<p>I was in my office in the Old Post Office building on the Pennsylvania Ave., a few blocks from the White House. After being ordered out of the building by security, I could see the smoke from the Pentagon. I walked over to and then several miles up Connecticut Ave to get my son, Torrey, who was in school on Macomb Street. I did not want to take the subway. It was too crowded. I also could not get the images out of my mind of the subway crash that had occurred the same day as the Air Florida disaster. There were people everywhere. My son’s school, an international school, did not want to release the students early.</p>
<p>I waited until the end of the school day and picked up my son. We walked over to the Metrorail stop and took a nearly empty subway to Capital Square where I had parked my car. By then the city seemed almost deserted. A Capitol Hill police officer told us that the bridges were still open. We drove across the 14th street bridge towards Virginia and passed the still smoking Pentagon. It smelled of airplane fuel and did so for days afterward. My wife was in Williamsburg VA at a conference. My son did not want to go to school the next day so I stayed home with him.</p>
<p>I could not bring myself to watch the tapes of the twin towers collapsing until days afterward. One of our neighbors was injured at the Pentagon. September 11, 2001 was one of the saddest days of my life. I left DC in 2004. I was glad to leave. For months after I arrived at my new university position I felt compelled to reach for my id in order to enter a totally unsecured administrative building.</p>
<p>Interesting that your post has had so many views and no comments. Everyone must feel like me - we will never forget, but we don’t want to relive the day.</p>
<p>When I left home for work, it was still thought that a small plane had it one tower. Shortly after I arrived at work, the second plane hit. I knew it was terrorism w/o anyone telling me.</p>
<p>My son was studying in Spain and couldn’t get through to us. Neither could he get to the US embassy, as it was surrounded by tanks. He had heard(as had we here) that Chicago was a possible target.</p>
<p>My daughter was in middle school. She only new about one plane hitting one tower. They were not updated in school, for which I was grateful.</p>
<p>I can’t bring myself to watch any of the ceremonies and services on TV. I live in NY and was on my way to the ER where I work. We were on alert and standby as other area hospitals to expect transport of the potential injured. No one ever came. As the day wore on it became clear that the death toll was enormous and we were not getting any victims. Such a sad day for us in healthcare. Felt helpless!</p>
<p>I was at work preparing to start an IV on a patient who was scheduled for an angiogram in our cath lab. His family members were in the room; the TV was on and we were speculating about the “small plane” which had apparently crashed into the World Trade Center. We all froze in place in total shock when we saw the airliner crash into the second building. The implications were clear. I remember my hand trembling as I inserted the needle to start the IV. I’ll never forget that moment.</p>
<p>Condolences to everyone who lost family and friends.</p>
<p>We were living within commuting distance to NYC. One of my sisters, who has the TV on 24/7, called me at work after the first tower was hit and asked if my husband, traveling overseas, was flying that day. He wasn’t. Then she told me to turn on the TV. I walked out of my office and asked the only other person who had arrived so far if she had heard anything. She said it was probably just another accident - though very tragic. Then the second tower. I picked up my bag and told her good-bye and headed to my car. A couple of people I didn’t know stopped to engage me in conversation. All stunned. My cell was ringing and I was just letting it go to voicemail. When I got home, a friend was already waiting for me on the patio, listening to his radio, and we had a brief conversation about picking up my kids at school. We decided to wait as the school was only a couple of miles away. We made coffee and watched TV. Another friend, whose husband worked out of town, and whose father is a minister in Manhattan, on site helping out, called and asked if she could come over. She came and stayed on her phone checking in with family and friends in the city. I remember her on the phone with a teacher friend, very close the towers and watching out the windows. My sisters kept calling and urging me to get the kids and head “home” to the south. I picked up the kids at the regular time. At their school, unless a family was directly impacted, parents seemed to have decided against early pick-up. It wasn’t clear for a few days how many students had lost parents or other family members. That night at home, my friends (who didn’t yet have children of their own) and I tried to keep the atmosphere as calm as possible for my kids. We ordered pizza. My husband finally got a call through and we discussed evacuation options should I decide that was the way to go. We discussed which friends in the city might want to leave and stay at our house, even if I decided to go. The next few days are kind of a blur. My husband got stuck overseas for more than a week, maybe almost two, because all overseas flights were cancelled and when they started flying again, things were really backed up. I remember city friends trying to decide about air quality or lack thereof for their children and whether they needed to get them out of the situation. It was especially difficult deciding about the college students in the city.</p>
<p>It’s been 12 years and I reflect on that day every year since. Today, I found myself crying as I drove around running my mundane errands. I think that this was hands down the saddest day of my life and also an event that changed me as well.
