<p>H called me–he heard it on the radio on his way to work (central time). He said, “Turn on the TV. Something very bad is happening.” When I turned it on, I saw the plane flying into the 2nd tower. We were glued to the TV for the next couple days. As many times as they played the videos over and over and over, it still seemed so unreal.
My kids all watched it. (Funny, I never thought of NOT letting them watch --including 3 and 6 yo). . . I told my older kids: You will remember this day.
Nothing will ever be the same. I felt that up to that point we Americans had always been very comfortable and confident. Now we were uneasy, suspicious, on the defense. . .bad things COULD happen to us–we’d lost our innocence.
We were glad to be living in a remote rural area in the middle of the country that seemed to be the most unlikely target.</p>
<p>I was in the 5th grade in class and my principal came on the loud speaker and said, “There was a plane crash in New York City.” That was all that was said. And then they called one of my friends down because his dad worked in the Twin Towers and his mom wanted to get him (his dad was fine though). Although my principal minimized the situation, I could tell by the tone of his voice that something was wrong so as soon as I got home, I turned on the news and found out what had happened.</p>
<p>I was working on my computer at home and had checked the news online. We have no TV to speak of (a few fuzzy channels, no cable), so I didn’t see it as it happened but listened on the radio, which was horrific. After the buildings fell, I walked to the grocery store in the bright sunshine and my knees were shaking. An older man in the store said to a friend that it was just like Pearl Harbor.</p>
<p>At school pickup time (the principal had just told the kids there was a terrible accident in NYC–no television coverage allowed), everyone was talking. I didn’t realize as I was talking to a friend that his brother-in-law worked in the first building in the office directly hit. He said nothing to me, as he must have still been processing it, and of course they were hoping he had not been in his office, as he was semi-retired and went in only two days a week. Sadly, he was killed; months later a bone fragment was identified. But the first few days, rumors flew–someone had seen him in a hospital in Toronto, or some other place. His was the first face to go up on a poster.</p>
<p>We live 35 miles from NYC and the town had to close the beach road because traffic was jammed: so many people were driving down to look at the smoke from the burning towers. We found out the next morning that our across the street neighbor had run down many flights of stairs and made it out but a father of three one street over stayed in his office and did not. 16 people died from our town, mostly young men and fathers in business. Our sons sang in a memorial service that very evening.</p>
<p>I had my head under a desk in my classroom when our school went on lock down because an escapee from jail was running around campus with a gun.</p>
<p>I was in a classroom in Ft Leavnworth with 17 other Majors from all the services, in the middle of a military history class. During our first morning break, someone in one of the other classes popped his head in to say, “Turn on your TV, there’s something happening in NY”.<br>
We sat n class for the next 3 hours, flabbergasted as we watched our ntion coming under attack, knowing the implications it meant for everyone in that room. We we’re sent home to our families, the post under “lockdown” for only it’s third time in history (Civil War and WII). Armed patrols EVERYWHERE, gaurd dogs, autmatic weapons at the gates, the whole shabang. Lots f frightened children, our children, escorted back to their homes by soldiers carrying guns. Scary.</p>
<p>Of our class of 1400 military, DoD, Government Service, and Foreign National students (inlcuding reps from Saudi, Yemen, and Pakistan), almost 100 left the school within a few weeks (9 months early), to head into war. Some never made it back; I tink the count is now up to 10 of my classmates who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for their country over the past 7 years. G<em>d bless them, and G</em>d bless their families.</p>
<p>I was about to take my son to elementary school when the tv news said that a plane had hit the WTC. I figured it was a private plane & the pilot had a heart attack or something. After dropping my son at school, I turned on the radio to hear my favorite morning talk show guys talking about how this was a commercial airliner. I hurried home to watch the news, but decided to go to my workout class just to be around other people. As I waited for class, a woman’s husband, who is a judge, called to tell her about the Pentagon. I was terrified throughout class & went directly to see my parents. When it was announced that another plane had gone down in a field, my dad, a former Army Ranger, told me he wouldn’t be suprised if the military shot it down on purpose to minimize casualties (he was on the right track, although it wasn’t the military who took it down).</p>
<p>It was my H’s birthday (yes … and his sister’s is Pearl Harbor Day), so I had to run to the mall that afternoon. It was closed, just to be on the safe side.</p>
<p>That night, our church had a service. Everyone was just so shaken up.</p>
<p>Thanks for the opportunity to get the memories out.</p>
<p>Like many of the previous posters on this thread, I also heard the news on the car radio and assumed the plane was a cessna and it was some sort of accident.
