9-11

[Tuckervill]

I remember it was a beautiful day at my house, too, 1500 miles away. I had extra kids at my house for a couple of days. They and my son were all still asleep. I grabbed a basket of clothes out of the bathroom and walked through my bedroom, where the TV was on. I glanced at it and saw "breaking news" on the screen and then saw the second plane hit. I stopped dead in my tracks. I picked up the remote and checked the other channels--certain it was a movie or something. I don't remember what I did with the laundry basket. I remember Peter Jennings crying.

After I watched a while, and the Pentagon was hit and the other plane went down, I called my husband and asked him to come home from work. He said he wouldn't. I was very mad about that.

The extra kids' parents called and were trying to decide whether to come home, but they ultimately decided to stay where they were. I spent the rest of the day online with others similarly situated, having moved a TV into my office so I could keep up with what was going on. I was so thankful for those extra kids, because I was able to keep them all busy doing stuff and entertaining MY kid while I kept one eye on the TV, and tried to understand. I remember feeling very lonely.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I held my breath all day and the next, waiting for something else to happen.

I happen to be traveling right now, and taking that son to NYC on Saturday to watch the Yankees play in Yankee Stadium before they tear it down. I asked him months ago what one thing he wanted to see in the city if he only had a few hours in the morning. He said he would see Ground Zero. So I guess we're going to Ground Zero on Saturday morning, despite me telling him about dozens of other things there are to see in NYC.

This morning, when we decided to leave a campground and get a hotel, he was glad that he would probably get to see the documentary on the History channel that uses the recollections of people who took videos and photographs that day. That's what was on when I first saw this thread.

He was almost 7, on this day, 7 years ago.

Karen

[maillotpois]

We went for a bike ride. We're in the flight path for planes to SFO (they are still pretty high overhead by the time they cross over us, but there's regular traffic.) There were no planes in the sky that day. It was eerie.

[divingbiker]

I was at a meeting on the top floor of the National Press Club, a block from the White House. Someone came in and closed the blinds, and it wasn't long before the meeting ended and we all stood around wondering what to do.

Finally, I told two other women at the meeting that we were going to walk to my house, 7 miles away. After walking about 3/4 mile, we caught a cab. One of the women (who works for the National Security Agency and really wanted to get to work) lived north of me, so we took her home. The other was in town from Houston, so she stayed with me for four days until she could get a flight home.

About 7pm on September 11, we drove to her hotel south of National Airport to get her belongings and check her out of the hotel. We went right by the Pentagon, and the smoke and smell of burning flesh was something I'll never forget.

Several Cantor Fitzgerald employees that my branch worked with died that day. We think about them often.

One of the reasons I ride my bike to work now is so I have a quick way out of town if something like this, heaven forbid, ever happens again.

[crazycanuck]

We were living in Auckland at the time. I remember waking up, turning on the internet to read the BBC & saw the reports.. I thought..eh?? No freakin way..OH!

I woke Ian up & he said " nah".. I said " Ya"

I was confused when I went to work that day & heard some of the comments from my overseas students. (I was teaching english at the time)

[Aggie_Ama]

When I was still at A&M I was assigned to write news articles for class on various speeches given on campus. I got to sit in on a speech from our Corps leader, Lt. John Van Alystyne, he described being in the Pentagon that day. It was the two year anniversary (or around) when I listened to him speak and yet the stoic career military man had trouble keeping his emotions at bay. It was powerful, horrifying and emotional to hear him speak of it. The vivid details of the feeling of the flames around the corner, the description of the burning flesh smell and the screams of the injured was the stuff of nightmares to listen to and hard to stomach. I remember crying for much of his speech while taking notes.

I remember thinking I wasn't worthy of telling his story in my assignment and wanting to do it justice. It ended up being one of my best grades in the class and one of the pieces I was extremely proud of for writing.

Growing up my parents talked about where they were when Kennedy was killed or where they were when Charles Whitman opened fire on the UT campus. When the Challenger disaster occured it left an impact on me I still remember even though I was a pre-schooler that day but it doesn't evoke the emotion the photos of those towers can. At first when I watched the news in class I didn't realize it would be my "I remember where I was when...." moment but I can remember the sun sparkling through the oaks of campus, where I was sitting in Reed McDonald, sitting in my first apartment and being late to work because I was watching the news.

