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My in-laws were in Canada on a vacation and couldn’t fly home. I think they had to drive back across the border to the U.S. and fly out of NY/NJ if I recall correctly.
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Yes, so many stranded. We were scheduled to fly out the next morning for my in-laws 50th wedding anniversary party that was scheduled for Friday. We ended up having to drive, but only after waiting another day to make sure that bridges didn’t have bombs underneath or other possible dangers. Two of my BIL’s were stranded on business trips with no means to get home.
On D1’s sixth grade bike trip from school to a nearby camp. A teacher came around and told us about the attacks at a water stop. Then came back a few minutes later to tell us that the towers collapsed. I remember her saying that the towers can have as many as 50,000 people in them when they are full. That is what sticks in my mind from that morning, that number, and worrying for days about the death toll.
When we got to the camp the kids ran off playing, but the adults gathered around someone’s car that had a built in TV. We ran their battery down and they needed a jump.
D1 was in 1st grade and doesn’t remember it. They had us sign kids out from school that day (not the normal procedure).
I was in a meeting at my work. My kids were in middle school and HS.
But my parents were actually at an airport waiting to board a flight home. They were grounded for about ten days between the airlines not flying and getting a flight once they were flying. Luckily they wer visiting relatives so had a place to stay.
I was in my dorm room getting ready to call D, who was living with her father temporarily, to wish her a happy birthday. We try not to let the tragedy cloud her birthday celebrations.
I was a sahm at the time but had a seasonal gig working in the bookstore of a nearby prep school. I was there when a teacher came in and mentioned that a plane had hit one of the towers. Naturally I imagined it to be a small private plane -until I wandered out into the lounge area outside the bookstore where the TV was on. The students were in disbelief and I wondered how many of them had parents there (this was in central Connecticut, luckily I don’t believe any students lost parents). I remember calling H from a payphone and while on the phone, watching the TV, thinking “that smoke looks strange, almost like when a building is imploded”. That was the moment the first tower fell.
Ugh. Watching the coverage non-stop, not knowing if it was “over”… not knowing even how to refer to the events. Wondering if we should cancel our trip to Walt Disney world in October. Looking at the beautiful crisp cloudless sky. Not knowing how to explain to the kids. Noticing the absence of air traffic from our nearby airport and the surprise when it resumed.
Some say they can’t bear to watch replays of the events. I force myself to watch every year because I don’t want to forget.
The TV was on as usual while we were getting ready for work. I stopped what I was doing when I noticed the live broadcast of a burning building and thought, “Oh no, there’s been a terrible accident.” Moments later, the second plane hit and I just sat there stunned. DH came out of the bathroom, having heard the newscaster, saying “What the hell is going on?!”
At home, getting ready for a doctor’s appointment, and watching NBC cover the odd unfolding story of a small plane hitting one of the twin towers. And then…
Watching the whole thing on the small kitchen tv at my parents house, none of us able to look away long enough (or even thinking about) putting on the large tv in the living room. Thinking, as many have said, that the world would never be the same (and it hasn’t, in many ways). Husband on a business trip and unable to fly home - finally rented a car somehow and drove 18 hours home.
We live near an airport and remember noticing how silent the skies were for so many days…
I also lived in NYC for 7 years and used the WTC subway stop for 2 of those years and remember being so surprised and grateful that I didn’t really know anyone who had died that day, yet still overwhelmed by the loss of life…
We live 7 miles up the road from the Pentagon. That morning everyone had left for school and work and I was watching the Today show as I got ready to go to a meeting. DH worked in DC. I called him to tell him it was real. That was the worst evacuation of DC. No one knew what was going to happen next.
S2 was in his second week at college. We went to get him and bring him home the next day when they closed the school. It seems his class was really impacted by it as he many of his friends and classmates had an harder time than our others finishing college, settling into careers, etc.
My boss had been in charge of the Pentagon office that was a direct hit so he know many of the people who had been still working there. We did not know anyone though. The strangest thing was when they finally stopped flying fighter jets over DC 24x7 it was eerily quiet.
I’m sure none of us will forget that day. Fortunately, I don’t know anyone who was directly affected, but my thoughts are with them today. The memorial in NYC which I have been to is excellent, though heartbreaking.
