Where were you on 9/11?

I got out of bed, grabbed a cup of coffee and wandered into Mr. B's home office where he was transfixed by the TV.

"What's this" I said.

"You won't believe it. A plane flew into the WTC."

"Bullshit".

Seconds later we watched as the second plane hit. I knew right away it was an act of war since the buildings had been targeted only a few years before.

Mo was spending the night, a freshly minted nine month old. I remember being glad that he was too young to understand what was happening.

I logged on to Abuzz not much after that and NYDiva (I think that was her name) was giving blow by blow reports on what was happening in the city. If I recall, she had a view of the whole thing as it unfolded.

What an awful day.

Sitting on my front porch in Arlington Virginia eating pancakes and wondering why that plane was flying so low. A few minutes later my husband called -- he was sitting on 395 on his way into DC. "They hit the pentagon!" Was all he said.

My sister called. "Lou (not his real name) went to the pentagon this morning for a meeting and I can't reach him." Other sister, my pregnant self, and not quite 2-year-old Duckie walked the mile to her house to wait with her. He showed up about 2 hours later, hugged his wife, and downed a beer before saying a word.

We spent the rest of the day glued to CNN and taking calls from relatives checking to see if we were ok.

The day of 9/11 I was at my computer in Hilo, Hawaii. And in the left hand lower side of the AOL screen a picture popped up of an airliner hitting a building, and for some reason I tuned it out until the picture came up again and again and I read what was happening. I couldn't believe it and I felt very isolated from the mainland. I got in my car and drove completelly around the island.

I couldn't get a call through to the West Coast to Andy. That worried me too.

Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. One of the planes that hit the WTC was the same flight that I had taken from Logan two mornings earlier. In fact, first thing I did after recovering somewhat from the shock, was to phone Sglass in Hawaii to assure her I was in California and OK.

I was actually at the Towers a few days b4 that 9/11. Wasn't even aware anything was gonna happen or that anything was wrong. The perks of being 12...

Lets see, I have to break that day down into parts.

When the news broke of the attack, I was at work teaching people how to drive trucks.
I called my then wife and asked her if she had heard from her aunt that morning (her aunt worked in north tower, she didnt make it).

That afternoon, I was reporting to the military reserve center in Indianapolis, drawing equipment and getting ready to go back on active duty.

Neither was anyone else unless they have ESP or ignored warnings from their security advisors.

Bear and I were on the way to the warehouse to work on getting some things together for a huge weekend corporate event. A friend called on Bears cell. I answered. He said "The United States is under attack" or something and I said "What?" (That didn't compute.)

He said a plane had flown into one of the towers and they thought it was an accident and then a second one flew into the other tower. We are under attack.

I said "You're fuckin' shittin' me!"

He said "What???!!!" (He had never heard me curse in the 15 years we had known each other.)

He gave more details. I told Bear to turn around... get the kids from school... No, can't do that. Friend said they had already put them on buses and called parents... Dang, do they have the right to do that? I want my kids!!!

We drove home and watched and cried and posted on Abuzz.

Did anyone save that thread?

Occasionally, I worked in Tower 2, 80 some odd floor (different floors)
for the Attorney General of NY, defending NY State in the Court of Claims.

I liked litigating there.
I took the E train (subway) to the World Trade Center stop.
I ofen went up on top and looked out to the horizon
in each of the 4 directions; each vista was unique and really beautiful.
To be honest, it woud take your breath away; awe inspiring.

A woman, Vivian, who attends my Mensa SIG told us that she was walking
toward the WTC, about to enter, when the first plane hit.

For several years I was a friendly acquaintance of NYPD Lt. John Perry.
He was a lawyer.
For a couple of years, at libertarian events, at Mensa events,
and at Republican Party events, he had discussed in conversation
his intended retirement from the Police Dept. He spoke of
a desire to practice law. After the fact, I heard that he was
submitting his retirement papers when the first plane hit.
I was told that he and the captain to whom he submitted
that paperwork immediately assisted with the emergency,
leading victims out of the WTC, in the dark, over the strewn debris.
I was informed that when thay got out, the captain ordered him
not to return inside, but he allegedly was guilty of insubordination,
he re-entered the edifice to rescue more victims,
when the building fell on him.

