone who shared their thoughts from that day.

And at the risk of jinxing it, I was very pleased and thankful that this thread was kept free of politicization. There's ample opportunity for that in other threads, but this one ... well, whether it makes sense to anyone else or not, this thread was my observance in many ways. We remembered the fallen, and that's what needed to be done most of all.

Thanks again lathum.

Jon

Critch

09-12-2003, 11:29 AM

On September 11th I was working at Pentagon City in one of a small group of office blocks across the motorway from The Pentagon. I turned up at work late, but while trying to sneak to my desk I noticed a group of people were crowded around the tv in reception watching something about the World Trade Center being on fire.

I got the news of what had happened in New York from one of my co-workers and went to my cubicle to try to check CNN or the BBC for the news but the sites were overloaded. While sitting searching for a news site that wasn't down we heard the sound of a low flying aircraft and a thump that shook all the windows. My first thought was that it was another plane hitting, but as we worked close to National Airport and right beside a motorway it was easy to account for the noises so the second thought was "nah, couldn't be." A minute later a guy came over from the other side of our floor and said something had hit The Pentagon.

Everybody was crowded round the windows looking out at The Pentagon where black smoke was pouring out of the side wall. We were to the side of the wall that was hit, so we couldn't see the damage from the front and to be honest it didn't look too bad. When the radio reported it was a commuter plane that hit our general opinion was that it must've been something smaller as it didn't look bad enough to be that big a plane. While we were standing at the window we heard what sounded like another explosion in the distance to our left which shook everybody up, but as nothing else was reported I guess it must've been something innocent, or something from within the Pentagon echo-ing off the buildings around us. Still shook everybody up though, the thought that buildings were blowing up all around.

By now the rumors were flying, somebody heard that there had been car bombs in DC, one of the Treasury buildings downtown had smoke pouring out of it (one of my friends who worked downtown at the time still says this was true), then the radio reported that the USA Today building in Rosslyn had been hit too (which would have fitted in with the explosion we thought we heard to our left). With the reports of car bombs we moved away from the windows and back to our cubicles to avoid any flying glass if there was a car bomb.

As there were reports of another plane inbound we were sent home, as a couple of the blocks next door to us were federal buildings (DEA, I think) and could be targets. Standing outside our building knowing there was a plane load of poor innocents heading in the way and that they had no chance was the worst feeling I've had. The roads were completely gridlocked, every now and then we'd be held to allow through minivans with minor injuries from the Pentagon. People looking shaken and completely covered in ash and soot. Eventually we got home to Maryland (driving past the USA Today building in Rosslyn which was intact in all it's ugly glory at the side of the road, the first hint that some of the "news" we'd heard may have been rumor gone wild).

The mobile phone system had been out all morning, so I finally got through to my wife who had gone to the local metro station assuming I'd be coming home that way. She told me that the cab drivers were puting their prices up sky high, $50 or you weren't getting anywhere. It's an ill wind that blows nobody good, I guess.

Craptacular

09-13-2003, 05:27 PM

Sorry for being tardy, but I've been away from the board for a few days.

I was unemployed and therefore sleeping until noon. My wife (fiance at the time) calls me up and says something to the effect of "two planes crashed into the World Trade Center, gotta go, bye". This was still well before either tower collapsed, and I believe before news about the Pentagon came through. I stumbled out of bed, turned on the TV, and tried to figure out what was going on. I actually had a 2nd TV on the floor for watching two football games at the same time, so I put one on ABC and switched between CNN, MSNBC, and FoxNews on the main TV. After calling a couple of friends who were at work to see if they had heard, I basically just sat and watched TV for a couple of days. I didn't know anyone who lived or worked in NYC or DC, so I had no worries about friends or family being victims. My parents were vacationing in London at the time, so I was concerned they might be stranded for a while. It was a weird day. I didn't feel a personal connection to the events, but like most people, was completely engrossed by it.

digamma

09-11-2015, 08:59 AM

Bumping and unarchiving for a little remembrance. Maybe newer members (or older members who didn't post) would like to add their stories. I think with a lot of tragedies it helps to make our story part of it in coping, and this is especially true with 9/11. It is part of us, and for me anyway, sharing how we experienced it is always moving.

I hope taking a minute or two to read a few of these posts helps you to remember that day we will never forget in a helpful way.

