In My Life...

In bed when I heard my dad call up to my mum saying 'Are you ready for a shock?Dodi and Diana are dead,car crash'..

I was at work when I heard from my boss about 9/11.She came in and said 'Have you heard, planes have flown into the twin towers in America'.

Both very sad surreal days.

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mark

I recall all of those events, although the space shuttle incident did not have such an impact on me that my exact circumstances remain in my memory. I recall vividly the assassination of Robert Kennedy, because i was up late watching television (home visiting from college, with everyone else gone overnight) and witnessed the event from the point of view of the news cameraman. I was also watching the coverage of the John Kennedy assassination as an adolescent and saw the live news footage of Oswald being brought out for his arraignment, and Jack Ruby suddenly pushing out of the crowed and shooting him down. I don't know why i recall this, other than that it was in the Christmas season, but i can still picture sitting in the dining room on the night that it was announced that Pope Pius had died (the World War II Pope).

I remember all too vividly the speech Nixon gave in November, 1969, when he announced the institution of a draft lottery (conscription ran continuously from 1942 to 1975, but the elimination of deferments and the institution of the lottery was new and ominous). And i vividly recall hearing the news of the Kent State massacre--i was in the Army at the time, and can still picture the surrounding scene as i listened to the tale with incredulity.

I think the main reason the Challenger had such an impact on me is that the mission had not only a civilian, but a teacher, which I was and am (although taking a break at that time).

9/11 - on my way to genetics class
Shuttle explosion - class
Diana and Dodi - class

I'm sensing a pattern here. 9/11 is definitely the clearest to me. I remember hearing on my way to class and then having to go the hour and a half before finding out that the guy I was dating at the time wasn't on that first plane. His family had actually considered taking that flight. It was a chilling thought.

"Elvis is Dead!" - Headline on the Chicago Times that was next to my breakfast plate at my aunt and uncle's house where I was staying for the summer (mid-70's @ August 14).

"Oh my God!, Oh my God! - Some crazy homeless guy shot John Lennon at The Dakota" - heard while walking through Washington Square Park on my way to an Art History class at NYU.

9/11 - my then 8 year old niece was waiting for her morning ride and turned on the TV. "Hey a plane hit the World Trade Center" I thought she meant one of those little commuter planes that you see flying above Manhattan.

In bed, woke up, parents and siblings talking about something on the news. Heard something about some bomb, wasn't quite clear, but found out it was a plane.. two planes. Went to school, to Technology class, everyone gathered with another technology class, watched the news, and the teachers talked about how this changed/shook the world. Now that I recalled it, it felt like something out of a movie...

In bed, woke up, parents and siblings talking about something on the news. Heard something about some bomb, wasn't quite clear, but found out it was a plane.. two planes. Went to school, to Technology class, everyone gathered with another technology class, watched the news, and the teachers talked about how this shook the world. Now that I recalled it, it felt like something out of a movie...

Yeah, I remember 9/11... I was in fourth or fifth grade. My dad took my brother and me into the kitchen and gave us a lecture about what terrorism is, and then he turned on the TV. I remember thinking that the billowing smoke was beautiful, and that my mom was crying and almost hyperventilating. We went to school, but there were no lessons, we just watched Bill Nye and Eyewitness videos until our parents came to pick us up. I wanted a friend to come over since there wasn't any school. It took me a year or two to really realize what had happened, and all the lives that were shaken or thrown away.

9/11 - Getting my car washed....I'm an hour earlier than NY, and I remember thinking....It's (around) 9:00 am there.....Everyone is just sitting down to work.

I stood there speachless with others, watching the tape playing over and over.....then, some guy that worked there came up just as it was showing the impact. He watched for a second, then, with his mouth hung open in a stupid kind of half-smile, said really loud "AWESOME"!

No one said a word....I looked at this idiot and said

THIS ISN'T A ******* VIDEO GAME, A THOUSAND PEOPLE JUST DIED"

Your response was the most appropriate one possible. Did he then apologize and make a number of socially acceptable expressions of sympathy?

9/11- just out of work
i turned on the tv as I changed my clothes and saw an already occuring news cast.
Called my husband and asked if he had heard.
He said yes and that UT was being let out soon.
I told him it was the start of a world war , and joked if he wanted to bet me some money on that.
He said he would so long as UT wasnt bombed in a personal attack on Bush...
I went to get him right away.


Diane? Doni? Not enough of an implact

Shuttle?
High school. We were watching it on tv.
I remember thinking it looked like an ant the way the smoke created "antennea"

Iran Contra?
Pretty little then. But I do remember it.

OH NO! That would have showed he had a brain......

I remember him saying, verbatim......"uh, I just meant that it was so, uh, big"

I'm sure awesome was the biggest word in his vocabulary.

(1) Standing on the Washington Mall, nigh the reflecting pool, among about half a million (no exaggeration) other people, listening to Martin Luther King Jr. say, over the loudspeakers, "I have a dream!" Had driven to D.C. from Boston on the NJ Turnpike with my pregnant wife. The whole way down, there were charter buses heading for Washington and, it seemed, every third car carried some sort of banner that read MARCH ON WASHINGTON!

(2) The JFK assasination: I was working the evening shift at a downtown department store during the Christmas rush. Getting dressed for work, I had neither the TV nor radio on. My landlady, who lived downstairs, phoned to say, "Did you hear? The president was shot in Dallas. Turn your TV on." I did and sat there, feeling absolutely numb.