I read in the NY Daily News that his remains were found
and removed the following April. Around May, the lady
whose house is across the street from mine, Diana, who
works for the NYC Medical Examiner 's Office told me that
she was conversing with a group of her co-employees were
in attendance during the emergency, standing around, when
the first Tower collapsed, whose violence broke her boss' arm.

She also mentioned that she did the autopsy on John Perry,
and she was surprized when I told her that I had known him.





David

I was in Dover New Jersey at art school. We were nearing the end of our lunch break and most of us were already back at our tables. The class clown walked in and said, very matter of factly 'some people just flew planes into the WTC.' We all kind of chuckled at him and he said 'No, seriously.' The entire room went dead quiet and suddenly people were running all over for TV's and phones.

Outside you could hear the sirens and see the smoke. Classes were canceled and we all scattered. I went to the mall to pick up my friend (he would eventually become my husband) we watched it all on TV. It was horrible to see those people jumping and then we got a live shot of the towers falling. It still makes my hands shake and my eyes tear up. On a clear day you could see the sun glinting off the towers from my friends (husbands) apartment.

New Jersey's borders were shut down, no one in and no one out, we left the mall to go to my apartment and I can still distictly remember the silence. It was so heavy you could feel it in your bones - all the planes had been
grounded.

I finally got through to my mother here in Texas, the phonelines were jammed for hours, and she was near hysterical because she had not been able to get through to me all day.

When the dust all settled my husband had lost his sister and his mother in the towers and one of his very good friends, Jeremy Glick, on flight 114. He was the martial artist that led the revolt against the terrorists on the plane.

I went to the WTC site a few weeks later, it was literally a hole in the heart of NYC. I still have a receipt from a watch that I bought at the Warner Bros. Studio Store at the WTC mall that used to be under the towers amidst all of the subways stations.

Wow...it's still a horrible feeling to look back at all of that. I still get nervous when I see a low flying plane.

Posted on this before, not doing it again - not meant as negative re the thread at all.

It was early morning here on the west coast and I was sleeping. Shortly after 6:00 am the phone rang and a friend from the east coast screamed into the phone: "Turn on the TV, turn on the TV!!!" She was crying, screaming and I was still half asleep and couldn't make out what she was saying. I did turn on the TV though and saw the other plane crashing into the second tower. It took me a while to realize that this is not some surreal movie. My next thought was that this was a declaration of war - we're at war! I panicked yet couldn't move. My friend was still on the phone and we both started crying as the news unfolded. After we hang up I received many other calls, mostly from my family in Europe. We felt the need to talk and reassure each other that we are okay, at least physically.

Then I heard my daughter waking up, she was 5 years old at the time, just had started Kindergarten the week prior, and I didn't want her to see this horrible scenes. I shut off the TV and made breakfast for her and got her ready for school. I don't know why they did not cancel school or why I even took her, but I guess I thought she would be sheltered there from the news. Then I went home and sat in front of the TV, crying and still in disbelief.

At work at the apartments, I always had the radio playing in the shop. I walked in there a few minutes before the second plane hit. It just took a moment to get the gist of what happened. I went on my radio (used like a walkie-talkie between staff members) and began to fill in details to my co-worker, George. "Now one hit the Pentagon," I told him. After a bit, the radio voice mentioned the plane that went down in Pennsylvania. I had to work the rest of the eight hours and so waited until after five to get the rest of the story.

Still working at the theatre, I was on vacation and at home. I was still asleep and my husband called from work. (he's since retired). I watched it all unfold while sitting in bed and I just couldn't believe the images. The strange sense of it being a movie came back again and again. I had to remind myself that it was real.

Being on vacation, I hung around the house and didn't go out until a few days later. I was very anxious, fearful even, being outdoors that first time and remember thinking about my mother who had passed away just a couple of months earlier in July. I think she would have been very unsettled by it all and I was grateful that she didn't have to cope with such a nightmare.

I was in the Academic Strategies classroom in B quad at East Chapel Hill High School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. There were about twenty students in the room and the principal came over the pa system and told all the teachers to turn on their television set in each classroom.
He was a funny guy with a wonderful speaking voice - could have been a dj or do voice overs or something - and usually sounded pretty jovial - though I could hear in his voice that on this day something was wrong.
So I turned on the tv and saw the hole in the first tower and then we all watched (me in horror) as the second plane flew into the other tower. I started crying - quietly - but crying (even if it was just an accident, which Iknew it wasn't - I still had the Oklahoma city bombing in my head and then Waco) I thought - oh jesus how terrifying for those people in that plane and in that building.