Grover

09-11-2015, 09:01 AM

I was a senior in high school sitting in Law class watching Mississippi Burning. Around 10:30-11 were were ushered into the auditorium to watch the newscasts of what was going on. I remember being absolutely glued to MSNBC when I got home that night.

Alan T

09-11-2015, 09:12 AM

14 years later, and this is still a tough day for me. I still remember the day vividly, and every year it causes me great anxiety and internal pain re-living it again.

We had just sat down in a conference room at work, waiting for some vendors to get there for a meeting when I suddenly got a call from my ex (my wife at the time), telling me about some plane crashed into the trade tower. At the time, it sounded like a small plane had lost control and we went on with preparing for our meeting.

She called back again a few minutes later saying the second plane had hit and we suddenly realized something else was going on, and ended up canceling our meeting and turning on the tv to see.

It did not take too much time before we realized at work that the planes had left from Boston and we had multiple co-workers and friends on one of the flights. We later found out that one of the co-workers ended up having not taken the flight due to other business reasons, but that was a very very tough day for all of us at work.

Still to this day, every year on this date I think back to our old friend and his poor son that pretty much has had to grow up without really knowing his father.

britrock88

09-11-2015, 09:12 AM

High school freshman. I remember my 4th period biology teacher seeming a little shaken, but not explaining anything. Then in 5th period computer applications, the teacher decided to show us the news coverage. The conversation at the lunch table was paranoid, apocalyptic...

miami_fan

09-11-2015, 10:00 AM

I was on temporary duty on Nellis AFB, I was sleeping after working a night shift and my wife called me and told me to turn on the TV. As I turned on the TV, a co-worker began banging on my door. I just stood there stunned and told my wife this was bad and I would call her back. My co-worker and I began to gather some of the members of our group. The rest of the day was spent watching a lot of TV, going to meetings, and preparing for whatever was about to come.

BillJasper

09-11-2015, 10:07 AM

Sleeping.

I was working third shift. My wife woke me up right after the first plane hit and said there was an accident at the World Trade Center.

My daughter's eighth birthday.

JAG

09-11-2015, 10:16 AM

I had a long commute into work. There was a driver with a small bus that picked a number of us up from the train and brought us to the office. Normally he listened to some awful music station, but that morning he had the news on. I was talking with someone else and didn’t notice, but after I realized it, I asked what was going on as I couldn’t determine it from the news coverage. My memory is a bit fuzzy on this point, but he either said one or two planes hit the WTC (the timeline would suggest 2, but information was jumbled during the day). I was a bit stunned and wondering how that could’ve happened, at some point he or one of the commentators mentioned it being a terrorism and I remember getting a cold sinking feeling.

As soon as I arrived at work, I pulled up cnn.com and there was practically nothing there because they were being so badly slammed. Eventually they worked up to having a little text blurb and later in the day pictures with the article updating. Meanwhile I was trying to frantically call my parents and find out how our extended family in NYC was doing. They were ok, just had to walk about 30 blocks back to their place through the dust clouds due to everything being shut down. Then we heard about the Pentagon getting hit by a plane and I placed a call to my friend in D.C. and after that called and woke up my brother in SF to warn him not to go to the city. Our CEO left a message for the company that the phone lines were being jammed by so many people calling and asking us to please leave the phones for business communications. My father told me one of the towers collapsed and later told me about the other one collapsing. I was stunned. On one trip to NYC I had visited them and I had trouble processing that they weren’t there anymore, that the view of them in the NYC skyline was gone.

Information was a mess that day. My wife (then girlfriend) called me and asked if we were going to war with Israel based on some things her classmates were saying. On the train ride back, someone had an evening paper that stated a group in Afghanistan (Northern Alliance I believe) launched rockets at Taliban targets (the groups meant nothing to me at the time, but the stuff going on there just added to the insanity of the day). The bus ride after the train, there were two kids playing noisily in the back and a lady told them to quiet down, that we all had a hard day. Lastly, I remember watching the news at home, nonstop until I went to sleep, and every day for the next few days. I couldn’t remember ever seeing the news anchors looking as exhausted as they did (might have been a day or two later, can’t recall now), having trouble completing sentences. Of course, no commercials, no breaks for them.

Fonzie

09-11-2015, 10:31 AM

I'm a psychologist, and back in 2001 I was doing my clinical internship (the final portion of the training prior to doctoral degree completion) at a major university medical center.