In any case, this morning, I had a text exchange with my 27 year old in NYC about that day 15 years ago when she was 12, because we experienced it together and she remembers it very well, and remarked how all her peers had been in school that day but she wasn’t.
We lived in rural Vermont. That day, I was traveling with my then 12 year old to NYC for her to attend an audition. We lived 6 hours away and so I was driving about 3.5 hours to Albany that morning where we were going to leave the car and take a train into NYC. As we were driving early in the morning, my mom called me on my cell from South Jersey. My cell didn’t get reception much, if at all, for a good portion of this drive. Her call was cut short, but she was calling to tell me to not go to NYC because a plane had struck a building. That’s all I knew. I couldn’t understand why we should avoid NYC if there was an accident? So, I kept driving and we switched from listening to Broadway CDs (what this kid did on car rides), and turned on the radio which we left on for the remainder of the car ride as we headed toward Albany. As we listened, the rest unfolded…the second tower in NYC, the plane in PA, and then the Pentagon. My D and I were transfixed as we discussed that it seemed like our country was under attack, like a war. We had no visuals at that point. We got to Albany and of course, no trains were going to NYC. There was a screen on in the station showing the scene at the World Trade Center and we then realized the full impact of what we had been listening to on the radio. We turned around to drive back to VT. I tried calling our HS back in VT where my other D was in tenth grade and asking if they would give her a message (no cells worked in our community and so my kid didn’t have one with her). I didn’t want her to worry when she heard the news and think that her sister and myself were in NYC. The school would not give her the message as they had not told the students the news.
A couple days later, I travelled to NYC with my 12 year old to go to her rescheduled audition appointment (though the audition was still held on 9/11). I will never forget that plastered all over Penn Station inside and out were flyers of photos of missing loved ones. It had a big impact on us.
On my way to class… w/ D1 & D2 to be taken to preschool… Lived in CA at the time… was listening to NPR when the commentary was interrupted to advise of the terrible accident taking place. At that point it was the first plane. Like many I envisioned a cesna or other small private plane… not the commercial airliner… I continued w/ my day… But by the time I got to class, after dropping the girls off at preschool, news of the second plane hitting the towers broke. I knew something was terribly wrong. We had actually just returned back to CA from our summer vacation in NY to visit my husband’s folks. He took me to NYC and for the first time in my life, Aug 28, 2001… I’ll never forget the day I craned my head up in awe at the shear size of those towers.
I felt a desperate need to return home, and promptly picked up my children and returned. Thoughts of my dear friend who worked at the pentagon raced through my mind (at that point, I believe the news of the attack on DC had broke). Thankfully, she was off that Tuesday.
Our lives forever changed from that day. It saddens me so many people lost their lives.
I was a SAHM mom and my S was in school, my D home with me. My H was prepping for a trip to NYC on 9/12 and worked in TV broadcasting. He had to stay at work very late as he had to direct the live broadcast of his channel and make the decision when to cut to network coverage of the event. It was unprecedented in his industry to got to another channel’s feed.
I had a workman at the house whose wife had just started a job with a company in the WTC. She was fine.
I remember calling my H’s secretary and saying that she absolutely had to cancel his trip on the 12th and being concerned that I was overreacting, until it became clear that no one would be traveling in the near future.
My daughter was at her second full day of Kindergarten at an elementary school in Chinatown, walking distance from twin towers. I was in my car driving home from Manhattan over the bridge to Brooklyn after dropping her off when the first plane hit. I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out how to get her home since the subways were closed and I didn’t think they would let me walk back into Manhattan and I didn’t have a cell phone back then (not that they were working properly). Guardian angels came to our rescue and she was delivered to my door at 6:30 p.m. I am so grateful that she was just young enough not to bear the full burden of what had happened. It was such a terrible time for New Yorkers and for years it was hard for me to accept sympathy and solidarity from people who didn’t live through the day and the weeks and months of disruption and emotional chaos afterward.
My family and I lost no loved ones on 9/11/01 nor were any of them sickened in the cleanup, so I can say that it’s just a distant, sad and traumatic memory. But for the families of those who lost their lives and for those who lost their good health, the pain will never go away.
I live in a suburb of NYC. H and I had taken the middle 3 kids (grades 5, 2 and K) to school that day and had just attended a meeting where we were told what a horrible monster our 2nd grader was and how we should put him in a school for mentally ill sociopathic children because the school couldn’t handle him. As we left the building, someone told us about the first plane. A group of us were listening to someone’s transistor radio when the word came about the second plane. At that point, H and I drove home to where his cousin, who lived with us, was watching S17, who turned 2 1/2 that day. Oldest son was in 6th grade.