The kids reacted as if they were watching or playing a video game or something. They were making jokes about getting to go home early - but also seemingly really in awe of the surrealness of what was happening.

I told them they should be quiet and pay attention - even if they didn't grasp the impact of the human loss they'd just seen - they were watching history as it was happening.
You could have heard a pin drop after that.

And then of course it all unfolded and tragedy followed tragedy.

That's MIL's birthday, and we were in here home, ahving lunch and coffee and cake later.

Because it was getting more and more ... well, boring for me, I watched tv and came across that terrible breaking news.

My mother and I were watching tv (We're in Canada) when they broke into the regular programing. We were shocked when we saw the first plane hit and then devistated after seeing the second plane hit. We couldn't believe what we were seeing. Then came the 3rd plane, then the 4th.
I can't even imagine being in NY that day.

After the collapse of both of the Towers,
I received erroneous information that one of the planes
had destroyed the USSC, and I told a courtroom full of attorneys in the Bronx
that a plane had hit the USSC Building and that the Pentagon had been hit.

Some of those attorneys, representing the City,
had their offices about a block away from the WTC, on Church St.

It was hard driving home that evening.
The police had closed a lot of roads.





David

Asleep in bed in Seattle. Got up not long after to get ready for work, but didn't turn on news. The wife and I took the puppy to day care -- no radio on in the car, which was unusual. The girl who worked the front desk at the dog place looked very worried. We asked why. She said she was waiting for a call from her brother who worked at the Pentagon. We figured it was a personal issue. We got back in the car to drive to work, turned the radio on, and got the news.

I was in New York City on 23rd Street between Lexington and Third Ave.
A worker, off that day, called and said "A plane hit the Trade Center."
I thought it was some idiot who couldn't pull out of a stunt. We used to eat at a restaurant named "BLUE" in the North Tower. You could look down at the helicopters and the planes flying by.

I went out to look down Third and could see the first smoke rising. There were sirens.
==
I went back inside.
An hour passed. The second plane had hit.
This wasn't idiots, this was war.
==
I walked down to the Starbucks on the corner.
My phone rang and it was my son in Dallas checking on me. While we were on the phone, the first tower fell. He told me it was falling as he watched on television, I looked down Third Ave and the smoke and dust were suddenly a thousand times bigger, the sky nearly filled.
==
more sirens.
Many emergency vehicles racing West, racing South down Park Ave, racing South down Third.
==
Then the people came. Just about noon.
The first people to walk their way up from the bottom of the island.
First, a knot of about a hundred, men and women, no children. Then, perhaps, ten minutes later, thousands. Some covered in white ash, some wearing no shoes, some carrying bags and briefcases, some holding the hands of children.
The sirens never ceased.
The people at the Starbucks gave out every bottle of water they had.
Every once in awhile, there would be a bus coming up from the South. There was no room for anyone else and they never stopped, at least, not as I watched.
=
I couldn't watch all the time. I had to work. We sold out of flashlights and batteries. We sold out of battery-operated radios.
One of the workers left to go the World Trade Center to see if he could find his aunt. (He did, but not until the next day when she returned home.) People were afraid. They were afraid of the dust. They were afraid there would be more attacks.
"The subways aren't running. Don't get on a train."
=
When I left at six to go home, the people were still marching up the sidewalks. These were the people who had been told to clear out the zone below 14th Street.
==
I walked over to Eighth Ave. On every Avenue, people were walking North. There was no money left in the ATMs at the Citibank at Sixth Ave. Looking down Eighth Ave, where the day before you could see both towers rising, there was only smoke and a lone jet fighter was making circles over the city. I walked up to 59th Street and Columbus.
==
I walked down into the Subway Station hoping and, the oddest thing, I no sooner reached the platform than a nearly empty D train slid in and stopped. I got on, rode to 125th Street, waited about a half an hour for an A to arrive. One did. Took it home.
===
My wife, who had ridden a train under the World Trade Center moments before the attack, called me from Brooklyn to say she was safe and staying with friends.

Joe(Only the first day was over)Nation