[mimitabby]

we were in Italy. Stopped into a hotel to use their bathroom.
When I came out of the bathroom, some men came up to us.
"Siete Americani?"(are you americans?) they led us to the TV in the lobby. I thought it was a horror movie. Of course, it was all in Italian. one tower was still up.. We watched as the second one collapsed! we drove back to my cousin's house with the car radio on, trying to hear the english behind the italian, and being fairly clueless, as it is very hard to understand newscasters speaking another language, they talk SO FAST. At my cousin's house, there was the same news reel, this time with 6 people talking in Italian. It sure brought us down to earth fast. It changed the tone of our vacation, we realized at that point that we REALLY didn't want to come back home.

we were so blown away by it all that we left our rental car unlocked in the town plaza and ended up with it getting towed away because someone tried to break into it and no one could re-lock the door without a key... what a mess.

[redrhodie]

I lived 20 blocks from WTC. You could see ithe North Tower from my building. That day, BF and I were away on vacation. My kitties were home alone, being taken care of by a neighbor.

My neighbor's friends lived at Battery Park City, and weren't allowed into their home because of the all of downtown below Canal St was closed, so we let them stay in our apartment while we were gone. It was the time you opened your doors to strangers, no questions asked. The need to do ANYTHING to help was foremost in everyone's mind. That's the one good thing that I remember from this, we all came together in a way that made you proud to be a New Yorker.

Sadness shrouded the city. The hardest thing for me to see was the funeral progressions for the firefighters, which seemed to happen every day for months, always with the firetruck decorated in purple and black, with bagpipes playing the mournful songs.

The missing person fliers were everywhere, on every surface they could be taped, smiling beautiful faces, which slowly washed away until the pictures were ghostly streaks of abstract color. I wanted those gone so much. It was hard to look at them knowing there was no hope these people were alive, knowing how much they were being missed. It just hurt to see them. I felt like I had been rubbed raw by the grief which permeated everything.

I left the city the following year. It was time to find a new place without the history this one held for me.

[Running Mommy]

I happen to be traveling right now, and taking that son to NYC on Saturday to watch the Yankees play in Yankee Stadium before they tear it down. I asked him months ago what one thing he wanted to see in the city if he only had a few hours in the morning. He said he would see Ground Zero. So I guess we're going to Ground Zero on Saturday morning, despite me telling him about dozens of other things there are to see in NYC.

This morning, when we decided to leave a campground and get a hotel, he was glad that he would probably get to see the documentary on the History channel that uses the recollections of people who took videos and photographs that day. That's what was on when I first saw this thread.

He was almost 7, on this day, 7 years ago.

Karen

If you get this in time, please go by the tribute center and take a tour. The tours are led by volunteers, and they are all people who had some personal connection to 9/11. I take the tour every time I'm there and I always come away with a different perspective, depending on who leads the tour. It's a very moving thing, and IMO very important piece of history being preserved by volunteers telling their story.
The tribute center is very moving as well. I can't walk out without shedding more than a few tears.
Oh- and please don't give the huckster street vendors a dime! Trying to make a living off of a tragedy. Go to the church and the tribute center. Those places are where you will really feel what happened.

Also when there take time to look around at all the buildings in the immediate area. Many of them have visible blemishes where chunks were taken out of their facades in the collapse. Century 21 had big chunks taken out of it.
Also remember that the burger king on the corner served as a morgue. I remember going there in 02 and "Morgue" was still spray painted on the window. Eerie that it's open again. ugh.

[bmccasland]

I was on the left coast (NoCal) working in a fish pathology lab. Heard the news when I was heading in to work - and thought it was "just" a small plane that hit the towers, not a jet. Like everyone, we were numb. Still had to do the work in the wet-lab. For some reason we were having electrical problems, so we had the van down there to provide the electricty to run the centrifuge. We'd get bits of news while we were spinning down fish blood.

Meanwhile at my house I had a contractor coming to cut a hole in my livingroom wall to install a new window.

Boss let us go home after the experiment was run, and I found my contractor at work. He'd started the hole when he got the news, so he was doing what he had to do to install the window so I'd be safe, then he'd come back in a day or do to the finish work.

Later I found out I knew one of the guys on Flight 93. He was the refuge manager at Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge (and was one of the law enforcement types on the plane).

I lived in the flight path for our local small airport, and the lack of air traffic for several days was eery.