Sometimes I wish we could go back to a time where the terror attack had never happened and we, as Americans didn’t have to think about the horror unleashed. I talked to my daughter who was four years old on this day and asked her what memory, if any she had
She remembered very vividly something that happened to us when we were out shopping for a dress for her to wear to my grandmother’s funeral
A stranger ( woman ) yelled at me on the street that we shopped on, in a small town on Cape Cod to " get off my phone, we are under attack " She even remembered my Nextel, bulky yellow phone that I was using to call my husband…</p>
<p>I still find this such a sad day, but clearly many people have moved on. Today on my way to work, I heard the local NPR station soliciting contributions for the fall fundraiser. After a bit, they said it was the first day of their fall campaign. I thought it was such a strange day to begin a fundraising effort and then realized that many others may not consider it so sacred after 12 years.</p>
<p>It dawned on me today that this year’s college seniors were only 9 years old on 9/11. Freshmen were only 6. Fairly soon, no kids in college will remember the day.</p>
<p>I thought today would not bother me. I was driving home from work and listening to the radio. They were playing tapes of broadcasts from that morning. I had to stop listening. I attended 4 funerals in October and November of 2001.</p>
<p>Yesterday felt like the anniversary to me. 12 years ago, 9/11 was a Tuesday and it was the day of the primary. I voted before I found out what had happened. So, somehow, it “hit” me more when I went to vote in the same place I did then on primary day than the actual date. </p>
<p>de Blasio talked about 9/11 last night. It was IMO very appropriate to say something to commemorate it.</p>
<p>Today for the first time I watched videos of people jumping from the towers. So very horrible. My mind stops before I imagine what the people trapped in the building went through. Just can’t bear to think about it. I have had to walk down from the 45th floor of a building because of a fire. I used to work on the 80-somethingth floor of the Sears Tower. What it was like in the stairwells I can imagine</p>
<p>I used to commute to work through the WTC. I still haven’t been down there.</p>
<p>I was 10 when this happened. 5th grade. I can’t remember a pre-9-11 world really well. That’s the reason today just doesn’t mark much for me, to be honest. It was lifechanging, but not in a way that it was to my parents’ generation. I’m not saying it’s not sad and something that we should forget- but for many of us, it’s turning in to just another remembrance day UNLESS you were directly affected or in the area. </p>
<p>My generation has heard about 9/11 almost our entire lives. It’s burned into our conscious. Today is not necessarily anything “special”. </p>
<p>That sounded much more crude than I meant it to but I can’t figure out a better way to word it. :/</p>
<p>I took off work a few hours this morning to attend a memorial service, a Yikzor service, so to speak. My son knew twin girls who lost their father in Tower 1, my dentist’s daughter led a groups to safety in 2, and the man who we carpooled with escaped, as he left the building for coffee. I spent most of the day with my dentist, as he awaited news about his daughter. </p>
<p>I was 5 years old. I remember seeing the towers collapse on TV, and I thought it was just regular news. I don’t think I understood what happened for a few years.</p>
<p>None of the underclassmen have any memories. To be honest, I can only think of one kid that cared at all that it was 9/11. It’s not really significant to us. It’s more like, “Oh, guess we have to be sad today.”</p>
<p>It’s kinda like how no one really cares about December 7.</p>
<p>I viewed the very moving ceremony for flight 93 in Shanksville and found myself in tears all over again, thinking of the heroes on that plane. </p>
<p>The collapse of the twin towers is almost too big to wrap my mind around. But 40 people taking a desperate stand against hijackers, giving their own lives in the process, is something I can picture and can grieve. </p>
<p>I don’t know whether I am relieved or saddened that my sons remember very little about that day. They for sure will never comprehend how we as a country changed as a result.</p>
<p>Romani, I was in 5th grade when JFK was shot. One reads of people weeping over it. As a kid, although I comprehended that it was a terrible thing, I simply didn’t feel as strongly about it as an adult might.</p>
<p>A dear childhood friend was on Flight 11 and another on Flight 175.</p>
<p>I will never forget this day! It is also a day that is hard to discuss and hard to revisit. I avoid the news on this day. </p>
<p>I recently visited the 9/11 memorial. It has an overwhelming emotional experience. One thing that really hit me hard were the names of many women “Jane Doe and her unborn child”.</p>