Where Were You?

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I know we've done this before.

But there are new people.

So, where were you, when you heard, nine years ago today?

Note that I am not asking about Korans or mosques, preachers or al Qaeda.

I am asking about you.

Where were you?

What were you doing?

And, how many degrees of separation are you from someone who lost their life nine years ago?

Only answer that one if you really want to. If you think it's crass or painful, I understand.

Me, I was at work. A coworker had just become a grandmother that morning. She had emailed pictures of the baby. We were oohing and aahing over her grandson. And she had a tiny television set (we ran long queries, and there was nothing to do while the queries ran, so she would watch TV while I would go on Abuzz). We saw the planes, of course.

As for separation, I think I hit second or third. My parents lost one of their neighbors, but I had never met the man. I believe he had worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. And when I worked for a company called Keane, they had a monument in their Charlestown home office to two women who had died in the World Trade Center that day. And, perhaps, I had seen in passing someone who lost their life on one of the planes, as they had come out of Boston. There are probably a good 100 million people, maybe more, who are within six degrees of separation of those who are gone.

So, you.

Where were you?

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i was at work, we didn't know it had happened until almost 1o:00 am, i usually listened to Howard Stern in the mornings but hadn't listened that day, my bosses cousin, who drove truck for my boss, called him at about 10 to say he was stuck on the highway into Windsor waiting to cross the border, but he was worried that they would close the border, my boss asked why would they do that, and his cousin said, haven't you heard what's happening in New York

i switched on my walkman radio and got the information (such as it was, planes heading to Detroit?, planes heading to LA?)

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@jespah,

I had been working a furniture job in KC and came home (to Wichita) in the middle of the night. slept late.

when I got up, I kicked on the TV just in time to see the first tower fall. thought I was watching a movie (no sound on)

then my sis called all freaked out...

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I was working. In the shop I always had a radio going. So, I went in there, after doing some work around the property and I tuned in on the coverage right as the second plane hit the building. I began reporting to my coworker on a two way radio. It took only a few minutes to begin to get the scope of this thing.

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@jespah,

Abuzz is very wrapped up in this experience for me. The baby was still sleeping, I checked in to Abuzz before anything else upon waking up, there was all this stuff about the World Trade Center and planes, I was confused, I checked Yahoo, saw the pictures of I think just one of the towers smoking, the other one hadn't been hit yet.

Ran downstairs to the TV, it was on every channel. Stood there watching with horror.

Ran back upstairs (TV was downstairs, computer was upstairs) to get more info. There were a lot of calls for New Yorkers to check in. Some first-hand accounts. Diva was very active with the whole thing -- she called Cantor Fitzgerald for some reason and ended up helping them out in some way (I can't remember details).

I was getting more info from Abuzz than from other outlets.

1 Reply

@jespah,

Me? I was working as a casual carrier at the Framingham Post Office, Framingham, MA.

I don't believe I know anyone or had any distant relatives involved in any of the attacks (Pennsylvania, the Pentagon, or NYC).

I was sorting and filing my route's unsorted mail into their respective address when someone made the announcement that two planes have crashed into the two towers and that one of the towers had collapsed and crumbled onto itself.

http://www.examiner.com/images/blog/wysiwyg/image/Post_office_letters,.jpg

Going out onto my mail route after that was surreal. I felt like I was walking around with cement shoes and I had taken a handful of Valium. I remember I spent most of the day thinking how useless it was that I was delivering junk mail on that day.

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@sozobe,

I saved the main Abuzz thread, first post:

Diva wrote:

NYC ABUZZERS....YOU OKAY???

NY members, please right in to let us know you're okay.
Thank God, I was uptown at the time.

Additionally, NYC is looking for blood donors, as there is a blood shortage to treat the
victims. Anyone who can help, please do.

And please let us know that YOU are okay. My PC is my only source for communication. My
phone lines are down.

. created this Question on Tue, Sep 11, 2001 11:35 AM.

This post from further on in that thread captures some of the confusion (were there actually any bomb blasts in the Capitol? I don't think so):

Diva wrote:

Added on Tue, Sep 11, 2001 12:33 PM

I'm okay.

Others I know are NOT.

I can't think straight right now.

THREE PLANES were hijacked: 2 from Boston, 1 from Newark.

The Pentagon has been hit.

One of the planes has been downed in Somerset, Pennsylvania.

Bombs have gone off on Capitol Hill.

No one has claimed responsibility for what I believe TRANSCENDS a
terrorist attack, and moves a lot closer to a practical
declaration of war in many ways.

NY hospitals need blood donors. There isn't enough blood to
treat the victims.