My wife was up before me that day and woke me up, told me that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center, and ran out of the room. In my foggy state I just assumed that a small prop plane had an accident or something, and wandered out to see what happened. By the time I got to the TV the second plane had hit, and it was clear this was no accident. I was not in the greatest emotional shape, of course, but I had clients scheduled that day so I went in to the hospital.

Shortly after I arrived I was told that appointments were being cancelled, but no decisions had yet been made about sending staff home. There were conflicting concerns about having mental health staff available for on-call work and worries that as a Level 1 Trauma center our hospital could become a target (at that time, the attacks were ongoing but their extent was completely unknown).

My director of clinical training cared deeply about her interns, and being a bit older I suspected she was much more worried about how this would affect us than how it would affect her. Shortly after the Pentagon was hit, she looked upon me with sadness and said, "I'm so sorry, Keith. Your world will never be the same." Shortly thereafter the administration sent non-essential staff home (including me).

I spent the rest of the day at home with my wife, alternating between tears and fury as we watched reporters try to piece together what was happening.

Honolulu_Blue

09-11-2015, 10:39 AM

I was living in Washington, DC at the time. 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 10:00 pm.

I was sitting at my desk, drinking coffee, and surfing the net. You know, getting warmed up for the long day. Shockingly, I was reading some ign.com review of new Transformer toys (the adulting I do at work is so overwhelming at times). 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. So, I go back to my serious adulting.

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 were watching for a few minutes and then I looked out of the window in the room. The side of the conference room was all windows and looked 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 had lived in that area for a summer and was positive it was. 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 Pennsylvania) 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, the Capitol, and Supreme Court building. The roads were all blocked off, because of all of the various reported threats, 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.

My former wife had it much worse. She was in the subway going from Brooklyn to downtown Manhattan for work. Her office was directly across the street from the WTC, One Liberty Plaza. (There were a few post 9-11 reports that the building was on the verge of collapse, though it never did). Her mother worked in the WTC (but was late to work that day) and her brother was on a flight from Newark to San Francisco. (His plane landed in Indianaoplis.) The subway stopped a few times and they reported there was some problem with the tracks. After a long delay the subway finally made it to the station. My wife came out of the subway and saw the smoking, flaming towers. She tried to make it to work and was turned back by the cops. She was one of the people running down the street away from the debris and rubble. She collapsed out of fear and exhaustion, thinking her mom had died, and had to be picked up off the street by some woman. She couldn't get a hold of her mom until around 2 PM that afternoon.

She went back to work at One Liberty Plaza in December. About two years after 9/11, she developed severe asthma. She is one of many who had to live/work around the site who now suffer from lung damage.

Chief Rum

09-11-2015, 10:48 AM

cmp

09-11-2015, 11:21 AM

I was in 10th grade sitting in class. The principal came over the PA system and informed everyone what was going on. We all turned the TV's on in the classrooms and watched as the first tower collapsed.

Peregrine

09-11-2015, 11:58 AM

I was on vacation with my parents, brother and aunt and uncle in Edisto Beach, SC. It had been a great vacation up to that time - understandably 9/11 pretty much ruined the trip after that.

Dutch

09-11-2015, 12:09 PM

Its hard to believe it's been 14 years...

bhlloy

09-11-2015, 12:12 PM

Sleeping in (must have been a really late night the night before as this would have been around 3pm local time, but I was definitely still in bed), 18 years old getting ready to go to University the week after. Friend texted me to turn on the TV with no particular details, I think after the first tower had collapsed but before the second one had. Even having never been to the US at the time and not really understanding the significance the towers had still the most unreal and shocking event of my lifetime. Like many others in this thread, we just watched the news until late into the night, dumbfounded.

Butter

09-11-2015, 12:21 PM

Found out my wife was pregnant with my youngest son the day before this happened. Mixed emotions that night for sure. went and sat in gas station lines like a moron that night for like a half hour.

lighthousekeeper

09-11-2015, 12:29 PM

I was unemployed in NJ at the time, alone in my apartment. I think I pretty much watched it unfold live on tv (it's hard to remember exactly, what with the countless video replays shown in subsequent days, coupled with the fogginess of slowly coming to a particular realization. e.g. when I recollect the video of the 2nd plane come in and the reporter's reactions and my own visceral reaction, was that when it was played live, or a replay done 3 minutes later, or am I remembering it from a replay I watched on youtube 8 years ago...).

I do remember going outside on my balcony to see if I could see the smoke (no) and also to watch the sky, as I could hear what sounded like military aircraft. There was that short period of time that day where you really had no idea of the scope of the attack, and could easily imagine the worst. I was imagining the possibility of military jets shooting down additional planes in the sky overhead.

