<p>I was sitting at my desk, first cube in a long aisle, and heard a colleague from another department rush by in the “main aisle.” I heard him say, “a plane just flew into the World Trade Center,” as he turned into one of the few conference rooms with a TV. </p>
<p>The rest of the morning was a frenzy as it’s my responsibility to handle all corporate messages to employees.</p>
<p>I was at home preparing for my day. I did not grasp the scope of the thing at all at first…stunning and so very sobering. I pray we never, ever forget.</p>
<p>I was standing in my kitchen watching my wake up dose of Katie and Matt. At first I thought it was some kind of weird new movie. I couldn’t comprehend that these could be real images I was looking at. Had to wake up DH for a reality check.<br>
I then went to work as a hotel manager. I had someone lower the flags, then an older couple came to check out because they couldn’t reach their daughter at the Pentagon and wanted to go home. One look at their faces and I certainly will never forget.</p>
<p>I was at work and a colleague came rushing into my office and said that a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. As that colleague was a bit of an hysteric, I didn’t take it too seriously and assumed that a six-seater had crashed. When the second plane hit, I ran into her office to listen to her radio, along with two or three other people.</p>
<p>Later that afternoon, we had a pre-arranged office meeting. The Managing Partner of the office said – and I quote – “What happened this morning was a tragedy, but we can’t take a week to mourn; we have a business to run.”</p>
<p>I lost whatever respect I had ever had for him at that moment.</p>
<p>My husband called to say “put on the TV”. I then called my dad and, while on the phone, we watched as the first tower collapsed.</p>
<p>My 5th grader watched the event throughout the day on TV at school; I had no need of telling her what had happened. Trouble was that they let the younger kids watch too. Our neighbor’s 3rd grade kid couldn’t sleep at all that night.</p>
<p>We then had the eerie silence of no overhead air traffic for a few days.</p>
<p>I was sitting at my desk in midtown when a friend in Florida called to ask if I was ok. Right after that, the phones in my office went out for what would be an entire month and i didn’t yet have a cell phone. Staten Island was already cut off from the rest of the world and would remain so for a long time (someday that tale should be told, it’s a good one), so I knew I couldn’t go home. Strangely enough, the INternet access in my office remained online and a group of my friends from various places in the country stayed online with me all day till I finally got home late that night.</p>
<p>My kids’ school was on a hill in downtown Staten Island looking right directly at the Towers. The watched the entire thing from up close and personal in real time. D2 knew pretty early that I was missing (my family didn’t know I was ok till late that night because hubby wasn’t able to sign onto computer) and the stress of that was horrible for her.</p>
<p>I was helping a telephone company linesman diagnose a bad landline coming into the house. He had the radio on in his truck. Nice guy. Very competent.</p>
<p>I was in the car on the way to go to work. I used to listen to jokes on the radio. I turned on the radio when I just got into the freeway. I heard the radio saying about an airplane hitting a WTC tower. Then I heard something about the second tower. I thought they were joking. One minute later, I knew that was the sad truth.</p>
<p>I was on our energy trading floor delivering a gift to a colleague whose wife has just delivered twins…seeing the second plane hit on huge TV screens live is a sight that I will never ever forget…</p>
<p>I had just returned from my mother’s funeral several days earlier, and in an attempt to do something – anything – to mark a new beginning, I had arranged to have the windows in my home washed. The crew had just arrived with the radio on. I spent the next few hours moving from TV to TV throughout the house to escape the window washers, wondering why in the world they wouldn’t just go home. It was my daughter’s second day in 4th grade, the day they traditionally check for head lice. The school opted not to tell the younger children what had happened, and to this day my daughter remembers thinking “Wow – a lot of kids have lice this year,” as so many parents came to collect their children.</p>
<p>I was walking with a close friend when my DH called me on my cell phone to tell me that a plane had crashed into the WTC. My friend and I turned around on the path we were walking and went back to a convenience store along the way. The TV was turned to a Spanish language station, but it didn’t take translation to understand what was going on as we watched the second plane crash into the second tower. MY DH was working in mid-town Manhattan at the time and I have no recollection of how he got home that day. DS#1 was going to school in one of the outer boroughs of the city and he eventually got home. Many of the students in his school brought home friends who could not reach their homes in Manhattan. DS#'s 2&3 were in the 4th grade at the time and were not told what had happened but they knew something unusual was going on because many parents came to school to pick up their kids that morning. DS#3 later drew a picture of the Twin Towers on fire. I saved the picture. The biggest panic we had was that we knew that a close friend worked on the 102nd floor. That evening we found out that he was late to work because he missed his regular train because he couldn’t find a parking space at the train station.</p>
<p>I was at home waiting for the plumber to finish a repair when I turned on the TV. I told him that he needed to see what was happening. We were watching together as the second plane hit. It was all so surreal. I don’t think either one of of us really understood what we had just seen.</p>
<p>I was listening to the radio on my way to work (running late) and I heard two deejays discussing that a plane had hit the WTC. I assumed a small plane, of course. One of them must have had a TV on because as they were talking about it, the second one hit. The shock in their voices was searing.</p>
