Where were you on 9/11?...

[WI_DEM]

We know where this guy was...





I was at work when an announcement came that a plane crashed into the Trade Center. We all gathered around a TV and watched the terrible tragedy unfold. I don't think any of us ever really went back to work. We were clutching each other and watching the whole thing.

[unblock]

1. is the paragraph at the bottom meant to refer to you, or is it written in shrub's voice?

i can't tell.

[onehandle]

2. The gym. I had to run up the street and inform about 500 people I work with...

...who were sequestered in a nearby hotel ballroom for a meeting.

I knew they wouldn't know what was going on, because my bosses' boss who was addressing them, always made people turn their pagers and cell phones off.

I was the art director for the communications group, and we spent the day getting messages out for the 25,000 people that were our responsibility in the Southeast.

Several people who worked for my company died in the World Trade Center. I knew one of them. A woman who worked out of our London offices.

[Happyhippychick]

3. My hubby was in NY headed home, I was in DC

I panicked when I heard a plane had hit since he was supposed to be flying out that morning. I didn't see him for five days, he took a taxi home.

[pinstikfartherin]

4. 8th grade math class.

We didn't have a clue until we changed classes though. When we got to 2nd period English all we did was sit silently and watch it on tv. I'll never forget the shock and silence in that room.

[Hamlette]

96. I was in 8th grade math class when we learned JFK had died

the odd similarity of your post made me think of both tragedies.

On 9/11 I was home ill. I had broken 2 ribs and was taking the day off. My mom called to tell me of the first plane crash and told me to turn on the TV. DH and I watched in stunned silence as the 2nd plane hit. I was glued to the TV all day. When I went to bed I thought "we should just turn the middle east into a parking lot". My first thought in the morning was "OMG that idiot Bush might just do it." All it took for me was a good night's sleep to calm down and be rational, Bush on the other hand never could.

Then I went to the bookstore. To find something to read to explain it all. There were lots of us there the next day, and for days to come, all looking for answers and talking to each other.

I was actually pretty scared. But not as scared as I was in 2008 when the financial sector fell apart. I've never been interested in the economy and ever since I learned economics is based on theory I've been sceptical. When it all came apart I thought no wonder, it all just a theory anyway and our theory was apparently wrong. Now what? At least after 9/11 I felt we had a response. In 2008 it didn't seem as simple as army guys killing the bad guys.

I wonder if I'm just more scared of the most recent catastrophe/major event?

[imanamerican63]

5. I was home!!!!

I was living with my parents. I drive a truck and had been living with my parents to help them out I while on the road. I had been home to breaking my leg and was off work. My parents and I watched in total shock. I remember my father calling out, "hey, you need to see this", he began to shake his head. We, like all others, watched the news the rest of day.

[Bobbie Jo]

6. I was having breakfast watching

CNN and getting ready to leave for work. I watched the second plane hit in real time. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

The rest of the day was just surreal....

[adigal]

7. I was teaching at school, heard two planes hit. My FDNY husband

was working, I knew he would be sent down there. As is was, his 1/2 of the firehouse, the Ladder, was left to cover northern Manhattan, and all the firehouses around him, and the Engine from his house, was sent down. They lost their Lieutenant that day. My husband got sick and disabled from cleaning up at that "safe" place, as the Bush Admin claimed, and was put out of the fire department.

[imanamerican63]

20. No words!

I can't imagine what these brave men went through, but they will be heroes in my eyes. God bless them all!

[liberalhistorian]

62. Yes, and now they, and the other first responders,

police officers and EMTs, etc., are being demonized as greedy, selfish union bottomfeeders by the very repubs who've used 9/11 for their own political purposes since day one. (Christie, yes, I'm looking at you, especially, and you too, Tooty Frooty Rudy). Yet, who did we call when this happened? Sure as shit not the 1% who relied on the first responders to save their asses and then took everything from them that they could.

[MichiganVote]

101. So sorry...thank you to your husband.

[Beacool]

119. I'm terribly sorry.

Although I'm glad that your husband survived that day, so many didn't.

[Comrade_McKenzie]

8. 8th grade history class.

The vice principal came in the room toward the end of the period and said: 'There's some history on TV. A plane hit the World Trade Center.' I had no idea what the World Trade Center was at the time.

We saw the second plane hit live. Then they came on the TV in my second period math class to tell about the Pentagon. My teacher started crying and had to leave the room.

We watched the events unfold all day long.

[NRaleighLiberal]

9. My wife and I had just landed at Shannon airport in Ireland, to visit our oldest daughter -

she was doing a study abroad term. We got off the plane, drove our rental car to a pub in Limerick, where we met Sara and her boyfriend. Barney (of all things) was on the TV - then a waitress ran in, changed the channel to Sky news, and all started watching in horror - the second plane had just hit and information was of course sketchy.

We spent the next 10 days in Ireland, from Dingle out west back to Dublin in the east, trying to catch news at the various B and Bs we stayed at, or pubs and restaurants we ate at. We called my parents when we could - they were taking care of our younger daughter at our home in Raleigh. they were quite frightened.

Ireland's people were just marvelous to my wife and I - the affinity between the Irish and America - particularly New York - was clear to see. At various churches in towns that we visited there were books of remembrance to sign. My wife and I were moved to tears many times during that week - on one day, the international day of remembrance, the FM radio station played the most beautiful, tender classical music all day. We did lots of driving that day, so it became a day of deep reflection for us.

The only politics that arose was when we dared speak our minds to B and B owners, and were amazed at their relief - we ran into no support for bush whatsoever there, so could unload our frustration freely.

It was a week we will never forget.

[ProfessorGAC]

10. At The Airport, Waiting For A Flight To Atlanta

An anouncement was made that all flights were delayed. No explanation.

Then someone said "a plane hit the World Trade Center". So, i went back to the newsstand (small airport, so getting back through security, especially then, was no big deal.)

Lady put the TV on CNN. About 3 minutes later the second plane hit. I picked up my bag and left. I knew that nobody was going anywhere that day.

I went back to work, and they were on full lockdown. They wouldn't even let me in. So i went home and watched news coverage the rest of the day.
GAC

[mikeytherat]

11. Driving up I-95 to a client site in my '72 BMW which has no radio.

I had no idea what was going on, but I knew something was up because everyone was driving so slowly on I-95. I remember saying to myself, "Is everyone in shock or something?" I said this (I thought) jokingly at the time.

mikey_the_rat

[glacierbay]

12. I had just started the day watch

when the message went out over our computers. We were all ordered to go on tactical alert, ordered back to the station, briefed, all days off were cancelled, off duty officers were called in and we went from single person cars to two person cars. I didn't make it home for 96 hours.
Tense times.

[DonCoquixote]

13. at home

It was my day off, and I had gotten up because I had an appointment. My mother told me that some drunk pilot had crashed into the World trade center...let's be honest, until the second plane hit, that is what it looked like. That made the shock of what happened worse.

[riverbendviewgal]

25. I was making my bed after waking up .

I worked an afternoon shift the night before in Toronto. The phone rang and it was my friend who asked if I was watching TV.
She said turn it on because there were no more Twin Towers. I thought she was kidding me.

I turned it on and was shocked. Unbelievable.... as I grew up in NJ and could see the twin towers way in a distance from my childhood home. I visited as well and went up to the roof top with my husband and boys when we visited one day a few years before..

This event sticks in my my mind as so profound as was the assassination of JFK, MLK and Bobby Kennedy..

Unforgettable. Profoundly effected me and the rest of the world. I went to work later that day and we all were very subdued.

Toronto is called the little apple after the Big Apple, NYC. We all felt devastated for America..