While others mention how weird it was to see no planes in the sky, I experienced a different oddity: many planes flying especially low in the sky. There was probably a lot of planes held up waiting to land at Newark. I was unsettling to say the least.

I also remember the look my wife and I shared the moment she came home from work, and the silent hug.

digamma

09-11-2015, 12:58 PM

Nipping the political stuff in the bud. Take it elsewhere.

Antmeister

09-11-2015, 01:01 PM

This is my memory while living in Escondido, CA (North San Diego County). My daughter had just turned 1 year old 3 days prior. I remember having the news on in the background when I was getting ready for work in the morning and remember when the news reported that a plane had struck one of the towers. At the time, I remember telling Lori that it was just a tragic accident.

I remember heading to work just listening to some of the events on the radio, but I also recall that news travelled a lot slower back then because the events were still a bit sketchy and when I arrived at work is when I learned that the 2nd tower was hit.

At this point people at work was getting worried because no one knew if we were in a state of war, did this happen two suicide pilots or something else all together. Details were all over the place across various news outlets. I recall that there were reports the White House was hit as well as the Pentagon. All my coworkers were just huddled around radio across the office with no one being able to do any sort of work.

People were starting to wonder if Downtown San Diego was going to be hit next and there were rumors that the military bases were on standby if the events escalated.

When the towers fell, I only got to hear the reports on the radio at work and was in complete shock. There were a few people in tears while others wondered if this was yet another rumor unverified. But as more of the radio stations gathered info, it was definitely true and I remember rushing to the TV after work to be astounded that it was way worse than my imagination even thought it would be.

Chief Rum

09-11-2015, 01:15 PM

Nipping the political stuff in the bud. Take it elsewhere.

Thank you!

Subby

09-11-2015, 01:18 PM

I was at a meeting at the Hay-Adams, a hotel across the street from Lafayette Park and the White House. It was a live demo of some association management system and it kept bogging down (internet tubes in 2001 were teeny tiny I guess). The sales people left the room to see what was up with the internet connection and came back after a little while and said "there have been coordinated attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon and there are reports of another plane heading toward DC. Please GTFO (paraphrasing)."

My walk took me right by the White House - fortunately my office was only two blocks over and three blocks down from there. People kept looking up at the sky and police officers on the street were urging people to keep moving away from the White House. When I got back to my office it was empty. I can't get in touch with my wife because the cell system is overwhelmed. Our two kids, who had just turned 3 and 1, were in a day care about 2 miles from my office and down the street from my wife's. I had driven everyone in that day, so I went down to the parking garage to get my car (90s Ford Explorer) and headed toward the Dupont Circle area from my office (at 13th and Penn). I have the radio on and Dan Rather is alternating between a) describing the towers falling and b) the car bombs that are going off in DC. I am crawling along in traffic, just looking at the cars parked along the street, waiting for one to explode. I can't reach my wife. I don't know what the fuck is going on, if she has the kids, if they hightailed it out of the city, nothing.

45 minutes later (a trip that typically took 7 minutes) I make it to daycare (which was at a church down the street from national geographic). Relief. My wife is okay. My babies are okay. Time to get home.

It takes us three hours. It was excruciating, listening to the radio, trying to call loved ones, sitting in traffic, crawling along.

We get home to McLean (we had just moved there in July) and watched along with the rest of the country. We eventually turned it off and played with our kids and went outside and talked to our neighbors. Did whatever we could to return to the way our lives had been just a few hours before.

JeeberD

09-11-2015, 01:51 PM

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'm not sure why I lied about this, but I was actually sleeping through an early class when my co-worker called and woke me up to tell me what was going on.

aknott

09-11-2015, 01:51 PM

I was an 18 year old working at Best Buy in Dayton, OH and mowing lawns on the side. I had to cut grass that morning and then go to my regular job so I drove separate from my dad to mow. I never listened to the radio much and had a CD playing. When I get to the house my dad asked if I heard what happened and I had not. He tells me and I say, “wow” and don’t think much of it. While I was mowing I received a call from Best Buy because one of the girls is freaking out over what happened and they asked if I would go in early. I worked my shift and got off around 4 and what happened didn’t really hit me until I got home and saw it all for the first time. Some of the customers at work had talked to me about it, but I didn’t realize how bad it was until I actually saw it.