<p>Went on to work, where no one got much done as we all were listening to radio and internet reports of event unfolding and new rumors flying. While we’re well away from NYC, we have a lot of kids from the NY Metro area on campus so the climate here was even more fraught with concern. God, what an awful day that was. I remember seeing someone post on a message board that the first tower had fallen and I just didn’t believe the words I saw typed.</p>
<p>On the 43rd floor of the second tallest building in Boston which is 2-3 miles from and directly on the flight path to/from Boston’s airport. My employeer did <em>not</em> release employees but it was pretty darn empty very soon after the second plane hit.</p>
<p>I was sitting at my desk at work (in an elementary school) and the assistant principal came to tell me. Within a hour, parents started coming to the school to sign out their kids. I asked one parent why she wanted to sign the kids out from school and she said that she just felt the need to have the entire family close for reassurance. My kids were in school–one in Middle School, the other in 9th grade. They will never forget that day. The older one happened to be in a history class and his teacher turned the TV on to show them and to discuss the situation. The middle school kids were told that something terrible happened in New York City and they were advised not to turn on the TV until their parents were home from work. It was such a terrible day. My husband’s friend was on the plane that was taken over by the passengers. She called her sister from the plane to tell her goodbye and to tell her where the “important papers-Will” could be found. The school nurse where I worked lost two brothers–they both worked in the WTC. A kid lost his uncle who was a firefighter and his Dad (a retired firefighter) went to the site for months to help recover bodies hoping to find his brother’s body. Although we live on Eastern Long Island and 2 hours away, it effected us. For about a year, we would cringe everytime we heard a low flying plane. It was just horrible.</p>
<p>I was on my way to the high school for a parent meeting. The DJ’s were discussing the first plane hit and wondering how they could have not seen it on a clear and sunny day. When I got to the school, the Principal at first tried to carry on, but soon it was apparent that there was something really bad going on. They made an announcement that any child who had family in NYC should go down to the office. Parents debated whether the kids should be told and allowed to watch, or have school carry on as usual.</p>
<p>I had just dropped my daughters off at school and went into the school office to say hello to the secretary. The T.V. was on and she and other parents were gathered around in stunned silence. I had not listened to the radio that morning and could scarcely believe what I was seeing. </p>
<p>On a side note, last night my 10 year old asked me, “What’s 9/11?” At first, I was amazed–how could she not know? But then I realized that she was only three years old at the time. To her, “9/11” is the same sort of vague and mysterious tragedy as “Pearl Harbor” was to me as a child–an event still vivid in the minds of my parents.</p>
<p>I was at home getting kids ready for school. I collapsed on couch with youngest and we stared at the tv, didn’t speak, didn’t move. She was very late for school that day. She was 10 and remembers everything.</p>
<p>I was on my way to NYC that day with my then 12 year old daughter. We live six hours away. I was driving about half way to Albany and then was going to get on Amtrak for the other half of the journey. I was taking her to NYC for an audition she had there (she is in theater). Most of my drive is where there is no cell service. It was the morning. At one point on the drive, a call came in on my cell from my mom in NJ and there was barely a connection and all I heard was “don’t go to NYC, turn around, a plane hit a building.” I kept thinking, well, that is bad but why would I not go to NYC because of that?? She said turn on the radio and then I lost the phone contact. So, I kept driving toward Albany to make our train to NYC and listened to the radio with my 12 year old. It was all so shocking but hard to take it all in because it was all unfolding at that point with a second building being hit and then planes unaccounted for and the Pentagon being hit and I felt like our country was at war and I was sharing every moment of it with my child. We were not fully able to take in the magnitude and continued to Albany. I got to Albany and of course no trains were running to NYC and I called the agent to see if the auditions were still on and she said, “yes”, which I could not believe but I said we could not get there and so we turned around and drove three hours back home (it was a six hour car ride to nowhere). I tried to call our HS and ask them to give my 14 year old the message that her mom and sister did not go into the city after all and would be coming back home to meet her at soccer and I didn’t want her to worry that we were in lower Manhattan as we were not after all. They were not going to give her the message because they said that they did not tell the students. I found out later from my older D that some found out through the internet anyway. I did go into NYC three days later with my 12 year old for a rescheduled audition and it was a good experience for her because all around Penn Station, there were signs of missing people and tributes and so forth and we were able to feel it even more. </p>
<p>I hope our country never forgets. I can’t even fathom being a family who was touched by the tragedy by deaths. It was horrific enough watching it from afar.</p>
<p>We were on the other side of the world. We had recently gotten access to ‘Kablevision’ and the kids had just finished homework. The events immediately activated our company’s ‘warden system’ and within 30 minutes we had 3 other families bunking in with us as the company and their security consultants tried to decide if it was safe for us to stay in the 90% Moslem country we lived in. </p>
<p>My children are American but had always lived overseas. When I told them that these events changed forever what it meant to be an American, they could almost not fathom what I meant. We all lost something that day.</p>
<p>We stayed on, school closed for a few days, and returning was humbling as fellow expats from presumably ‘friendly’ countries were shockingly insensitive.</p>