Glad people here are okay.

I'm beyond frantic, and my phone lines are running
intermittently.

One or two of you have my phone number and private email. ANYONE
should feel free to get in touch if they need anything at all.

Diva

Also on the thread, fishin' talks about how he knows two of the people who were on one of the flights from Boston -- Sugar knew one of them too.

Oof, really brings it all back, reading that thread.

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started listening to Howard Sterns 9/11 2001 show, pretty crazy all the misinformation, speculation and just downright fear you hear from the callers, going to listen to the Ron & Fez Show from the same day (WNEW night shift show) later

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I was home. I had just finished working (I'm on the night shift). I was at first incredulous. Then scared. When I watched the towers fall, I wept. Terrified.

I was glued to the TV. Heard the city shut down. Silence. Except for war planes and helicopters flying overhead. Eerie and more terrifying. First time I could remember the subway not rumbling underneath.

To me this was not political except in a removed sort of way. It was personal! My home. My city. The place where I was born, where my family was born, where I'd spent my whole life. Very personal. It still is.

I remember a man walking down the steps of the Trade Center being interviewed on TV. He said, "Someone is trying to kill me." That's exactly how I felt. Very personal.

I did some less than rational things. I spent a considerable amount of time online trying to find a gas mask for my cat Mikey. Couldn't find one. I decided that if he goes, I go. (Uh, oh. I'm crying again--very personal).

When the winds changed and the smell of the burning towers moved north, I thought it was the end. Panic. Fear. I guess I wasn't alone in my concern. They announced on TV what that horrible smell was. It eventually caused me to have an asthma attack. Diva, whom I did not know well, offered to come over and look after me. I'll never forget that. I declined. She was like a saint through that experience.

It was 9/11/01 that a major depression kicked in. How can I be so sure? Friends came to help me clean out my apartment so that I could take in stuff from my mother's apartment. At the bottom of every pile of papers, things were dated September and October 2001.

Personal.

1 Reply

@Roberta,

interesting reading this, reminds me a bit of Stephen King's short story The Things They Left Behind

Plot summary

Almost a year after 9/11, strange things start happening to narrator Scott Staley, who – at the time of the attacks – is employed at 'Light and Bell Insurance' on the 110th floor of the World Trade Center. Not only is Scott unable to get rid of his survivor's guilt (on 9/11 he followed an inner voice that told him to take a day off to enjoy the sun), but things belonging to his late colleagues start to appear in his apartment. A pair of sunglasses, a baseball bat, a farting cushion – Scott can easily identify them all. After convincing himself that they are no delusion and that others can see them, he tries throwing them away, yet they reappear after his return home.

He confides in Paula, a neighbor, who offers to stow away one of the things. It triggers the most horrible nightmare of Paula's life, recreating in her mind the last minutes of its proprietor. Paula immediately returns the object, but makes Scott understand his mission: he must give the things to the victims' immediate family – and on seeing the joy on their faces, he feels his guilt slowly fade away.

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I had gone to sleep on the couch with the TV on. For me it was sometime between midnight and 6.00 am. I woke to see the first tower had been hit. I was confused and assumed it was some kind of hollywood "the making of" disater movie. after a while it kinda kicked in that this was real and I woke my wife to come have a look. Watched until one of the towers collapsed then went to work.
There was never any feeling of personal emotional involvemnet of course.

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I read about the first plane hitting the WTC on Yahoo! News, my home page, before checking my e-mail as part of my usual morning routine. I didn't think much about it. The early report I'd read hadn't identified the plane as a passenger jet, so I thought it was probably just some small private plane.

An hour or so later, I backed out of my driveway and started down the street. When I reached the island at the end of my block, the car radio reported that a second plane had hit the other tower. That's when I realized this was a major event.

I can't remember where I was going.

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@jespah,

jespah wrote:

I know we've done this before.

But there are new people.

So, where were you, when you heard, nine years ago today?

Note that I am not asking about Korans or mosques, preachers or al Qaeda.

I am asking about you.

Where were you?

What were you doing?

And, how many degrees of separation are you from someone who lost their life nine years ago?

Only answer that one if you really want to. If you think it's crass or painful, I understand.

Me, I was at work. A coworker had just become a grandmother that morning. She had emailed pictures of the baby. We were oohing and aahing over her grandson. And she had a tiny television set (we ran long queries, and there was nothing to do while the queries ran, so she would watch TV while I would go on Abuzz). We saw the planes, of course.