[PCIntern]

14. Practicing dentistry on our busiest day of the week...

I personally told about 15 people what had happened and for YEARS afterwards, people would come in and remark that they'll never forget where they were and that I told them. Weird that it's a Tuesday, the weather is 'severe clear' here in the NE, and it's 9/11 again.

[TwilightGardener]

15. Getting ready to end my hospital shift, go home and sleep.

[HockeyMom]

16. Not called to Sub that day on LI

I saw it live on local TV. When I went to work the next day, some teachers weren't there. A few children didn't come to school either. None of us asked why. We knew.

[HughBeaumont]

17. Unemployed.

Woke up at 8:30. Didn't turn on a TV just yet. Neighbor called .. . that's when I flicked it on to see the second plane hit.

Then the Pentagon . . . all I could think of was "who's protecting us here?" . . .

And then Building 7 went down for no apparent reason . . . that's when the bells and whistles went off.

I went to DC the week after. It looked like a warzone, seemed like the last place anyone would want to be at. You couldn't get NEAR the White House, but you could get into all of the museums and see everything uninhibited, since there were so few visitors. There were security checks at every one, even if you didn't have a bag.

One month later, I got the job that I still work at to this day.

[gollygee]

18. I was the only one who rebelled against the "no radio" policy at work

so I was at work and everyone was in my office listening to my radio.

[barbtries]

19. at home in hawthorne, CA

less than two months previously my 21-year-old daughter had been killed. a friend called me early, maybe 6 or 7 am, and said, "We're under attack." i remember saying it has to be terrorists, no country would be that stupid. got up and turned on the tv and stayed close to the tv for a long long time.

i felt the entire country had been jolted into my world. i felt as if lead had been poured into my veins.

definitely one of those events that will never be forgotten. peace and love to us one and all

[A HERETIC I AM]

21. In Houston, getting ready to fly to Sarasota

Needless to say, I didn't. After about 2 hourson the phone, I finally found a rental car I drove back to Florida.

[cynatnite]

22. I was at home and I thought the first plane was an accident...

It was stunning to watch and it seemed like the world was in complete disarray. Nothing was making sense. No one knew anything.

The hardest part for me were seeing families and friends showing photos of the missing. It was heartbreaking.

[Tunkamerica]

36. I did too, my roommate came into my room, woke me up, and told me a plane

hit. I assumed it was a prop plane or something and went back to sleep. I got up after the second plane hit. In my defense I was in college and my first class was at noon.

[montanacowboy]

23. In Washington DC

working across the river from the Pentagon

it was a day that one cannot describe - like living outside your body, wondering if I would get home that day at all

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

24. Driving to work

at my job in an airline flight operations department. I first heard the news on NPR, thought it was a freak accident until I got into work. Then I learned it was something much worse - there was a TV in a conference room and everybody was trying to watch - it was frightening; everyone was milling around trying to find more information about where our airplanes were. Later that morning they had a meeting to let us know all of our planes had landed (the international flights were mostly parked in Canada) and were accounted for, but knowing that those others weren't - it was a rough day.

[Not Me]

26. in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii

It's always strange when you are 6 time zones behind EDT. You wake up in the morning and can sense that there is something amiss.
I got up, and was walking to the local coffee shop. Something's not right. By the time I got to the coffee shop--with TV's going--it was already 2pm in New York. So I got the condensed version of what most Americans took in all day in about 5 minutes.
Unbelievable.

[catbyte]

27. I was home from work with one of my ubiquitous migraines when my boss called around 11:00 a.m.

She asked me if it was really true. I asked her was what true because I never have the TV on when I have a migraine--I just can't get the room dark enough or quiet enough. She told me about the attacks, so I turned on CNN just in time to see a tape of the second plane slamming into the South Tower. I was stunned. I told her that yes, it was true, and she began to cry and so did I.

People are right when they say you never forget where you were when earth-shattering events occur. I still remember what I was doing and where I was when word came that JFK was assassinated. I was 8, and I was painting library furniture green in the one room school I attended until 7th grade. The teacher had a transistor radio on for some reason when the announcement came. I remember everybody, including Mrs. Brock, bursting into tears then she let us go home early. I remember a high school play we were to attend that night was cancelled. I was watching TV when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby.

Vivid, vivid memories.

[dixiegrrrrl]

105. and yet Poppy Bush says he cannot remember where he was when JFK was killed.

Even tho there is a photo of him in Dallas.

EVERYBODY remembers where they were during events like that.

[Kolesar]

28. Same fucking chair. Zoning out and hating my company. eom

[KansDem]

29. I was at work in Kansas City

My colleagues were glued to the radio listening to the events as they unfolded.

I looked out of the window at a most bizarre sight: contrails forming great circles in the sky as planes were ordered to return to KCI.

[Panasonic]

30. Asleep in bed in Tucson, AZ

when was violently woken up by my wife who is a New Yorker and still has family there.

We got ahold of her family - and while her brother was working near Manhattan, across the bridge in Long Island City, he had to walk home that day.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

31. In my law school breezeway.

I remember just having finished reading a case about a passenger who brought a gun on a commercial aircraft and took a break to chat with some of my classmates. One of my classmates came up to us and said, "Hey, did you know a plane crashed into the World Center?"

My immediate reaction was to think back to a story from the 1970s when a small single engine Cessna crashed into the stands of Baltimore's Memorial Stadium shortly after a football game there. Thankfully, no one was hurt (not even the pilot) and the pictures of that event show, somewhat comically, the tail of a crumpled airplane sticking out of several rows of empty seats.

So when I heard "plane crash", I figured it was something like that. What I first saw when I walked into the student lobby to see the television was much different--the tops of the twin towers lit up like giant matchsticks (this was just after the second plane had hit.) I rarely curse out loud, but my first spoken reaction was to gasp and say, "Holy shit."

From that point on, all I remember was rumors flying around like crazy. Two planes highjacked, three planes highjacked, four, five, six, seven planes highjacked. A bombing at the State Department. No one knew what the exact truth was, except that it was not good.

Cellphone service was jammed. When I heard about the Pentagon, and knowing my mom was taking classes in the DC area, I started desperately trying to call my dad to make sure she was okay and to tell her to stay away from DC. Finally, I got through. My dad, who was at work, didn't hear about the attacks until I told him.

Then I heard about Flight 93. At that time, they just said it had crashed "near Pittsburgh", which got me concerned because my sister was living in Pittsburgh at the time. So I had to call and make sure everything was okay with her.

Then I saw the first tower collapse, and it was literally unbelievable to me. I can see why some of the conspiracy theorists wax stories about a controlled demolition, because my first thought was that the terrorists had also planted bombs at the base of building to help bring it down. Of course, I don't believe this now, but I think it was all out of shock that such a prominent building could literally be reduced to rubble like that.

Amazingly, they had yet to cancel classes and just after the first tower collapsed, me and my fellow stunned classmates trudged into our torts class, not sure why we were doing so. The attacks were on everyone's mind, and it dominated the first few minutes of class. I have to say I'm somewhat proud of myself at the time for showing some restraint--I said that if we had the chance to catch Bin Laden alive and put him on trial, I would perfer that to just killing him outright. My opinions were met dismissively from some of my colleagues, however.

Several minutes into class, word got out that the second tower had collapsed. Still, our professor attempted to keep on teaching as usual, but about halfway through, it was announced that the rest of the day was cancelled.

When I left campus, it was still bright and sunny. I remember driving down the expressway and along the side are some car dealerships with giant flags, and I wondered what the consequences were going to be for the country. My normal route took me right by the airport. I wanted nothing to do with that. I didn't want to be near any airplanes. So I took an alternate route, and I remember halfway home it started raining. And then it started pouring as hard as I could ever remember rain falling. Maybe it was my emotional state at the time, but I thought it was something of a sign of mourning.

