Where Were You?

[Elianna]

I was driving to work when I heard the first plane had crashed. At first, I thought it was a tiny private plane (because I assumed they crash more frequently). When I got to work, we saw it was a jet. I was a high school teacher at the time and we all had TV sets in the classrooms. We were glued, teachers, staff and students.

Then I think it finally hit the kids what was happening. We spent the day having teacher-led discussions, trying to help kids process what we could not fathom. Many families came to pick their students up. Some kids were hysterical, they had family or relatives who worked in the trade center, and wanted to call RIGHT NOW. Of course all the lines were busy.

I can remember how the kids were, how we were and just "oh my God" running through my head over and over again. It was one of those moments where I felt I was really lying... because I didn't feel any better or calmer than my students, but I had to APPEAR that I was okay.

Even thinking of it now my heart still sinks. It was a very hard day (and if you didn't notice I'm a very emotional person).

 

[Angeline]

I was sitting at work browsing some gaming forums while listening to Howard Stern on the radio (the only rock station in NYC at the time was his home station). I was surprised to hear of the first crash, and disgusted to find that the second crash was real and not a prank by someone calling his show up. I listened in horror as reports came in about everything else that day. I didn't actually see the video of it until I got home after 5:30 that evening.

And I still wonder if that flight over Pennsylvania was shot down by air force jets.

__

However, the next day on my birthday, I was pleased with how quiet it was with less people going to work, and no planes in the sky. It was quite serene. I felt guilty about enjoying that, but it was the only thing I had at the time.

Krock, right? I remember, too.

I was on the way to work in Princeton, NJ listening to Good Morning America on my car radio. When the report first came on they weren't sure if it was a small Cessna plane or a bomb. I didn't go right to my office because there was an awards ceremony I had to attend at 9. I told my coworkers that there had apparently been a terrorist attack on the WTC; no one believed me. Then our company president came in and announced the news to everyone gathered there and disbanded the ceremony. A group of us sat in my bosses' office listening to the news on a small tv we kept there. I kept trying to call my childrens' school in Bucks County, PA and couldn't get through. After the first tower came down, I was so scared for my kids' safety that I left the office and drove (doing over 90 mph most of the way) the 40 miles back to their school. I lost three friends who worked in the WTC and one of the plane pilots was the father of one of my daughter's classmates. For a year after this, every time she heard a plane, my daughter got scared and thought it was going to crash into our house.

 

[Tarakin]

I was at work that day (a different one from now), and a colleague informed me. I checked the internet and saw what had happened on a german newsside. I tried to check US newssides but it was impossible, they were all unreachable over the Atlantic. I already knew some Americans those days and went into the chatroom for our common game (L5R), which was still reachable. The guys on there were asking for informations, unable to watch TV and unable to get anything out of the internet they were dependent on my news. So I told them what was getting into the German news. There were lots of rumors disguised as news, like a supposed car bomb attack at the White House. I'll never forget the cheers when finally the US Air Force showed up at the Pennsylvanian side.

I finished work early that day, like almost everybody else. The mood was gloomy, everyone was discussing things, but almost whispering. Nobody knew what had happened, or who was behind the attack, but everyone in Germany I talked to or who was interviewed on TV was firm in supporting America.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

I remember, I was nursing a 3 mo-old in bed and flipped on the TV just in time to see the second hit. Hubbie came home almost immediately, and picked up the older kids from school, too. I just wanted everyone home and safe.

 

[freshface]

I was in San Antonio. We were planning a disaster exercise for September 14 that would involve all twenty-eight hospitals in the county. An Air Force planning staff had volunteered to be observers, so we were at Write Patterson AFB to train them. Pagers started going off about fifteen minutes into the briefing. An officer would periodically go out, come back without saying a word, and settle back into the briefing. Someone mentioned that a plane had hit the WTC, but I thought it must be a tourist plane that got too close to an antenna. They let us continue the meeting until after the plane hit the Pentagon before they told us what was happening. Security at Write-Pat was really high when we left.

We spent the rest of the day figuring out how the hospital system would respond. Two of the three Level 1 Trauma Centers in San Antonio belong to the military and were closed for patients. The Air Force hospital closed its ICU because the ICU staff was headed for DC, so the other hospitals had to figure out who would take which patients from the ICU and how they would handle ER and obstetrics patients. I didn't really have time to look at television or process larger events until the next day.

 

[Just-Legal]

I was at college, Sociology class. We'd just started when Kate bolted in, screaming and crying hysterically. Took ten of us a good while to calm her down enough to find out what had happened, and then we realised why she was panicking - her brother was in NYC and she had no way to get hold of him.

A good friend of mine was supposed to be in the WTC that day. I spent forever trying to get hold of his relatives, panicking we'd lost him. There was a couple of us in the IT block (the Sociology teacher was taking Kate home) glued to the computers, trying to find out what in god's name was going on. Sky's website crashed out, then BBC news went down, at least to us. Then my friend's mother called us - he and several of his colleagues had been on a rather long "buisness dinner" the night before. None of them had been in the WTC due to, of all things, hangovers.

 

[CharleyH]

On this day 7 years ago, the USA stood still...as did most of the world.

We all stopped. No matter what. And watched in horror.

What were you doing?



As for me....


Two days prior I had taken my best friends mother to the Bea Rivage Casino in Biloxi MS for her Birthday. Her daughter, my best friend had past away several months before. Since I was this womans "other" daughter, I wanted to do something nice for her.