It used to amaze me how my parents and others could remember what happened when they found out about JFK. Well, with each passing year, I get it more and more. I think about what that day quite a bit and it still gets me. Maybe a part of it is I’ve always had a fondness for New York. I haven’t been back for over 20 years, though, but when I do I’m sure I will cry like a baby.

molson

09-11-2015, 03:13 PM

I moved from the grove street area of Jersey City and my midtown Manhattan job back to central MA in August 2001. My Jersey city neighborhood had a big Arabic population - I did read later that some of the 9/11 terrorists lived in the area - I wondered afterwards how close they were.

I'm pretty sure Howard Stern broke the 9/11 news to me during my new commute into Needham, MA. Then I went into work and everyone was already watching things unfold. I remember the Internet went down and wondering if shit had REALLY hit the fan. The CEO told everybody to go home. I drove home really fast, 30 miles or so back, wondering if things would be even worse by the time I got there.

Then I went with a few friends for a long weekend to my friend's father's little cottage on cape cod. No Internet, no TV, we just drank a lot to get away.

hawk4669

09-11-2015, 08:24 PM

On 9/11/2001 I woke up to go on duty at then Humboldt Fire District Station 12 (now Fire Station 2 for Humboldt Bay Fire) in Eureka, CA. I was a newly promoted Engineer and like everyone else, the day began like every other before it. I never listen to the news or anything in the morning before work....so when I left for work, I was clueless as to what was happening.

On the way to the station, my truck's radio was on but turned very low. I heard the DJ say something about "Pentagon" and "attacks" but figured it was something elsewhere in the world going on.

When I got to the station the off going crew, my crew, and the department Assistant Chief were glued to the TV. Still clueless, I said hello to everyone. A few of the guys glanced my direction, said nothing, and went right back to the TV. It was only then that I began to see what was unfolding.

For the rest of the day, my crew and I watched the news all day only pausing to respond to emergency calls in our own jurisdiction. With each passing news story, the gravity of how many citizens, Firefighters, Police Officers, and EMS workers had lost their lives began to set in. Come evening time, my Captain at the time turned off the TV and told the crew that we didn't need to see this anymore. It was a great decision.

The other part of this story is my wife being at home with our two year old. She (my wife) too was watching the news reports and was emotional over the loss of life....especially as a young wife of a Firefighter. Our two year old asked her mom why she was crying. My wife told her that some bad people had done something and that a lot of people had died or were hurt badly. Tori glanced at the the TV screen, saw pictures of several FDNY brothers digging through the rubble and said:

"It's ok Mommy....the Firemen will make it all better."

Never forget.

Groundhog

09-11-2015, 08:29 PM

It happened while most of us were asleep in Australia. I was working morning shift and somehow managed to get ready and catch the train into the city with no idea it had happened - I had headphones on listening to music. An hour or so later when others started coming into the office, a guy comes over to me and says 'Hey, how about those planes that crashed into the buildings in the US?'. I went into the kitchen, turned on the tv, and saw it for myself.

BillyNYC

09-11-2015, 11:22 PM

Grad school in Florida, just several weeks after concluding a temp job at the NY Mercantile Exchange (which was across the street from the WTC).

On Feb. 26, 1993, when the first WTC bombing happened, I was in 5th period computers class, in HS 4 blocks away. We heard a thud that sounded like a truck backfiring. We eventually heard sirens and saw lights. This was years prior to large apartment towers being built between my HS and the WTC, so some rooms had a clear view of the activity. 8th period precalculus was one of such classes and we spent the whole period at the windows. A police helicopter hovered maybe 20-30 feet away. A classmate waved, the pilot waved back and then headed towards the mass of blinking lights. After class, went down to the site and saw some people with soot on their faces outside. I don't think at that time, pre-Internet, we knew yet what had happened. One of the 6 people who died was the father of a 7th grade classmate of mine.

Anyway, back to 9/11. My class was smallish and I was the only NYer. A classmate mentioned that a plane had crashed into the WTC, which struck me as odd. Why would a plane be flying there? Went home after class, and basically was catatonic in front of the TV the next 24-36 hours. I felt really isolated and wanted to fly back to NY, but did not.

No one that I knew personally died in 9/11 (a HS classmate, whom I unfortunately barely remembered, did). Yet, with my 1993 history and having walked through the WTC daily just weeks prior, 9/11 is more emotional/personal to me than would be otherwise expected.