The Shanksville memorial is about 90 minutes from Pittsburgh. It’s a VERY sobering experience but worth it.
It was a beautiful fall day. I remember calling my parents after lunch. I asked what they thought. Neither one had heard the news. Busy doing yard work. I basically said we’ll be at war soon.
I was doing laundry and ny friend called from Nebraska asking if I was watching the new. I had to bring my 6 month old to the doctors due to an ear infection. Listened to the radio and looked at the smoke (pediatrician was uphill). Tower one fell. The pediatrician cancelled all appointments except sick visits because many of their patients had parents who worked in NYC (including my husband). Came out, heard the second tower fell, on the way home we were facing nyc and the smoke. Lots of sirens. Picked up my kids from preschool and elementary (schools closed). Spent the day watching it on TV, didn’t want to my my husband was across from the UN, cellphones didn’t work, he didn’t know if he should stay put with landline phone service or try to get to NJ (he took the bus to work, roads and tunnels were closed). He decided to chance it, took hours but got home that night (hopped on a ferry and got a ride from someone willing to take backroads to our house 8 miles away). The sirens and smoke lasted a long time. A friend gave birth at a local hospital and then asked her to leave, thinking they might get injured (which of course they didn’t).
I was in New Jersey, visiting my parents. We had come from Japan to introduce our almost one-year old son and had spent the previous week in NYC. On the day, my father wanted to drive up to the Woodbury outlet mall in New York to buy my mother a Christmas present, and he was out in the driveway waiting for the rest of us to get in the car. He heard about the first plane on the radio, and we all assumed it was some sort of accident. And then, just as we were about to drive off, the second plane hit, and we knew something was terribly wrong. My father was a very proud and stubborn man, and he insisted we should not let whoever it was interfere with our lives, so we got in the car nonetheless. At the bottom of the driveway, we had a view of the city and could see the Towers burning. We got to the mall just before they announced an emergency close and then the Towers fell as we were driving back down the highway towards home. It was so disorienting, we took a wrong turn and ended up almost in Pennsylvania, where we had lunch in a beautiful cafe. I remember what a gorgeous day it was. For anyone who hasn’t read “The 17 Minutes that Changed America” by Garrett Graff for NatGeo, I strongly recommend it.
I didn’t visit the 9/11 Memorial for many, many years, even though I work very close by and watched it and the new World Trade Center being constructed. I just couldn’t bring myself to go.
I finally visited a few years ago with a cousin who was visiting from out of town. It was emotionally quite difficult.
My wife has never been, and doesn’t plan to.
It took me years and years before I could go. I just sobbed.
I was in grad school at Belmont. I was not working at that time, so I was asleep on the 1st floor couch at my girlfriend’s condo.
She called. I did not yet have a cell phone, so the wall-mounted phone in the kitchen (15 feet away) rang.
“What are you doing?”
“I was asleep. What’s up?”
“Turn on the TV.”
“Why?”
“Just turn on the TV.”
I turned on the TV and thought I was watching the newest Schwarzenegger movie trailer. It was fairly soon after the first tower had been struck.
That day, of course, got a lot worse. I ended up very angry and drowned my sorrows at a nearby bar. Then called the Navy recruitment hotline a couple days later, prepared to suspend my studies to get into OCS and help fight. Asthma kept me from doing that.
…called the Navy recruitment hotline a couple days later, prepared to suspend my studies to get into OCS and help fight.
A co-worker had a son at the US Air Force Academy when 9/11 happened. The academy immediately went into lockdown. Their son said there was talk among a few first-year cadets about dropping out and enlisting so they could fight sooner.
The memorial is very moving. Went there a few times, but fully 10 years later. Have not yet been to the museum.
Went to Liberty State Park to see the tall ships on 4th of July. The Empty Sky memorial there is also quite moving. Unfortunately, unlike the NYC memorial I didn’t see a way to find specific names.
I have a friend whose birthday is 9/11 (although decades before the horrific attacks). She’s extra sad that it’s now such a sad and somber day.
My daughter was in her fourth day of Kindergarten in Chinatown. I had a car then and had dropped her off. I was probably on the Manhattan Bridge going home when the first plane hit.
I didn’t know what had happened until later in the morning when I went outside to move my car for alternate side of the street parking. I had a tough time getting my daughter home–I didn’t know if they would allow me to walk into Manhattan to get her. Finally my much younger cousin and her then-boyfriend/now husband walked to her school and brought her to their apartment. A neighbor picked her up from there and brought her home at around 6:30 pm.
Such a crazy time for all of us living in NYC. A few days after her school reopened, President Bush and entourage visited her school. Our amazing principal slept in the school with students who were not picked up. She later had kidney failure which may have been caused by exposure–every time it rained, there was a stink from the pile.
It wasn’t until the following summer that I felt back to “normal.” I will always be grateful to the staff at PS130 for how well they took care of our kids.
I went to the memorial and museum about 10 years ago with my family and my sister’s family (3 adults, 8 kids 10+). I ended up walking through the museum alone, not really on purpose, we just all were so immersed and quiet and ended meeting up at the end. It took me back immediately to not only that day, but that time period, it was tough, but at the end, cathartic. I highly recommend it.