My grandmother had passed away just days before and I was with my parents and my then 4 yr old daughter. My husband was back in NJ with our other kids who had just started school.
I was driving to look for a dress for my little girl to wear to the funeral. The store that I went into had the radio on and the sales woman began to cry because her sister worked in the first tower and she couldn’t reach her on her cell phone.
Something about seeing her break down made me just pay for the dress, get out of the store and call my husband…a lady on the street yelled at me to
" get off my phone, we we’re under attack "
I drove back to my parent’s and picked up my sister ( whose car I had borrowed ) We sent my daughter upstairs to watch PBS while we all watched the news in shock.
Before the afernoon was over, we witnesses their neighbor get the news hat their daughter was killed in the first crash…she was a buyer for TJ Maxx.</p>
<p>Living in the NY/NJ area and being in Mass seemed to me that everyone I know was somehow witness to or knew someone who was personally affected by this tragedy.</p>
<p>I was at my desk at work. S1 was a freshman in flight class. He & his teacher were on the runway ready to take off when they closed the airport. They went inside and saw the first tower fall on the TV in the airport and he called me. I couldn’t comprehend what he was saying. “What do you mean, it fell down? A buildling can’t just fall down.” Couldn’t get through to any web sites. I finally connected with one in France that showed a photo of the burning towers. </p>
<p>H was away on sabbatical at a military base in the DC area. Phone lines were jammed and we couldn’t get through to each other all day. I knew he was safe where he was, but all his mom in Europe knew was that he was in Washington, DC. I finally got through to her and she had been frantically trying to call him.</p>
<p>A friend was home in the southern US with the TV off and received a call from friends in Brazil telling him to turn the TV on.</p>
<p>I was on the way to my father’s funeral. My father had passed away suddenly on 9-7( 2 days after my b-day) and we scheduled his funeral for 10 a.m. that morning. We were on the road right before 9 am. As we were driving I looked at my H and announced that I doubt if I would get out of the car once we got there and said I need something to get my mind off of what lied ahead. Within one minute the radio announcer came on and announced that the first tower had been hit. That was way more than I could ever imagine. Since we live in MD, we have relatives and friends who work here and in DC. My husband worked in DC at the time and one of my closest friends worked at the Pentagon. With all of the flurry of what was going on, all I could think about during the service, was that my world had fallen apart and now literally, the whole world was too. It was very unreal. The only thing I am eternally grateful for, was that I could account for every member of my family and close friends, since they were all there. Of course, the out of town relatives ended up staying longer than planned, until they decided it would be easier to just rent a car and drive back.
Once I had time to reflect on the whole day, I realized that I had my dad for 41 years and there were many many young children out there who lost theirs that day who would never enjoy that many years and memories. So I ended up crying more so for them during that time.
Needless to say this day is very emotional for my family and I, even after 7 years. For me it starts right before my birthday on the 5th, then the anniversary of his death on the 7th, and then the emotion of the events of 9-11.</p>
<p>It was my day off. I heard about a plane crashing into the WTC while driving to the DC United offices to pick up tickets for my D’s birthday celebration the following weekend. I remember the crisp blue sky and thinking there was an ill (or dead) pilot of a small plane. The reception desk and visible offices were deserted and I wandered further back to find many peopled huddled around a tiny TV. I don’t think the 2nd tower had been hit by then. While driving away, planning to head to a Costco, I heard about an explosion at the Pentagon, very near to ‘my’ Costco. I quickly decided traffic would be chaotic so I diverted to a Costco close to where I was on my errand. Hubby called me from the other side of the Beltway while I was shopping; it was then that I learned of ‘attacks’.
At home I turned on the TV and was sucked in. All 3 kids(2 HS, 1 MS) watched on TV at school; I left them there in safe buildings rather than get on the road in the chaos.
When school reopened later in the week, DS told of a friend who had driven home from school ill that morning. Her route went right past the Pentagon as the plane hit. She didn’t sleep for 2 days.