As for separation, I think I hit second or third. My parents lost one of their neighbors, but I had never met the man. I believe he had worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. And when I worked for a company called Keane, they had a monument in their Charlestown home office to two women who had died in the World Trade Center that day. And, perhaps, I had seen in passing someone who lost their life on one of the planes, as they had come out of Boston. There are probably a good 100 million people, maybe more, who are within six degrees of separation of those who are gone.

So, you.

Where were you?

I was in court (in chambers). A judge came in and announced
that a plane had hit the WTC. Naturally, my mind went back
to another plane hitting the Empire State Building in 1945.

I said that if the other tower gets hit, then we 'll know that
its a malicious attack.

Based on misinformation from the radio, I later made the mistake
of telling lawyers in the courtroom that I 'd heard that
the USSC had been hit with a plane.

I knew NYPD Lt. John Perry, who was in the act of retiring
when the first plane hit. I knew him for several years from Mensa,
and from meetings of a NYC libertarian group called the "Junto",
after a group formed by Ben Franklin.
He was giving his retirement papers in to a captain.
I was told that thay both helped rescue survivors,
leading them out to the street, from the darkened WTC.
John allegedly violated the orders of the captain in re-entering
the WTC to continue the rescue effort, when it collapsed on him.
I read in the NY Daily News that his remains were uncovered
the next April.

A lady who works for the NYC Medical Examiner 's Office, Diana,
lives across the street from me. She told me that she performed
the autopsy on John 's remains. She was surprized that I knew him.

Additionally, one of the members of my fine dining group, Vivian,
said that she was approaching the WTC, when the first plane hit it.

In earlier years, I had worked in Tower 2 of the WTC,
in the NY Court of Claims, trying some cases there.
That Court had several floors in the 80s of Tower 2.
I liked trying cases there; beautiful vu. It was fun.
I used to take the E train into its basement.

David

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There are photos someone around here from a family event at Windows on the World in the late '90s. It might have been my brother's 40th birthday party. It used to be our go-to place for things like landmark birthdays. The food was good, the views were incredible, and everyone knew how to get there. So very, very sad reading of people throwing chairs out of windows there, then jumping to their deaths, because it was the slightly lesser than two unimaginable evils.

Thank you all so much for sharing how it was. I believe these feelings, these behaviors, are a part of history as well.

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I was in my car in Warwick R.I. about 1/4 mile from home. I was returning from working an overnight in Rhode Island Hospital emergency room.
It took me awhile to reach my daughter who works in Manhattan. As luck would have it she turned out to be on a brief visit to her mother's in Braintree MA .
The next concern was for her fiancee who WAS in Manhattan. He was in midtown and was unhurt.
They were scheduled to marry in NYC eleven days later -ie. September 22th.
My daughter, who had been working on wedding plans for over a year said,
"We'll have to postpone the wedding. It would be selfish to go forward with it at a time like this."
I counseled her to take two or three days before deciding. In the end they decided to go ahead with the wedding.
It was a beautiful wedding in a chapel at Columbia University. The reception, in midtown was wonderful although our hearts still ached over the 9/11 attack.
I feel both happy and sad as I remember that day...
...and the juxtaposition of grief and joy.

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I was at home and my phone rang. It was my son in Colorado telling me that the buildings were being bombed in N.Y. We live in Texas, and I hadn't yet turned on the TV. It was awhile before we could get the thing that was happening, straight. Wars happen just like that. One day someone bombs your country, something that's not happened the U.S. except Pearl Harbor.

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@jespah,

I've posted on this recently. Was taken as a drama queen.

Fuh.

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

ossobuco wrote:

I've posted on this recently. Was taken as a drama queen.

Fuh.

Shows what some people "know", doesn't it?

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I'm pretty much a night owl, so I was either still asleep, or in and out of sleep, when another abuzzer/a2ker called and told me to turn on the TV. I think it was before the towers fell, but I was a little foggy from sleep and it took awhile to figure out what was happening and had happened, and I saw the replays so many times, I'm not sure exactly when I came in. I didn't move from in front of the TV for hours.

My sister lives in the 20s in Manhattan, fortunately far enough north to have been out of the danger zone, but I called her to check. She had been taking her then-preschool twin daughters to play in the park a few blocks south, and they ran into the smoke and the ash clouds and the panic and turned around and hurried home, with no harm. I don't know if the girls remember it--they've never said anything about it. Now that I think about it, I'm going to call my sister and see if there have been any aftereffects.

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I was at home in West Vancouver and my sister called and told me to turn the TV on. I saw the one tower burning and thought I was watching a movie, only I knew I wasn't. Then the other one got hit and I was in shock that this was actually happening before my very eyes. It was disturbing to watch, to say the least.

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