(3) LBJ announcing he wouldn't run for a second term. In a bar in Norwood, MA. The President was speaking on television and the announcement was a surprise to most. And one of the drinkers at the bar turned to his companion and said, "The sonofabitch finally did something right."

(4) RFK: Driving to work in the morning and hearing on the radio that Kennedy had been shot the night before. He was still clinging to life at that point, apparently. Thinking this terribly uncharitable thought: "Well, if he survives, he's got the nomination and the elction clinched." Not proud to admit it, but those were my thoughts.

(5) MLK assasination (Gad! 1968 was a terrible year!): Bar-hopping that night. Went into a place on Beacon Hill with a couple of friends, sat at a table, ordered beers all around. Waiter said, "Did you guys hear about Martin Luther King getting shot in Memphis?" I thought this was a lead-in to a bad racial joke and told the waiter it wasn't funny. Turned out he wasn't trying to be funny.

(6) Challenger disaster: I will never again be able to listen to Verdi's Requiem in the same spirit. That's what was being played on classical music station I was listening to when the disaster occurred. The host, the late Robert J. Lurtzima, stopped the recording and, first, apologized for having done so. Then delivered the bad news. I wasn't a teacher at the time, but I was living in the woods in New Hampshire and Christa McAuliffe was from New Hampshire. I shut off the radio and turned on the television.

(7) Princess Di: Yeah, I remember where I was but it didn't seem so earth-shaking to me. I'm neither a celebrity-worshipper nor a royals-watcher. I was getting dressed, making coffee and had the radio news on. My wife was still sleeping. When she came out for her coffee, I tol her. It impressed her a lot more than it had me.

(8) 9/11: Newport Beach, CA. Early morning. I'm with a group of Latvian border-guards and nuclear experts, here on a fact-finding mission sponsored by the US Dept. of Defense. We're due to go down to the San Ysidro border crossing, near San Diego, later that morning to observe how Americans handle sensitive border crossings. From there we're due to fly to Washington state and spend some time at the Hanford Nuclear Base. It was early morning, and, given the three-hour time difference, the first plane was just crashing into the World Trade Center. The radio announcer, who had been reading all sorts of other news, stopped and said, "And we have a report of a plane apparently flying into the World Trade Center towers in New York. In other news..." and went right on. It took another 15 minutes before the media realized what was happening and all other news was swept off the air. We didn't go to San Ysidro that day and we didn't get out of LA for another three days. LAX was shut down tight as a drum. The truly eerie part? One of those planes that hit the Towers was the same Boston-LA flight I had taken two days earlier to get to Newport Beach. Fate.

What'd I do? Kill the thread?

I'm rather young in comparsion to you all as I was born in 1988.

Well when Pope John Paul II died I was drunk (I'm Irish) but I vividly remember looking at sky news and looking at the headlines in the bar. "BREAKING NEWS, Pope John Paul II has died in his sleep." It was amazing when a very loud 18th party hushed up for five minutes in respect. Of course thats all I remember then.

September 11th, I saw live when the towers collapsed, classes in school unioffically ended as people refused to believe what had just happened. Most surreal day of my life.

London bombings, was crazy because the next day my mother was going to go there for a day of shopping. Her flight was subsquently cancelled.

Some interesting things here - while I remember all of the events, it was only the few I listed that I remember exactly where I was - that was the impact/enormity.

Not being American most of those events were learnt through the evening news or via the web and they are not so shocking when presented by a neutral news reader or a web page.

However, I learnt of 9/11 in Singapore at night just after seeing a film we were about to turn on the news when a neighbour (who happened to be a Singapore Airlines pilot) came knocking on the patio doors and told us to turn on the news. We were just in time to catch the second plane hitting the second tower.

The crash of the El Al boeing in Amsterdam, at home in front of the TV.

The assassination of Olof Palme via a newsflash on a very old bl/w TV (literally kept together with string) in the late evening while in my student room. Was so shocked I went to tell the neighbour, even though she would not have known who Palme was.

The invasion of Grenada by the Reagan administration, in a photographer's shop taking passport pictures. At the time I did have neither radio, TV, nor newspaper and the world wide web did not exist.

John Kennedy assassination - at the counter buying shoes in Leed's shoestore in Westwood; the radio behind the desk was reporting the news and the clerks told us standing there ready to pay what had happened. I walked back to campus crying and people just stared at me as they hadn't heard yet.

Robert Kennedy assassination, saw live on tv; I was still living at my parents' home then - tv was in our den.

Moon Walk and one giant step for mankind, that was a good memory, I was having an amorous afternoon with a lover, on my apartment floor, tv on in the background.

What date I'm not sure, but the announcement of the US Invasion of Iraq, first gulf war. I was in my car going back to work after an errand and heard it on the radio. Started crying. Parked and went upstairs to our design office. Five people cheering, me with a wet face sad.

9/11 - I was visiting Los Angeles, staying at the home of a friend, sound asleep in his guest room. At something like 6:20 a.m. he started yelling down the hall and came and pounded on my door, get up, get up, you have to see this -
and I did; it was not long after the first plane hit - a friend had called him. That was a bad week for me personally (not solely for 9/11) and terrible for many, including me, for 9/11.

Those are the ones I remember fairly precisely where I was when I heard.