Stopping by the grocery store, I remember seeing everyone one in the store in total shock. Dozens of people just walking around in near silence. The only other time I remember such a scene was back in 1986, when I was a kid vacationing in Central Florida and we had just seen the Challenger explode before our own eyes, and the total feeling of sadness afterwards.

People like to say, "Remember how you felt on September 11th" as if it is a good thing. It's not. I was scared. I was irrational. I was willing to believe things or agree with things I never in my right mind would have agreed with or believed. It was not a good feeling at all.

[no_hypocrisy]

32. Drinking coffee, watching The Today Show, on the phone with my SIL simultaneously.

First plane hit, emergency broadcast went on the air. Never imagined a terrorist attack. Thought it was a wayward plane.

[livetohike]

33. Waking up with a migraine headache in Oceanside, CA

My husband was on his way to work and told me that it looked like a plane hit one of the towers - thought it was a private plane. I dragged myself out of bed and went down to watch TV. I sat there all day and watched the horror. The plane that went down in Shanksville, PA is not far from my hometown. We also lived outside of NYC for a while and I was thinking of our friends and their families who may have been affected.

[MANative]

34. In my office in Midtown Manhattan, across the street from Madison Square Garden.

I've shared this story here before, but it still feels as fresh eleven years later as it did that morning.

I had hired a group of twenty-two new Executive Trainees, who had started work the day before, all of them new college grads and some still looking for places to live for their new jobs in the big city. We were scheduled to conduct a training session that morning at 9:00, and at five minutes before the hour, my secretary ran into my office saying that a plane had hit the Trade Center. Since our meeting was on the 14th floor, and faced downtown, I ran up eight flights of stairs (still couldn't tell you why I didn't take the elevator) and found the entire group staring out the windows at the smoke billowing from the tower. It was obvious that it hadn't been a "small plane" as so many of us initially assumed. It was also obvious that we wouldn't be conducting any training that day. I ran back down to my office on the sixth floor and called my SVP for input on what we should be doing, as it was our team's responsibility (HR) to see to the safety of our employees. It was during that call that the second plane struck, so I didn't witness it, but my entire team of ETs and my own direct reports all did.

By that time, phone communications were getting difficult, and someone - still don't know who - made the decision to shut down all out-going phone access. About a half-hour later, our cell phones stopped working. The only way I could communicate with anyone was via email, which worked throughout the ordeal. I couldn't reach my husband, who was working in Greenwich, CT, and he couldn't reach me. At about 11:00 a.m., I was able to reach my parents in Massachusetts via email, who were then able to relay messages to my husband that I was okay. It was during that exchange with my dad that I found out that my brother was scheduled to fly to San Diego that morning from Ronald Reagan Airport. We were certain that he was on the plane that hit the Pentagon, based on the time he was scheduled to leave. Since he and his wife both worked for the DoD inside the Pentagon, they were unreachable. We finally made contact at 10:30 p.m. to discover that a last-minute meeting at the Pax River base had delayed his departure. Four of his direct reports were not so lucky; two died on the plane, and two more inside the Pentagon.

I still don't remember how I got home from the train station after they finally opened Grand Central around 3:00 that afternoon. I've tried and tried, but I honestly have no memory of making it home. Easily the most harrowing, horrifying day of my life.

[cliffordu]

35. Mental hospital.

[deutsey]

37. At work and preparing to give my two-week notice

I went to our regular weekly team meeting at about 9 and was planning to tell my supervisor afterward that I had been offered another job and was quitting.

It was during the meeting that I first heard about a plane striking the WTC. Co-workers were saying that it sounded like a terrible accident. We had no idea...

After we began the meeting, we heard someone going down the hallway saying a second building in NYC had been struck by another plane. As we were attempting to process that (well, maybe this wasn't an accident after all), we heard someone else out in the hallway say (in a panicked voice) that the Pentagon was on fire.

Suffice it to say, the meeting was over. I chose not to give my resignation at that time and instead watched the towers fall live on TV with my co-workers.

After that, I just wanted to get home to be with my wife and three young children, but I feared the roads would be jammed (I worked in Potomac, which is a suburb of DC). Surprisingly, the roads were open and I made it home in no time, only to find a tank sitting in the entrance of the Army fort that was down the road from where I lived, with troops in combat gear and holding machine guns standing around it.

What a fucked up day.

[justiceischeap]

38. Visiting family in Missouri, was in a thrift store

watching events unfold on an old console TV. We drove back to my folks house immediately and watched TV for the next 24 hours or so. Watched local news reports of how gas stations were raising gas prices to $5 a gallon and how the National Guard was being sent to guard the US Treasury building in KCMO. Two days later, drove from Missouri to Pennsylvania, freaking out about the lack of planes in the sky.

[laundry_queen]

39. I got up uncharacteristically early

My 12 month old daughter woke me up at 6-ish (MST) while I was visiting my parents' place. At home I would just send her back to bed and go back to sleep, but my mom's house wasn't childproof so I got up with my daughter. Usually one of the first things I do in the morning is turn on the tv to see the news, so I did. It showed the first tower hit on fire. The anchors (CNN) were speculating about the size of plane, how long it was going to take to put the fire out, how they were going to get everyone out, etc. They talked about what a horrible accident this was ... a few pauses here and there made me (and I'm sure everyone else) wonder perhaps if this was terrorism.

Then I saw the second plane hit in real time. There was no question at that moment what was going on. And it was shocking to see the buildings fall...I don't think anyone REALLY expected that. I called my mom at work and she had told me no one was working, everyone was gathered around the tv. "You know this will mean war, don't you?" she told me, "the US will never let this BE without attacking someone."

We live near an airport and it was hard to sleep without the planes roaring overhead that night. Just eerie.

[NJCher]

40. same place as right now

Sitting in my home office at my computer, looking out the window and thinking about what lovely day it was going to be.

I turned on the TV just as they were getting a camera set up after the first plane hit. I couldn't figure out what was going on.

My husband had just crossed the Tappan Zee and made it to the Jersey side and was able to get home from his trip to Boston.

I had new neighbors and the husband worked in the city in that area. He didn't make it home until the next day and when he did, he was still covered with that ashy stuff and was in a walking state of shock.


Cher

[CherokeeDem]

41. In Miami...

on the Dolphin Expressway on the way to work. I heard the first plane crash report on ABC radio, then listened live as the second plane hit. At that moment, like everyone, I realized that this was no accident. I remember screaming out loud, "and that f'ing moron is in the White House." I was so, so scared for everyone at that moment.

The funny thing was looking into the rush hour traffic around me...easy to tell which drivers knew and which ones were either listening to music or nothing. The contrast between the shocked and happy faces was startling.

My office was directly across from Miami International and we stood in a partner's office. watching the TV and watching plane after plane...more than normal...land at MIA. Then nothing....I think that was the eeriest thing for us...so used to the constant air traffic, and then none. The silence was deafening.

Three days later, when planes started flying again...the first one to take off from MIA happened again while I was on the Dolphin...traffic stopped to watch as an American Airlines jet took off.

A horrible time for everyone.

[BumRushDaShow]

42. At work desperately trying to load a CNN webpage and wondering

why it was taking so long. Then co-worker came over and asked if I heard about the "commuter plane" that had just crashed into one of the twin towers. Finally got to the CNN page, took one look at the still of the plane before it hit, saw the engines on the wings, and was like - "Whoa! That's no commuter plane! That's some sort of wide-body" (767 or L-1011 or DC-10, etc). I know that anything with engines (not propellers) on the wings (vs on the sides) is big.

Everyone headed to the TV in the office and we saw the OP's pic of Shrub sitting there in Florida live and wondered whether someone would eventually walk over to him to say something. Later, (watching Peter Jennings on ABC), they switched to a shot in DC looking towards the Executive Office Building where there was smoke pouring into the sky from that direction and at the time, they didn't realize it was coming from the Pentagon.

