9/11 Memories

[mso489]

My wife lived on Long Island but had an apartment in Greenwich Village about three miles or less from Ground Zero. She was on Long Island that morning, but went to her newspaper to cover the news, later went to help serve food at the Salvation Army station at the Medical Examiner's office, stood in a line of employees to show respect when remains were identified, and sang "It's A Grand Old Flag" to people during a break.

As for myself, living in N.C., I had lost my late wife just a year earlier and was alone in my bed at about 4 a.m. when I awoke in a frenzied brawl, throwing punches and kicking at the foe. When I regained my composure, I just lay awake trying to remember the dream. Nothing like it had ever happened to me before, and hasn't since. About five hours later, I watched in our work room with the entire staff who gathered to watch the breaking news. Just after the second tower was hit, one of our scientists, a guy from Oklahoma, walked through and without breaking stride said, "Now we know terrorists know how to fly airplanes."

 

[Akousticplyr]

I was in Key West on an air to air training det.

I was pulling my boots on in the Fly Navy building (guest lodging) getting ready to go in for a morning brief.

I had the TV on while getting ready and I watched the second plane hit the towers.

My brother was supposed to have a meeting in one of the towers that morning. He wasn't in the buildings when they were hit but ended up stuck in the mass evacuation crowd. He had to walk with the hundreds or thousands of other folks across the bridges to eventually get to a train station and then back home to NJ.

I couldn't reach him for about 8 or 9 hours and didn't know if he was alive until he finally got through.

I'm still mad at Al Qaeda.

 

[frozenchurchwarden]

I was still a teenager at the time and I just rolled my eyes at the stupidity.
Time has proven my scepticism entirely justified.

 

[Country Bladesmith]

I was on my way from classes to my construction job. When I showed up to work everyone listening to the news on the radio in the work truck and I found out what had happened. Later that day I watched Air Force One fly overhead on its way to nearby Barksdale AFB, where President Bush gave an address. A horrible unreal day.
My cousin was a student at NYU at the time, and interned in one of the towers. She had called in sick that morning, and watched all the chaos on tv and from her apartment window.

 

[kcghost]

It was a tragic day. Roughly 3,000 innocent people lost their live for no good reason other than some bastard didn't like. I certainly approved the bombings that we conducted but sorely disappointed in putting boots on the ground. There was nothing we could gain by it. We should have concentrated on our main of finding OBL and killing him.

 

[hoosierpipeguy]

I and 3 friends had a 9 am tee time at Valhalla Country Club in Louisville, KY. A couple of minutes before we teed off, the fore caddy got a message on his radio the Twin Towers had been struck by a plane. As we played the front 9, the whole thing unfolded and we went in at the turn and saw the devastation on tv.

This was a momentous event as it was really the first time we here in the USA felt the fear and danger of being attacked on our home soil. I think this was a rather I'll conceived move by the terrorists as it woke the sleeping giant and made it easy for our government to allocate trillions of dollars and man power to fight terrorism.

 

[pepesdad1]

Was at work at the Dept. of Highway Safety (Florida Highway Patrol) building got locked down, troopers started pulling out the automatic weapons and stationing guards...watched it on the TV and had my employees stop and pay attention to what was happening to our country. Sick feeling watching bodies drop from the towers.

 

[FurCoat]

I was in the hospital holding my new born son. Thankfully has was born on the tenth.
Twenty years later and I can't say I'm pleased with what has become of once great republic.

 

[Zack Miller]

I was working at a company in Portland, ME when it happened. We were able to turn on several televisions around the building. We saw the first plane lodged in the tower and realized it was no accident. Then we saw the second plane hit and our thoughts were confirmed. The company shut down after a couple of hours. My oldest daughter was home with us as she was going to leave to spend her junior year in Switzerland. I remember talking with her from the office and how upset she was as she watched the towers come down.

My wife was working at the shipyard and they closed the place down for security reasons.

One of my close friends from India had just arrived in New York the night before and was staying in mid town. He was supposed to be doing business downtown. When he stepped out of the hotel, he saw hundreds of people pouring up the street. He asked someone what was going on and didn’t believe it at first. His parents were back in India and were terrified because they couldn’t contact him. Fortunately we were able to talk with them and him and served as a liaison.

My nephew’s wife worked at Deutschebank and stepped out on to the street just as bodies started plopping on the ground around her. She dove under a garbage truck until the bodies stopped falling and then walked uptown in her bare feet. She never went back to work.

On Saturday, we took a ride to Popham, ME just to calm down. Large numbers of people were congregated at the mouth of the Kennebec. Shortly after we arrived, a nearly completed destroyer from Bath Iron Works came down the River and sailed by to massive cheers from the crowd.

A few years later there was an article in Yankee magazine that usually just published puff touristy pieces, but they interviewed the clerk who had checked in Mohammed Atta and the three other terrorists who who spent the night in Portland before flying to Boston and taking the flight that crashed in to one of the towers. He thought they were acting suspicious, but blew it off as his own bias. Consumed with guilt, never got over it.