It was a beautiful morning in western KY with a sky so blue that I now associate days like that with 9/11. I was living the easy life that year with S, a senior, driving my D, a freshman to high school and I got a few more minutes at home before heading to work each morning. I remember seeing Jack Welch, the recently retired CEO of GE, promoting his book on The Today Show and the next thing up was the report of the first plane hitting. I headed to work and was behind a colleague at a stoplight near our community college when we both heard them reporting the second plane flying into a tower (this was back in the day when we could still pick up our local NBC station on a radio frequency in the car). We rushed into our building and immediately turned on the tv while colleagues began to gather. I had gone downstairs to cancel my 9 am class and while speaking with students, I missed the news of the plane hitting the Pentagon and the first tower collapse. I remember so much about that day and a few select other days that are indelible for me (one of those days is the afternoon of the Kennedy assassination when I was in the first grade. I was volunteering as a reading pal in my former elementary school 50 years to the day of that event and I found myself standing in the lunch line with my little pal and looking down to my first grade classroom and fighting back tears as those emotions came flooding back). Reading these stories is painful, but reminds us of the importance of sharing connection.
H and I were just discussing our preschool situation at the time, out 4 year old had just started a preK program early September, it was new to him, his previous school was a gentle learn through play program our other kids went to (that I went to) and it didn’t mesh well with his adhd, so switched to a Montessori school his friends attended that was very structured regarding behavior. Several of the teachers were Muslim. When school opened back up, we were asked to pack bags for our kids with a few outfits, snacks, water bottles, toothbrushes, just in case the school was targeted. There was an escape plan through the back into a residential neighborhood. After a month or so, we were asked if we wanted our bags back or if they could be donated to a shelter. We donated. H claims he didn’t know about the bags but I suspect he just forgot.
I was at home making breakfast for the kids. My normally chatty mother-in-law called, and the first thing she said was, “Where’s (my husband’s name)?” I said, “Oh, he’s upstairs getting ready”. Then all she said was, “Turn on the TV”, and hung up.
I turned on the tv, and when my husband came downstairs, I told him I thought this was the beginning of WW3. My MIL was afraid that we were in the air, as we were airline pilots, and she was terrified.
I remember dropping the kids off at school, and the other parents looking at each other, saying nothing. I think we were all in shock.
I too remember like it was yesterday. I was seeing a patient and there was a lot of noise in the waiting room. We went out and we had that on the TV. I called my friends in California. Woke them up to turn on the TV.
Then I called up my dentist to rearrange my appointment . The office manager told me to come as the Dentist’s daughter was in building number two. She could get him to go home and be with his wife, but she felt like I could be of help. turns out, she was one who led a group out.
A man that was part of our carpool group shared that he was in the hotel on the bottom of the tower. He had left his room to go get coffee. when he came back, Everything was destroyed. His story really affected my son. even worse was when my son found out that two of his friends lost their father in the towers.
It may sound strange, but I had a child patient come in because her birthday is on 911. She couldn’t handle her sadness of that day with having a birthday party. She had awful nightmares.
At work. Hospital pharmacist. One of our techs came back from rounds and told us about the first plane hitting. Of course, at that time everyone thought it was a small plane, true accident.
What a day huh? One of my co-workers sister was in the Navy at the Pentagon and had her daughter in daycare there.
Another co-worker’s Army husband worked there. He was in the next section over from where it hit.
The longest day, just in shock like everyone and I cried when I finally heard that evening at home, that the sister and her daughter and the husband were safe.
We lost 22 county citizens between NYC and Arlington. There is a vigil here in a couple of hours. We have a memorial built with 4 beams from one of the Twin Towers. A local business, iron works, was responsible for construction of the box columns at the base of the Twin Towers.
My husband was in Alexandria and heard the fighter jets popping the sound barrier and shaking the building on taking off from Andrews that would have taken out Flight 93 as they were pretty sure it was headed to the Capitol which was in full session that day or the White House.
It was a perfect late summer day here on the East Coast.
Our son’s West Point class ring contains steel from the WTC that was first added to the 2016 melt. All subsequent cadet rings contain some of the steel.
Never forget.
@FallGirl , yes, yes. My kids were in middle and high school and the first announcement was for any children of employees at the Pentagon to go to the Principal’s office. 
Yes, no routine air traffic in a normally very busy area, as in many places, I’m sure. But I remember late at night hearing what must have been military jets in the air. I guess keeping a watch and on alert for any more incoming.
Up the hill in Arlington from the Pentagon where is now the Air Force Memorial, were old Army buildings housing DOD workers. My friend’s husband worked there. Many coworkers heard the roar of the plane, ran to the windows and saw it hit the Pentagon. Art said they were forever in therapy after that, trying still to cope with what they had witnessed.
Later they relocated that division or maybe all of DOD to Huntsville, Alabama and my dear friend and her husband re-located.
My SIL’s dad was a long time American pilot and was in the air that morning. SIL has said a few times that his dad doesn’t talk about that day.