By 10:30, everyone downtown (notably in the skyscrapers) were told to evacuate and I beat a retreat at 70 mph to get home! After the Oklahoma bombing in 1995, no one wanted to take any chances.

[Hayabusa]

43. I was sick at home

and just flipping through the channels when I saw it on NBC. My mom was between jobs at the point and had just gotten home from taking her then-husband to work in Columbia, MO. She turned around to face the TV just as the second plane hit.

[nolabear]

44. Believe it or not, that was my first day as a therapist. I was getting ready for work at an agency.

Nervous, you know, about what I was going into. I got the first shower and turned on The Today Show while my husband showered. It was just after the first plane hit, and we sat there as long as we could, going through the whole horror together.

I'll never forget that drive in to work, and the looks all we drivers exchanged as we drove. My feelings were reflected in every face, as if we were all one terribly wounded organism. At one point I found myself on the highway behind an enormous truck that I assume was carrying stage trappings, but with the logo and legend "Les Miserables" emblazoned across it. I couldn't help thinking, "Indeed. This is misery. This is profound suffering."

I didn't have a single client that day. Most didn't show up for anyone. We all sat in the receptionists' area around a little TV, trying to make sense of things until I went home. I remember the radio station I usually listen to playing an endless, uninterrupted list of sad, mournful songs. The one I recall most was Paul Simon's "American Tune". It seemed to fit. It still does.

I don't know a soul who's not been shattered
I don't know a friend who feels at ease.
I don't know a dream that's not been battered
or driven to its knees,
But I'm all right;
I'm all right,
For we've been so well so long,
Still, when I think of the road we're travelling on,
I wonder what's gone wrong.
I can't help it; I wonder what's gone wrong.

Peace, DU. I don't know if the road's gotten one bit better these long years after, but I have to have hope, and work for that hope. We can do better if we don't let hatred win.

[Bertha Venation]

111. This.

[nolabear]

112. Thanks, Babe. This back.

[Raine1967]

45. In Manhattan.

11 years later, one thing I will ALWAYS remember is how wonderful people were that day. To this day, I believe in the humanity and kindness of the people of New York.

[MANative]

75. Yes! And for weeks after...

people on the subway would smile at you. Remember how quiet everything was for several weeks? Everyone spoke in hushed tones.

[rickford66]

46. Memphis Tenn

I was working on a flight simulator at the National Guard facility when one of the civilians told us to come down to the OPS room because a plane hit the WTC. He said there's a big screen TV there. Before we got there we heard about the second plane. Previously normal security got real tight and we even had trouble leaving later in the day. Automatic weapons pointed at us instead of the usual smile and hand waving. My niece lives in DC and her military boyfriend at the time worked in the Pentagon and while at home was on the phone with a co-worker and heard the crash over the phone. He was scheduled to be in that area later. It was very eerie having a quiet airport for three days after living with the constant roar of planes because we were working right under the approach path.

[rickford66]

65. PS

I should add that shortly after this, the facility was pretty empty. Those Guardsmen and Guardswomen were shuttling troops and supplies to the Mid-East non-stop.

[RevStPatrick]

47. I live in Brooklyn, and I was heading to work at 9am...

I was able to see the World Trade Center towers from the corner where I catch the subway each morning.
When I got to the subway that day, the first plane had struck and there was a plume of smoke, and a bunch of people were standing around looking.
I asked a guy what was going on, and he actually said the words "that was one bad pilot!"

I watched the smoke rise from the tower for about 20 seconds.
Then I ran the 3 blocks back to my apartment.
In those 3 blocks, the following thoughts popped into my head:

"This will be blamed on Muslim terrorists.
The Bush administration is somehow complicit.
This is a world-changing event. Everything is now different."

I got home, and my girlfriend was getting ready to leave for work.
I turned on the TV, and in the time it took me to get home, the second plane had hit.
Naturally, all hell broke loose.

I know this won't be a popular sentiment here and now, but I thought Mayor Giuliani was terrific.
Exactly what we needed for about 3 days there.
And then, of course, he lost his mind and became a parody of himself.

After watching the TV for a little while, we decided to go back to the corner where the subway is to look at the towers burning. Shortly after we got there, the first tower collapsed. Yes, I watched the South Tower collapse with my own two eyes.

Actually, this picture from Wikipedia is almost the exact view that I had, except with shorter buildings in my way:



We stayed home with the TV on for the next 3 days.
My cousin, who lived upstairs from us, was supposed to go to job interview that afternoon.
At the World Trade Center.

Luckily, I did not personally know anyone who was lost that day.
But I do have a number of friends and acquaintances who lost people.

So sad...

[MadrasT]

48. Orlando, Florida at an IBM conference.

They set up TVs in the conference center lobby so we could watch between sessions. The conference continued for the duration of the week.

It was a very odd week to be 1000 miles away from home.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

49. Up in Lake Tahoe --

waiting on my car to be repaired.

Also, on DU all day and night, getting news updates/support/collective wisdom on what was happening and why. That was a helluva day and showed just how great this place was back in the day.

[csziggy]

50. At home watching TechTV News

Their news show was very new and the people working the main desk were completely out of their league, but trying hard. I soon turned over to CNN and watched the second plane hit the building, the collapses, the coverage all day.

That was my husband's first day in circulation at the local news paper. They sent every single person not involved in writing news stories out on the streets to give away their special edition. He spent all day standing in the middle of a six lane highway giving papers to people in cars. It was surprising the number that had not heard the news and only got it when he gave them that paper.

An online acquaintance was on the subway going to the World Trade Center for a meeting. The train was stopped and everyone sent out to walk. She had just gotten a Blackberry and sent periodic updates to the forum where we followed her progress as she tried to find out what had happened at the World Trade Center (we told her online), what had happened to the people she was supposed to have met with (it took weeks for her to confirm that most of them had died), and she tried to get home (she had to walk across one of the bridges which was wall to wall pedestrians).

Months later I found out that a cousin who had recently retired as an Army chaplain was supposed to have a meeting at the Pentagon at ten that morning. He found out about the attack when he tried to catch a taxi to get to a meeting.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

51. Times Square...

dismissed my class just before 10AM. Everyone in there was a New Yorker except one guy. The rest of the week on Manhattan was surreal...

sP

[blueamy66]

52. Just waking up

and then having to tell my Dad that 2 of his AA planes were gone.......he cried....

[Odin2005]

53. Sitting in 10th Grade Biology class.

[Auggie]

54. Packing, getting ready to move the next day

My dad called and told me to turn on the news. We wanted to watch but had movers coming with half a flat to pack-up.

Six weeks later I was a stone's throw from Ground Zero shooting magazine ads with Ford models. Unreal.

[rainbow4321]

55. Bringing my daughter to school, heard about the initial report on the car radio

When it was initially announced on our local radio news I had images of a small Cessna like plane...until I got into the house and turned the TV on and saw the tower. I saw the fireball come out of the second tower and thought it was caused by what was going on in the first hit tower until they showed the slo-mo video of the second plane.
Had to leave the house shortly after because my daughter's friend called me asking me for a ride to school and I felt bad telling her NO, not NOW. Went and got her, headed back home.

Spend the next few hours going between the TV and online watching everything unfold.

Not knowing what would happen next I went to my bank to get most of my money out. Was told by the cashier "because of an incident (!) in NY, we are not allowing people to pull alot of cash out of their accounts".
After a few moments of going back and forth with the cashier who was telling me no, you can't have your money, I came up with a request she couldn't deny... get my money out of my account in the form of travellers' checks. She then gave me the withdrawl amount I asked for in the form of travellers' checks. I used the travellers' checks over the next few days for all my purchases. Eventually put the left over ones back into my bank account like a week later.

