H had dropped S off at preschool and headed back home. He heard the news of the first attack on the radio and watched the second one on TV when he got back. He called me right away at work.
We all gathered around in the hallway at work, discussing what we had heard. There was a thought that we were at war - the VP in charge of the building decided that he was closing the building down. He told all of us to go home, this was a time to be with your families. I picked S up at daycare and drove home in a state of shock. I still remember 3 yr old S saying in a very serious voice “plane hit the tower” although I don’t think he really grasped the meaning of that. He’s home today and we asked him - he has no real memory of that day, only remembers what we told him after.
Fortunately, I think your boss was in a very small minority. I remember corporate leaders of all stripes announcing “Do what you need to do” and basically granting funeral and mental health leave left and right- even for folks who wanted to attend funerals for people who they didn’t know and had no connection to. I stood in the crowd watching the procession out of St. Patrick’s Cathedral for a cop I did not know but whose story was just gob-smackingly heroic. She had a young child- I wanted her kid to remember the enormous outpouring of respect for her mom, even if her memories of everything else were fuzzy. It was November (by the time they recovered, identified the remains, etc) and the little girl was in a burgundy velvet dress- the crowd started sobbing when they saw her- it was clearly her “Christmas dress” for special occasions and now she was escorting her mom’s coffin down the steps…
I’m crying as I type. I haven’t thought about that day in years. Attending a strangers funeral- OMG. How bizarre.
I had a 2 year old and twin 9 mo olds after years of infertility. Two weeks before, flying out of Newark after a visit to my parents in the NJ suburb where I grew up (my friend’s mom had worked in the Trade Center and we’d visit her in her office on trips into the city as teens) I’d looked out the window at NYC and told H I couldn’t wait to take them there when they were older. My story is very ordinary- came out of a meeting at work and a colleague, who was worried because she thought her son was flying from Boston that day, told me about the planes hitting. Disbelief. That frightening word “highjacking.” Trying to get news through people who would go out to their cars and listen to the radio and also on an online forum I kept logging into where people who were at home and watching tv would keep the rest of us updated as the towers fell. I was only working a half day but didn’t pick my kids up from daycare right away as many others did because I needed to process it all before I dealt with them. I remember watching the news and the anchor saying that all planes over US airspace had landed. And bursting into tears. My emotions were fright and fear about the world my finally here kids were going to grow up into. Reading and hearing so many incredible / horrific stories today has really made me emotional again. I’m glad there seems to be more of an emphasis on remembering on this 25th anniversary. Or at least I’m noticing more. We need to remember how we were that day and in the aftermath. Public service was so important then.
Interesting so many thought we were at war and were fearful for safety - I don’t remember feeling that - maybe because I didn’t grasp the magnitude at first? I was in upper Manhattan having taken the train right by the site earlier that morning and had it happened an hour or two later I would have been in a meeting across the street (in the old post office building, I can’t remember the address). So I was very lucky. I stopped to call my answering machine (!) on my way out to go downtown and all the phone lines were down. So I turned on the computer to see what was going on and the NY Times was saying two planes had hit the towers. I assumed a midair collision, small planes, though was a bit confused by the gap in time between the two planes hitting. We all watched on the TV in the cafeteria and then went and sat outside on that impossibly beautiful day waiting to hear where we could go give blood. At some point it became clear there would be no need for blood donation so a friend and I walked the 50 blocks or so to 59th street planning to walk across the bridge to queens and have his girlfriend (now wife) meet us with the car. But by the time we hit Columbus circle though the subways were running again (only in NY) so I just jumped on the train and went home to Brooklyn. The days after were very surreal and we all had a bit of PTSD. The burning went on for weeks and you could smell it if the wind was right or taking the subway through the area. For years afterward a beautiful blue cloudless fall day would make me uneasy - it was such a shockingly beautiful day. I worked only a couple blocks away and felt the explosion when the towers were bombed in 1993 and witnessed all the rescue efforts then. I spent a lot of time in the shopping mall under the towers when I worked down there. I’m really grateful I didn’t work in the area anymore when 9/11 happened.
I’m kind of astonished by how fresh the feelings still are. I lived and worked a few blocks from the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge and pretty much saw it all spiral out in real time. People covered in concrete dust trekked by my building all day long. I remember neighbors passing out cups of water like they were marathoners. I’ve tuned out all news programming for the day.
I am having a rough day today. Not sure why this year is making me more emotional than other years. Ds2 called and I was all, yeah, I don’t feel like talking. I’m not one to turn down a convo with an adult kid!
@Youdon_tsay I get that. This has really hit home and made me so sad.
Thanks to all of you who are sharing your stories. I admit they are making me cry, especially for those of you who lost someone or were near any of this at the time.
We lived in a bedroom community for Wall Street, One of our neighbors worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, he never came home. He had three kids, aged 7, 4, and 1. His alma mater, Ohio Wesleyan, gave all three kids fully paid scholarships.
I remember when Bush and his entourage (not Cheney who was probably in a bunker somewhere) visited my daughter’s elementary school two days after it finally reopened, several days after most other public schools because we were so close to the pile. All the teachers, staff, and many students were still totally freaked out, to say nothing of the parents. Crazy, crazy, crazy in Chinatown where cops from all over the country were directing car traffic, having no idea about one-way streets and dead ends. My kid got a teddy bear every week until the end of the school year because they were sent by other schools across the country. No phone service in Chinatown until after Christmas. A zillion bomb scares, especially in the subway. Muslim US citizens lined up at 26 Federal Plaza, the headquarters for Immigration in lower Manhattan for mandatory check-ins. Latina women with no PPE hired to clean office buildings for cash. Etc., etc., etc.
It took many months before I felt “normal.” I had several friends who left the city for good.
My experience is so pedestrian and I feel it’s not like so many here.
My sister and I visited NYC late summer 2002. People were so nice and so grateful that we were visiting. It was a nice reminder of humanity.
I can’t remember the year but maybe around 2015, my D’s boyfriend at the time took us to the 911 memorial and the Statue of Liberty. It was at that time, sobering and uplifting at the same time. That we remembered and the poignant Emma Lazarus poem.
DH and I lived in NYC from 1995 through 2001, getting married halfway through that time. He was working at the World Financial Center, across the street from the WTC – and I had worked in that building from 1995-96. We both used the subway entrance under the WTC to get there.
We decided to move to Atlanta and left NYC in April of 2001. We spent that summer building a house and living in a crappy little apartment with our stuff still in boxes, waiting for our house to be ready. I was working remotely for my company, and DH was looking for jobs and applying to grad school.
So that morning, we were still in bed and started getting texts from colleagues (including a few who fled for their lives) – it was unreal. And we watched it unfold both on TV and online like the rest of the world.
But that was our city, and our home – the survivor’s guilt was something fierce. We’ve been back many times and seen the memorial, but I don’t think either of us will ever fully process it.
A couple of additional notes – on the night DH proposed to me, we did a bunch of NYC touristy things, including going out to the Statue of Liberty and walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, etc. We tried to go up to the WTC observatory, but it was closed for some reason. I remember DH being really disappointed, but I didn’t know why at the time. (He told me later that he would have proposed up there if it had been the right vibe.) Instead, he had booked a room at the Millennium Hilton across the street (now called something else) that he had filled with flowers, and he ended up proposing there instead.
And then, I really REALLY wanted to get married at Windows on the World (at the top of the WTC) – because July 4 was our wedding date, and I had in my head that seeing fireworks out the window at our wedding reception would have been just perfect. Alas, that did not end up happening because it was just too expensive – as you can imagine.