H went to Queens to bring his mom back to our house and I went to the courthouse in Queens County. After watching the Towers fall from a window in the courthouse, I drove back to my office on Long Island and eventually went home. H was in the volunteer FD then and he went to muster to give aid. His starkest memory is that a call came in for body bags to be sent out, but no volunteers or medical supplies were needed. When the FD eventually went down to Ground Zero, H was not allowed to go because we have 5 kids.
Oldest boy was finally allowed to call me from school. He didn’t know what was going on but he was curious about all the sonic booms he heard. He’s a fighter jet aficionado and was actually able to discriminate between the different types of planes.
When I got home, my mother in law was watching the news. S17 kept saying boom, boom, plane. I shut the TV off immediately but not before seeing people jumping, which they actually showed in the first few hours of coverage. We didn’t watch the news before 11 for a couple of months.
My first job was in 2 WTC. I loved working in that building and that area.
As for survival stories - a friend of mine unexpectedly got her period on the train downtown. Her forced stop at the drugstore for supplies meant that she hadn’t yet reached her office when the first plane hit. My D’s friend’s uncle got to work early and was at his desk at about 8:35 when he was overcome with a desire to go to mass, something he had apparently not done in about 20 years before that. He left the office and survived. Unfortunately, a friend of my H’s lost her fiance and the firefighter brother of another friend also died.
I always watch the name reading. This year, they put the ages down and I did the mental math to figure out how old each one would be now. I was shocked by how many young people the ages my two oldest children are now (24 and 26) died.
I was arriving into my IT/IS job in Boston’s financial district when a supervisor who knew I was originally from NYC called me over to a room where the TV was broadcasting the news. At that point, the first plane already hit and not too long after I joined my colleagues, another plane hit the towers. My supervisor and colleagues were shocked at that point which was only furthered when the towers started collapsing.
By around 9 am, the overall head of our division called us together for a meeting to discuss the situation and to dismiss us from work because the local authorities were concerned about the security situation in the financial district. Ended up walking 2+ hours back home because public transit was so snarled up it was faster to just walk. There were crowds of people in the Financial district milling about in stunned silence, waiting to grab a train/bus home, or were deciding to walk home like yours truly.
Nearing my home by the Longwood Area, stopped into Brigham and Women’s Hospital to donate blood. When I got home, tried contacting my parents and family and wasn’t able to until the following day due to heavy phone traffic.
Was concerned as I had an uncle who were working in the towers at the time and an aunt who was due to have a meeting there that very morning. Later on, found both ended up not being in the towers due to being delayed by dropping off their kids at school.
Sadly, among the dead from the terror attack was a HS classmate from an older class.
I wish I didn’t know anyone who was personally affected, but sadly I do. I lost a college classmate, a friend lost her brother, and my parents knew many in their community who’t come home that night.
We were in bed. Mr. Ellebud turned on the television and woke me up. The first plane had hit. I thought (remember this is Hollywood) that this was a part of a movie shoot. Just for a second. My children went to school. I heard that the Muslim mothers came and picked up their children. They returned the next day. Terrifying.
I had an early dental appointment. The daughter of dentist was in Tower 2. The dentist refused to leave work and go home to his wife, so he fixed my cavity. I stayed for hours until he got word that his DD survived.
A man we carpooled with survived because he left his hotel room to get a cup of coffee. He computer and suitcase were crushed.
2 kids in my son’s school lost their father that day.
In North Dakota with the in-laws at their apartment. We were about to take D and her little cousin to the zoo for the day. I walked into the living room and saw the tv (as FIL was flipping channels) and said “omg what is THAT?” (one tower was flaming). He brushed me off , said it must be some war movie and kept flipping channels but it was the same picture on all the channels.
I finally got him to stop and watch and as we did the second plane hit the second tower. And then we couldn’t stop watching.
We did finally go to the zoo that day just to get out of the apartment. The skies ahead were dead though. All planes grounded. And then we think Air Force One flew over at one point but we have never been able to confirm.
It took us almost 5 days to figure out how to get back to Texas–rented a car and hit the road.