[leveymg]

56. A mile from the Pentagon, on the Pkwy next to National Airport at a little before 10am. Ring-side.

I was listening to the DC Pacifica radio affiliate while I motored into work late, when the announcer reported that airliners had smashed into the WTC and the Pentagon. As traffic jammed-up, and the passenger jets began landing nose-to-tail on the runway next to me, I was fortunate to inch up to a gap in the guard rail, and was able to cut across into the empty lanes of traffic coming from the direction of the Pentagon, where over the trees, the first traces of smoke were visible in the cloudless, blue sky.

I've often wondered why I was the only one who thought to turn around and get away from there.

As I drove home on surface streets I saw a solitary silver military transport plane, a C-130, flying west. It was the last airplane I saw in the sky for a week over Northern Virginia except F-16s.

[ctaylors6]

57. in labor at the hospital

my youngest was born that day

[Historic NY]

58. I was awaken by the deafening roar of the 2 jets....

heading down the Hudson. It was just over my house which faces the Hudson River. It was one of those WTF minutes.

http://911anomalies.wordpress.com/2007/06/20/911-military-drones-stewart-air-force-base/

[Jazzgirl]

59. I was in Amarillo, TX.

It was on a Tuesday and I was in one of our offices. I was working out of town. One of the Trainmasters came in and said his wife called and said an airplane had hit one of the WTC buildings. We were both assuming it was a really bad pilot of a small plane. He came back a few minutes later and said it was a commercial airliner. Then he came back a bit after that looking quite stunned and said another plane had hit the other building. I went back to my hotel room and watched the rest of the day unfold. It was not pretty at all.

[msanthrope]

60. I had tickets for Yankee Stadium that evening. So I decided to sleep late and take Amtrak up.

I'm glad I missed the 'live coverage.' I only woke up and turned on the TV after my husband called me from Western Pa--he was out on a deposition. At that point, Flight 93 was still missing-- it was about 11 o'clock.

Last year, I finally watched the replay of the 'live coverage.' It took me 10 years to watch the buildings my grandfather had helped build come down.

I grew up in Manhattan, and yes, I went to school with some of the dead and missing.

I lived near the Liberty Bell and the US Mint on 9/11, so I got to watch a very strange assortment of troops on the street.

this year has hit me more than any other--because it is the same crisp, clear day that 9/11 was.

[liberalhistorian]

61. I was at work (a small office with five or six people,

with the bossman in the next city over for a conference). My mom called me shortly after the first plane hit; at that point, we still thought it might just have been a horrible accident. We didn't have a tv in the office, but we did have radio and internet. She then called a short while later to tell me of the second plane and the hit on the Pentagon; at that point, we knew what was happening and that it was terrorism. She told me then that I should leave work and get as much cash as I could withdraw from the ATM and go pick my (then ten years old) son up from school and bring him home.

We gathered around the radio in the main office; we were in a suburb of Cleveland and they were reporting that there was a "suspicious" plane on the ground at the Cleveland airport, not responding to any communication from the tower. The announcer also said that there were reports of "ten more planes headed for the country." At that time, we had no way of knowing that that wasn't the case or what was really going on, and, for the first time ever, I had a true sense of the kind of sheer panic, fear, chaos and terror my grandparents had described they and everyone feeling on the day of the Pearl Harbor attack.

We didn't know it until later on, but we were also in the area where the plane that was headed for the Capitol and that crashed in PA had been turned around in the air by the hijackers.

[NJRick1006]

63. At work in Manhatten

I was in my office at Penn Plaza (office complex in the Penn Station Complex) in NYC. A co-worker told me that a plane hit the WTC. I walked down the aisle in our office to the South facing window and immediately saw the smoke and fire. We all thought at first that this was some terrible pilot and that it was a small plane. Within minutes were learned that this was false. A friend was walking to work and while he was crossing Fifth Avenue the first plane passed directly overhead, barely missing the Empire State Building at 34th Street. When he reach Sixth Avenue, he saw the smoke and fire coming out of the Tower.

We all stopped work at watched the horror unfold on TV. There were announcements telling us not to leave the building and that the city was at a standstill. Getting a cell phone signal was almost impossible and the company internet service was sporatic at best. A few minutes after the first plane hit, I heard people yell and scream; this was my co-workers seeing the second plane hit. A few of us saw one of the towers fall from our south-facing office windows. Prior to that we keep on seeing "things" fall from the side of one of the towers. We couldn't make out what they where. To our shock, we later learned that these were people jumping off one of the towers. Many people in our office were terribly afraid for their own lives; people were crying and hugging each other.

[MANative]

76. You and I worked in the same building.

I know there were many other companies in that building, but I wonder if we might have been co-workers? Federated, by any chance?

[SoapBox]

64. Home from NYC the night before...and supposed to go back to NYC on Tuesday night.

I got home to Los Angeles very late on Monday night, from NYC...waking up around 9A (?), I thought, do I hear voices?

Turned out that the answering machine was full of messages, wanting to know where I was (the phone ringers were turned off but I guess I was hearing people leaving messages). I was SO groggy that I kept thinking...huh? What? About what? Why are all these calls flipping out? What tragedy? Turn on the TV...of course, like the rest of the world, couldn't believe it. I watched for some time, with the dog rolled up next to me (I swear to this day, he "knew" something was really wrong)...finally shut it off...and put out the flag.

Ugh. I still can't think about it.

[shanti]

66. at work n/t

[Loki]

67. At home in Houston and on my computer reading DU

Saw a post from Khephra to go to breaking news the twin towers were under attack and the rest is history.

[MicaelS]

69. At home, asleep. I work nights.

Neighbor came over and woke me up, told me that "A plane crashed into the WTC." My response was "What? A Cessna?" He said "No, an airliner."

Turned on the TV, and watched until both towers fell. Called my boss, and asked if I should come in that night. His response was "Of course, why not?" I was so mad, I would have choked him if he had been standing in front of me.

Went to work that night, listened to the same news over and over again, hour after hour. In the morning, NO ONE wanted to talk about it, NO ONE.

[Sylvarose]

70. Gary, Indiana

...was supposed to do some staff training that day. Had never been to Gary before. Didn't know anyone. When I got there people were already around a TV talking about an airplane hitting the first tower. Watched the coverage...remember...the second one hitting.

The campus was in a near panic. People were wondering if there were still classes. Rumors were flying that Chicago was a target.

We were supposed to carry on as normal..but nothing was normal. We kept taking "breaks" to watch the coverage.

I remember calling my Dad at one break (he was still working at that time..3rd shifts). I told him he needed to get up and watch the TV. I kept trying to convey to him the magnitude of what was happening but he was too groggy to get it. Finally he called me back later that afternoon wide awake and supportive.

The thing that I will always remember, beyond the horror, the fear and the sadness was also the kindness and the tenderness. I was in a strange city staying in a hotel and having to go to restaurants for my meals. I was interacting with strangers and there was this sense, this unspoken contract, that we would all be "gentle" with one another. There were subdued but genuine smiles. No one forgot their "thank yous" and "your welcomes." Strangers were invited to prayers services or vigils. I also remember seeing more flags flown than I'd ever seen. I also remember those who displayed a sense of normalcy - as if this tragedy would not drag us down. In particular I remember an elderly man, on his lawnmower, mowing. For some reason, that scene was so comforting. It was like seeing that image made me think that we would get beyond this madness..this tragedy..and though we would be forever changed...we were still "here."