My Dad is retired FDNY, many of his peers lost sons that day.</p>
<p>Like many here, I was at work and followed the coverage on my computer all day. Nothing was accomplished at all that day in my lab, and I distinctly remember people crying (myself included). If I remember correctly, our site director announced later in the day that we could leave early, espcially if we wanted to pick up our children early from school. I thought that was a classy move.</p>
<p>However, my strongest memories are actually of a trip I took to NYC three weeks later. My brother, his partner, and I had bought tickets to see “The Producers” (with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, no less) several months prior to 9/11. After the attack, we really vacillated between cancelling the trip and going anyway, and we finally chose the latter. I remember going to the theater and how good it felt to laugh again - the atmosphere in the theater was one of relief and catharsis. I also recall how grateful the hotel workers and the waiters seemed when they found out that we were in the city on vacation (I guess a lot of people had cancelled their trips in the aftermath.)</p>
<p>When I got to the airport for my return flight, all the TVs in the terminal were broadcasting that the invasion of Afghanistan had begun and that bombs were falling on that country. The stress level in LaGuardia was noticeably higher that usual, and I saw a few women crying in the waiting area. It was a very sobering experience.</p>
<p>Maybe this has been mentioned - but MSNBC is rebroadcasting the Today Show as it happened - for the next two hours. I can’t watch but some might not have seen it.</p>
<p>Thanks, Cartera. We just turned it on.</p>
<p>I carpooled in to work that day. If I had been driving, I would have had the radio on, but the driver was playing a CD, so it wasn’t until I got in the elevator at work that someone said “Did you hear that two planes hit the World Trade Center?” As soon as I got to my floor, I got to a television and by then they were showing the Pentagon. My very first thought was, “I won’t let my son go to war.” He was only eight, but I knew then that we would be starting a war that would last a long time. I stayed at work tuned to the TV until the second tower fell. Then I left the office to go pick up the kids because I knew they would be scared if they saw all other kids going home.</p>
<p>I was reading a storybook to my First Grade classroom. A teacher’s aide came in with a clipboard, circulating a silent memo from the Superintendent. We had specific instructions not to talk about it among adults throughout the day, lest the children overhear and misunderstand our words. </p>
<p>Later I learned that President Bush was doing something similar at that moment, reading to a classroom. I am not usually sympathetic to our President, but oddly I always identified with his much-criticized stupefied look and long pause, immediately upon hearing the news. It would take that time to figure out how to exit the room without alarming the children and adults in it.</p>
<p>Paying3 I remember clearly thinking that same thing too - how he must have felt with all those little children in front of him in a circle, innocently listening to a story and then to see that news and wondering how to gently finish.</p>
<p>I too, was home that day with my 4 year old while her older brother and sister were at elementary and jr. high. I recall WANTING to go and get them just to have them near, but deciding that they would be fine at school. My husband called me and told me I better call my brother who works in NYC (luckily, he had been working from home that day). He stood on the roof of his brownstone with his 3 month old son, able to see the fires and smoke. :(</p>
<p>I also so clearly remember that it was a warm late summer day and taking my 4 year old outside to play - the bees were out and she was so innocent and playful - while my mind was so shocked and scared. </p>
<p>We talked to our older kids about it when they got home. But did not dwell on it or make them witness to all the tv coverage. But I remember for weeks afterwards, every night after they were all in bed, I would camp out on the couch watching CNN and all the updates in disbelief.</p>
<p>I was hoping some of you may have been watching ABC’s Good Morning America and could validate what I remember. They, too, were questioning air traffic controllers after the first plane hit. From their camera angle, I could see the one tower burning. Then I remember seeing a plane fly nearby, but we didn’t see it hit the second tower. I shut off my television at that point to leave for a 4th grade parents’ meeting at school. When I arrived, the 4th grade teacher began with, “I don’t think anything I have to say today is important, in light of what’s happened.” The meeting was rather short and she did tell us that the school decided not to announce anything to students that day.</p>
<p>This thread is so striking. We all have a story, even those of us whose experience with 9/11 was all distant, on TV. That truly was the defining moment of our adult “public” lives, the way Pearl Harbor was for our parents and grandparents. I know that is trite, but hey… We were all one in our grief that day.</p>
<p>^ ^I have a neighbor lady in her 80s who remembers Pearl Harbor very well. and I asked her which was worse. She said 9/11 was worse - much more horrifying. She said that Pearl Harbor was very far away and that mostly military boys had been killed. Nobody had ever heard of Pearl Harbor prior the the attack. But 9/11 happened right here at home and civilians were the ones wiped out. Both events had the effect of plunging the US into a whole new world, but to her the 9/11 attack was perceived as much more immediate, direct, and real.</p>
<p>I was driving to my work at our diocesan seminary when I heard the report of the first plane on the radio. There was immediate speculation that it was an air traffic control issue or a plane out of control. Just as they were reporting this, the second plane crashed.</p>