[RobinA]

71. Gardiner MT

Home is Philadelphia, but I was on a trip visiting Yellowstone. Got up at Mountain Time at whatever would have been about 9a NYC time. Turned on the TV to get the weather and they were just talking about the first plane, which at that time was a "small plane." I wondered what kind of idiot would fly into the WTC, which you can see for a 100 miles when you are in the air on the east coast. Then they started saying it might have been a jet, which I KNEW couldn't be true, because no commercial pilot would do such a thing. Then they started talking like it really was a jet. We were ready to start our day in Yellowstone and it was obvious the news would be there when we got back that evening, so we turned off the TV and left.

Midmorning we were at Tower Falls and I heard some redneck type make a comment about how "they" "took out" the World Trade Center. I considered this a gross exaggeration, and the "they" reminded me of the early reports that "they" had bombed the Murrah Building on OKC. Midafternoon we heard some people talking and it became clear that it was some sort of hijack incident involving 4 planes from major airlines. I remember feeling for the people who worked for those airlines because I have family who works for airlines and I know they have a lot of company pride (or did back then).

Late afternoon we were still on the road and decided to head back and find out what was going on. We ate some dinner and then went back to the hotel and turned on the TV. At this point we had no idea the disaster, including that the towers had collapsed. The news that night was a confusing story of collapsing towers, planes hitting the Pentagon, planes landing in a PA field, plus a bunch of other rumor that never actually happened. It took me days to get the timeline right.

In a way we experienced this differently than most Americans, as we saw none of it in real time. We also weren't on the east coast with our friends and families with this stuff going on over our heads. No one was going to bomb Yellowstone, so there wasn't the fear factor. I'm actually glad I didn't experience it real time, and to this I attribute the fact that I have never been as freaked out about 9/11 as a lot of people. It was all smoking rubble before we knew the extent of what happened.

[DreamGypsy]

72. My wife and I spent the day in Giverny, Monet's home and garden...

...enjoying the incredible beauty and peace of the place. We returned to Paris by train in the late afternoon and walked back to our bed and breakfast. Friends on a bus tour of France were scheduled to arrive in Paris that afternoon and my wife called their hotel to arrange to meet them for dinner. The hotel operator has hesitant to transfer the call ... saying something about the 'confusion'...but did put the call through. Our friend picked and was basically crying and hysterical, but told us to turn on the television. A few minutes later we watched as the second plane hit the tower. In shock, we watched the news coverage....

We couldn't fly home to Oregon. We thought about staying in Paris, but decided if attacks happened in France that they would most likely occur there. The next day we took our scheduled train south and joined our walking tour in Provence.

[nadinbrzezinski]

73. Navy Housing at Pearl

Sis called at 05:30, the true definition of oh dark hundred, called me on the edge oh hysterics.

Waking up realizing we were at war was all but fun. That morning, knowing the history after Pearl, I went to the exchanged and stocked up with canned goods for a month. Within a week there was no milk to be had outside the Exchange. Unfortunately there was no shelf stable on base, or would have gotten a couple cases for locals with kids.

And yes, we had some shortages, but not as deep as oh after Pearl Harbor. Canned beef is not that good.

Oh and the peope who were stuck on the islands due to no flights led to a lot of locals feeding a lot of other Americans. I particularly remember the woman, Gracie was her name, who was from the Big Apple. For a few hours she did not know if her family was ok.

[FreeJoe]

74. In a hotel, then on a train into the mountains

I was on vacation in Durango, Colorado. I turned on the TV to check the weather before we left for the train. I saw one tower burning and then saw another plane hit the other tower. After that, we had to leave to catch our train. I spent the next 4 hours with no idea what was going on.

[Webster Green]

77. I went to the store to get a pack of smokes and a newspaper. It was on TV there.

I went home, and turned on the TV just as the first tower fell.

My first thought was of all the people in those towers. My second thought was how awful the retribution would be.

[MrScorpio]

78. At work at Langley AFB VA

Intel Squadron, pretty much figured out that out job was going to get a hell of a lot more complicated.

[RebelOne]

79. At work at my office in Marietta, GA.

A co-worker came to me and told me a plane crashed into the World Trade Center. At first, I thought he was joking until I heard about the 2nd one.

[appleannie1]

80. Working in my shop when a customer called and told me to turn on the TV.

My youngest daughter was on her way to a luncheon for the wives of officers on a ship in Norfolk and my youngest son was flying home from a race. I was able to contact her but was not able to contact him for over 8 hours.

[Kalidurga]

81. Getting ready for work...

I turned on the news for some weird reason. I continued to get ready. I saw coverage of the first plane hitting, I don't think that was live. I thought it was a small plane and was concerned about the "accident". Then someone reporting at the Pentagon heard a blast, didn't know it was another plane, but my radar was spinning now. Then the second plane hit and it was confirmed that this was an attack. I finished getting ready for work. I got on a bus and the driver said it was probably Osama. I had never heard of him before. I got to where I work and they were evacuating. This was the Mall of America. I ran to where I worked, I was hoping everyone was ok, but I heard evacuation and feared the worst. I got to where I work everyone was fine and I was told to go home. I rode the bus for a couple of hours and went into a few mall places where tvs were going and it seemed everyone knew what happened already. The scene outside the bus was surreal, people seemed to be walking slower, driving slower, and in a general somber mood. Fittingly the day was over cast at least this is how I remember it. I finally got home since I took the scenic route it was several hours after being sent home. I waited nervously for my kids to come home. I was pretty sure that the attacks wouldn't extend to random schools in Minnesota, but I was worried about how they were told at school. I still to this day don't know, my daughters really wouldn't talk about it. But, they did want me to quit my job. I told them I wasn't going to do that. I wasn't giving in to the fear something might happen. I worked there for almost 9 more years. No major incidents that I know of, not terror related anyway. Once a guy ran around the mall nude, I think that was a major story for a couple of days.

[Johnny Noshoes]

82. At work in midtown Manhattan.

We had a view - from a corner office - of the towers. One of the guys was just looking out of the windows before he settled in to work and he saw the first plane hit. I worked for a media monitoring company and we had a bank of TV monitors and vcrs on a whole wall. We couldn't believe it was an attack at first it seemed like a freak accident until the second plane hit. We watched the monitors for awhile and then the building was evacuated. When I hit the street I headed uptown for the 59th street bridge to Queens. Its the longer way for me to get home to my area of Queens but I wasn't about to head downtown. I still have the production log for that day - I wrote "terrorist attack" on the log sheet and a receipt for two bottles of water I bought. I ended up eating my lunch while walking along Queens Boulevard and FINALLY seeing fighter planes in the sky hours later. I actually went into work the next day and of course nothing was going on so I went home.

[Nikia]

83. I was at work and a coworker told it to me incorrectly (much worse)

She had received a call from her husband who told it to her. She said that there were terrorists flying planes into "a bunch" of buildings in NYC and "bombs were going off all over Washington, D.C., Congress and the White House were on fire".
That news made me so scared that I had to sit down.
When I learned the actual news, yes it was bad, but not quite as bad. For me personally, I worried about my sister who worked as a flight attendant for one of the airlines with hijacked planes. She was not flying at that time, but was laid off a few months later because of the decrease in air travel in the aftermath. I admit that I had anxiety about the whole terrorist thing and was worried most of the time when we visited Chicago a couple months later.

[regnaD kciN]

84. My wife and I were heading to work...

I was driving to my office, and was going to drop her off at the park & ride to catch the bus to Seattle. This was around 8 or 9 A.M. on the west coast -- i.e. after everything was already over, but we didn't know it yet.

The first inkling that something was off should have come when we passed the Maplewood Golf Course, and noticed that the parking lot was full of utility trucks and vans. At the time, I thought that there must be some sort of breakfast meeting of a local electrician's association or something; it was only afterward that it became clear that this was a rendezvous point in case of a crisis.

Shortly thereafter, we got onto I-405. Since it seemed even more backed-up than usual, I flipped on the radio for a traffic report. The first thing we heard was a reporter talking about how, after the 1994 bombing, people assumed there would be another incident there. I figured someone must have set off another bomb at the WTC, but then the announcer went on to report that, even though there were no reports of threats against Seattle, the Space Needle and Columbia Tower (then the tallest building west of the Mississippi) were closed as a precaution. What??? They then went on to recap the events of the morning, telling us that terrorists crashed planes into each WTC building and "the towers are gone." After a few moments of shock, I told my wife that she was not going to work that day (she worked at the downtown Federal Building, which would be a primary potential target). She agreed, and we proceeded on to my software company, where practically nothing was being done, and we were told we could leave if we wanted. We stayed around for awhile while she called her office (which was also being shut down) and then tried to get in touch with family members. We were especially concerned about my father-in-law, who worked in D.C. "near the Pentagon." Needless to say, it took hours to hear from him; when we finally got through, we were relieved to learn that "near the Pentagon," in this case, meant on the opposite side of the Potomac.

Sometime during that day, someone at work received a couple of e-mailed pictures from a friend of his in NYC, both of views from his apartment. The first, taken sometime before, had the WTC towers in the near background; the second, taken from the same angle, just had a cloud of brown smoke where the towers used to be. My co-worker printed up the photos and taped them to the glass in the breakroom, where they remained for some time.

The thing that's hard to remember, now that the notion of "3,000 dead" has become seared into our national consciousness, is that we initially thought it was much worse. We assumed the buildings had been at their maximum capacity of workers, and that only a portion of them had been able to get out in time. We were figuring that the death toll would be more like ten times what it actually wound up being, or even more.

At our church, one of the people we knew was a pilot for United. Fortunately, as we found out, he was on vacation that week, but, on his last day at work -- two days before -- he had piloted the aircraft that wound up going down in Shanksville. (He had also, at other times in his career, flown the plane that hit the South Tower.)

At the time, I figured we needed to set politics aside and support President Bush (hoping and praying that he was up to the task). It was only months afterward, when he introduced the "axis of evil" -- that didn't seem to include anyone responsible for the attack -- as the main target of our foreign policy, that I realized that we were being played big-time. After Iraq, I could only look back at the "United We Stand" rhetoric of the days after the attack with bitter irony, realizing how this country got sucked into throwing away so much of what made it special, from our civil liberties to our moral standing in the world, all to the benefit of the neocon fantasists who populated the Bush maladministration, and the Big Oil fatcats that funded and reaped the rewards from it.

[NYC Liberal]

85. I was in class (8th grade) in Manhattan. My most vivid memory is as we were walking to pick up

my sister, we ran into this man who said he worked on the 105th floor of one of the towers, and he had overslept that morning. I'll never forget that.

[LiberalCatholic]

86. I was home with my two boys.

I had just turned off the tv in my bedroom right before they broke in. First my husband called to tell me (then hung up). Then my father called- and hung up. When my sister called we stayed on the phone and talked. We were talking when the towers fell. I remember crying to her that so many people died and she kept trying to reassure me that they had all gotten out. It was sweet the way she was trying to protect me. My boys were in the living room having a blast because they got to watch more TV then usual. PBS played their normal lineup without a single change. My boys had no idea. I was so grateful. To this day when I hear that Congress wants to take PBS's funding away I think of that day...

[mrmpa]

87. I was in my science class................

I had just returned to school at the age of 44. There were about 8 of us in class. The secretary of the department walked in and told the professor. The secretary came back and told us about the 2nd plane, also that the President of the University was cancelling classes and televisions would be available in the Music building.

Our school had about 800 undergrads and about 400 graduate students. We had for our size, a large contingent of about 12 women students from Palestine. I remember almost every student sitting on the floor or on an available chair in the music building and watching TV.

I remember sitting on the steps of the library, listening to a student talking to her parents. The student said, I will not fly home for Thanksgiving.

I remember how quiet the sky was.

[Blue_In_AK]

88. Sound asleep.

It was 5 a.m. in Anchorage. My ex's niece called to tell us.

[LadyHawkAZ]

89. I slept through the whole thing

I was on swing shift at the time and hadn't got home till 3am.

[madokie]

90. When this happened we were in the middle

of placing and finishing a big ass concrete driveway for a big ass house we placed and finished the concrete floor a couple months earlier.

[CraftyGal]

91. I was just starting a new job...

I lived in Morinville, AB and had just started a new job in a daycare along with my housemate. We had just gotten all the kids, her 4 and my 1 into the car. We turned on Easy Rock and the DJ's were saying this is surreal something about a plane crashing into the towers. I remember looking at her shrugging my shoulders as we hadn't heard the whole thing. Then instead of music the DJ's screamed "Holy Shit! They hit the second tower! Oh my God, the second tower has been hit!"

I looked back at the the kids and they all had shocked looks on their faces, my son was quietly crying. He asked me if his Aunty Cathy was ok. I had no idea I just knew she was in NY. We got to work, and quickly informed the other ECE workers as to what we heard on the radio. I had my boom box, which I used to play children's cd music to calm my group of kids (3 yrs old), which got turned to CBC (Canadian Broadcast Corporation).

We were absolutely stunned all day. We were getting news on families as the majority of families were military families. I ws fainally able to find out about my sister and she is ok. My plans for the day went to the wayside.

Its funny the weather here in Edmonton is almost the same as it was 11 yrs ago.

CraftyGal

[catchnrelease]

92. On a road trip

Going from home in Long Beach Ca to visit friends in Rankin Texas. The night before, just an hour or so before arriving at our friends house, I realized that I had missed a call from my daughter but my cell phone couldn't get a signal where we were at the time, so I couldn't call her back. I had a thought of my old (30yrs) horse just then, but figured it was just daughter wanting to chat. When we arrived at our friends' and I called home, sure enough my horse had died suddenly that day. I'd had him since he was a year old, so I was pretty upset that night.

The next morning, feeling pretty low, I stayed in bed longer than everyone else. Then my husband came in and said I had to come watch what was going on, that a commuter plane had hit one of the towers. Like so many others, we watched as the second plane--obviously not a commuter plane, hit the second tower. I remember asking at the time, what about the tops of the buildings, wouldn't they collapse? My husband and our friend both said that, no the buildings could withstand the collision. Needless to say, when both buildings fell completely we were all stunned. I just kept thinking-- "All those people......" That whole damn day was cursed.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

93. Uhh... in an intimate moment...

My then girlfriends cell phone kept ringing and ringing and ringing. It was around 6:00-6:30 in California. She ignored it at least three or four times before getting out of bed and saying something to the effect that her estranged mother had better be fucking dead.

It was her brother who lived in New York, announcing he was okay and was in Westchester County and going straight to a relatives house in Connecticut and not back to his apartment and to please call their dad at a more reasonable hour to tell him he was okay and at so-and-so's house. I was just staring at the ceiling waiting for her to come back to bed when she turned on the TV to a loop of W just staring off into space.

I understandably wasn't terribly lucid, but as it sunk in my only thought was that we were going to be led thought this crisis by the village drunk and his merry band of idiots.

[treestar]

94. I was in my office on my own and no one was calling

I got a lot of work done that day. I didn't notice that no one was calling or was just taking advantage of that. I was on dial up so I was not online and had no TV or radio on. So I got home to find out about it, around 7 p.m. and may have been one of the last people ever to learn about it.

[sgsmith]

95. Driving into Washington DC

I had finished a DR drill in Gaithersburg and was driving in to see a client in the north east part of DC. Listening to a rock station on the FM when news interrupted and they started to carry the NY news station. Drove to the client listening to the news reports and caught a glance at the smoke from the Pentagon from a distance.

Needless to say, my flight out of National airport was canceled.

Called the DR folks expecting them to tell me to drive to NY, but they asked me to stay put. Got my hotel room back, attended a bunch of conference calls as recoveries were being put into place. Performed an actual DR for a customer who was located in lower Manhattan, and had to be escorted by police to pick up their backup tapes.

[zen_bohemian]

97. My kids and I saw the 2nd plane hit on TV

while watching the Today show. I was channel surfing a few minutes before, and saw where MSNBC went live right away, the other channels had went live a couple of minutes later. When the 2nd plane hit we just sat in shock at what we had just seen. It took a minute for it to sink in that we were being attacked, at first glance it sort of looked like a fighter hitting the building, maybe a couple got off course....or something was going terribly wrong at the tower at JFK or LaGuardia.

What was eerie also for me was in the days afterward, when all the planes were grounded. I stood outside and it was a weird silence, I think we hear more noise from the planes way overhead than we think we do. It was a strange kind of silence, I could hear the cars and other noise, it was a strange time.

[badtoworse]

98. I was there

I had just walked out of the WTC and was across the street getting a coffee when the first plane hit.

[MichiganVote]

102. Well that will make you take stock of your life.

[Zorra]

99. I was living on a fairly remote beach in Mexico at the time, no internet or TV.

A friend came over, all flipped out, he said, "Get over to the bar right now! the shit hit the fan in the US!" (the bar had American satelliteTV). When i heard what happened, the first thing that came to my mind was, "Fuckin' Bush. He either did it or he knew." So I went to find my closest friend down there, another radical liberal Bush hater ex-pat from DC whose father was career CIA.

She was looking for me too, and she was coming towards me while I was coming towards her, we were both furious, we yelled to each other simultaneously "Bush did it"! and took turns cursing Bush, calling him every vile thing known to humankind.

I did not see the actual footage of the WTC attack until 2005. I just didn't want to see it.

[AsahinaKimi]

100. I was in Santa Barbara

It was a Tuesday morning, and I had the day off. Had slept in late, and one of my room mates came in with her radio, saying something dreadful happened in NYC. A plane had hit one of the towers. I got up with her and went to her room, and we flipped on TV when they reported a second plane hitting the other tower. I stayed glued to the TV all day... It was a horrible day.

Thankfully, it was before my parents moved their practice to New York. They were still in San Francisco at the time, still trying to find a Real estate person to sell our house.

[dixiegrrrrl]

103. My first day of a week's vacation, wouldn't you know it.

I was in SF, off work, waiting for some out of state friends to come from Oakland via BART to meet up..had not seen them for 5 years.
THEY grabbed a rental car and drove all the way back to Alabama.
I watched endless re-runs of the towers falling and wondered if the rumors of attacks on the Trans Pacific tower in SF
or the Golden Gate bridge were going to be real.The city came to a standstill..except for the endless roar of traffic, of course/
But the overhead roaring of the jets ceased, for several marvelous days.

The next day, I made plans to move out of the Bay area.

[Bettie]

104. We were in Florida

Husband was conducting a training session in Orlando. The group he was training were from New York and New Jersey.

I was there with him and our six month old son. He was in love with Diane Sawyer's big giant head on the TV, so we were watching Good Morning America in our room. I really thought it was an accident at first, a big, ugly accident. Then the second plane hit.

I went down at break time to make sure Tim made an announcement before the guys went out and saw it on TV. Later on, several of them expressed how grateful they were to have had some advance warning of what was up.

Let me say, it was hard getting on a plane that Friday to head back to Chicago. We were on one of the first batch of flights to leave that week.

[smirkymonkey]

106. West Village, Manhattan.

I remember the sense of shock an walking home to the Upper East where I had lived at the time. Everyone was completely shell shocked. Everyone looked each other in the other in the eyes. It was the most intense experience I have ever had in my life.

We did not know if it was going to be a one shot deal or if it was one attack or a series of many. I ended up walking the 60 blocks to work every day and back because I was so terrified of the subway. We just did'nt know if it was going to end or not. It was a horrible day.

[Marymarg]

107. At home

I was glued to the TV. I listened to the late Peter Jennings report Bush's hopscotching from one safe place to another. Jennings was having to speak through gritted teeth in disgust. I wrote down copious notes to record the awful event, knowing that I would forget details and I am awfully glad I did.

[derby378]

108. Settling down in my office at the medical center, getting ready for another workday

One of the doctors poked his head in to tell me that someone had flown planes into the World Trade Center. I can't say for certain if he used the word "terrorists" when talking to me.

We were crowded around the TV in the doctors' lounge. One doctor was trying frantically to call her relatives in New York to make sure they were okay. Then we saw one of the towers implode and collapse, live and on the air, while this poor woman started shrieking during the broadcast. Our hearts sank. Ginny couldn't work anymore that day, so my boss gave me permission to pick her up and take the rest of the day off.

[elleng]

109. Driving toward office in downtown DC, w husband who was going to his office at SEC.

Our usual classical music station on radio, interrupted w 'news' of first plane, then second. I say, 'So much for missile shield.'

Went to work in NW DC, windows in direction of nearby Capitol; WH, and Pentagon in distance. After a while 'boss' said 'everyone go home,' but took a while to coordinate w husband + 2 daughters' schools etc. Fortunately friends helped kids get home, so we were together within a few hours.

Nothing the same since, of course.

[Nay]

110. At work in a hi-rise bldg in Richmond, VA, 90 miles from DC. At first, everyone thought it was a

lousy small-plane pilot. Then the second plane hit and my boss, a retired Secret Service agent, turned to me and said, "It's a goddamn terrorist attack." When the plane hit the Pentagon, most of the buildings in Richmond dumped out and everyone went home. Anyone could see that Richmond was too close to DC for comfort, and there were still some planes unaccounted for.

I went home and was glued to the TV. Over the next few days, about a dozen people in my building quit their jobs because they were too afraid to work on the higher floors.

[DFW]

113. Ironically, I was exctly in the same place yesterday I was in 11 years ago

In the same office in Brussels, Belgium where I was when I heard the news. A friend in London called me and told me. He called me back when the second one tower was hit. I went back to Germany that night, I went by train. The people on the train were talking about nothing else. Even this year, there were hour long documentaries. One of the ones on German TV had no comments at all, just video clips from New York, most of them from private people.

[Egalitarian Thug]

114. Sleeping in at my GF's house. She walked in the room and, while up hanging up her lingerie said,

"I think we're at war or something. It's on the TV".

[Left Coast2020]

115. I was in Texas working for some Bush Boot Lickers.

Why is this cabal not sitting in a prison in the Hague now?

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/291-144/13411-focus-more-evidence-that-bush-a-co-ignored-911-warnings

[Sparkly]

116. Getting ready to go to DC, to teach classes.

It was a sign of my employer's stupidity that it took many hours before they decided the district was, indeed, a massive jam of chaos and maybe it was some kind of emergency.

[Beacool]

117. I was in the North Tower.

I live in NJ and would take the PATH train to work. I was in the next to last train to arrive at the WTC that morning. The airplane had already struck the tower. People were jumping out of windows.

Terrible day.

[Douglas Carpenter]

118. Al kobar, Saudi Arabia

[cash__whatiwant]

120. 8th grade social studies nt

[Lugnut]

121. DH and I got back from our DE beach vacation on Sept. 10th.

My sister and niece were still there and planning to stay for the week. I made my coffee and had the morning newspaper on the kitchen table. When I turned the TV on to catch up on the news this horrible scene of a burning tower was on the screen. As I watched the unfolding events the second plane hit the other tower. As I kept watching I eventually saw both towers collapse. I will never forget that day.