We returned back to my home on 9-10.

I got up and was cooking breakfast...I wanted to surprise her.

I turned on the TV.....as the news reports started coming in.


After several minutes I knocked the guests room door and said..."I think you need to come in here.."

and for the next 2 days we were glued to the TV.





I guess the only positive thing that comes to mind....thankfully it didn't happen two hours later.

We are all well aware of where we were on the morning of 9/11. But where were you the day the US attacked Iraq? Probably not thinking of the 7299 civilians murdered by the invasion alone.

 

[jomar]

We are all well aware of where we were on the morning of 9/11. But where were you the day the US attacked Iraq? Probably not thinking of the 7299 civilians murdered by the invasion alone.

Painting my daughter's bedroom, listening to the radio reporting on the unopposed convoys and the Iraqi denials of Foreign military presence even after forces had staged in Baghdad. Shock and awe.

 

[Remec]

I had come home from work that night, had gotten all the school kids finished readying up and saw them out the door to their buses, then had squired the other kids (we ran a full-blown daycare back then) into playing with toys or watching PBS. In the middle of Sesame Street, a friend called and said we should turn on the news, so we flipped on GMA--no, it was Today, 'cause I remember Couric being one of the commentators.

They were discussing the apparent crash of a plane into the WTC and what might have happened when the second plane came into view and, seemingly obviously from their camera angle, flew into the building. Since we had a number of military familes both as clients as well as part of our staff, we were glued for the rest of the morning and on edge throughout the day to see what responses might have to be made and whether any of the kids would have to stay on with us for a little longer than usual.

The whole thing had a sort of otherworldly feel to it.

 

[CharleyH]

Painting my daughter's bedroom, listening to the radio reporting on the unopposed convoys and the Iraqi denials of Foreign military presence even after forces had staged in Baghdad. Shock and awe.

Yikes!

 

[jomar]

Yikes!

*I remember*

 

[Angeline]

We are all well aware of where we were on the morning of 9/11. But where were you the day the US attacked Iraq? Probably not thinking of the 7299 civilians murdered by the invasion alone.

Yknow Charley that being shocked and horrified about what happened in the USA on 9/11 does not preclude feeling shocked and horrified about the invasion of Iraq or any other invasion anywhere by any country for that matter. I may not have the personal ties to Iraq that I had to NYC, but trust me when I tell you I feel as shitty about loss there as I do where I am now. I understand your point and it's well-taken, but not everyone who lives in America is also blindly nationalistic. Not every American accepts the interpretation of that horrible tragedy as a justification for partisan political opportunism. Just sayin.

 

[shereads]

Overslept that day. Slept through my alarm. Had the answering machine on "call screening" function and listened to two messages about what was happening before it sunk in and I woke up. The first was from my art director at the office, saying a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Sounded like just a really nasty accident. The second call was from my mom, who was crying about what she was seeing on TV, which made my pulse speed up - and made me desperately wish I could fall back to sleep and steal a few more minutes before I allowed whatever was happening out there come inside.

A couple minutes, max, after I turned on the television, the first tower collapsed. I remember watching firemen entering the second tower after the first one had come down, and knowing they were going to die in there, and knowing they knew it too and were going in anyway. When the Pentagon attack was reported, it wasn't just civilian targets, I thought the Cold War had reawakend. Maybe some Russian faction had staged a coup and a surprise attack, all at once. Maybe every city on the East Coast was a target.

Then there were no more planes, no more explosions. Just ashes, and silence.

The absence of ambient noise is always something I've cherished - the sound of nothing artificial happening, no distant hum of air traffic. I've traveled to isolated places as often as I could, in part to be in places that are quiet enough to hear the rush of air beneath a bird's wings. But that day and the days after, with air travel canceled, the silence was awful, the sound of death and shock and fear and impending doom.

 

[shereads]

Yknow Charley that being shocked and horrified about what happened in the USA on 9/11 does not preclude feeling shocked and horrified about the invasion of Iraq or any other invasion anywhere by any country for that matter. I may not have the personal ties to Iraq that I had to NYC, but trust me when I tell you I feel as shitty about loss there as I do where I am now.

Same here.

To acknowledge one horror is not to dismiss another.

And yes, Charley darling, I know exactly where I was during Shock and Awe. I was working in my home office when I heard the news of the invasion from the TV in the other room. I felt sickened and horrified and deeply ashamed, and said as much in this forum. I won't apologize for what I felt and feel about the people trapped in those buildings on 9/11 and the ones on the planes that were used as flying bombs. The nightmare of how they died still resonates. As does the heroism of the men and women who stormed the cockpit of their plane and caused it to crash so it couldn't be used to kill anyone else. And the firemen who went into a burning tower, knowing it would almost certainly collapse like its twin. I can feel for those people and honor their memory without diminishing my anger and grief over the Iraq invasion.

 

[shereads]

The whole thing had a sort of otherworldly feel to it.

Yes, it was too huge and too much like a movie-script to seem entirely real. I didn't shed a tear until individual stories began to be revealed: the one that stands out in my memory is an interview with an emergency phone operator who took a call from one of the passengers on the third plane. They both knew he was going to die, and she promised to stay on the line and be with him at the end, if he would promise not to hang up.

That made it real.

 

[Angeline]

Yes, it was too huge and too much like a movie-script to seem entirely real. I didn't shed a tear until individual stories began to be revealed: the one that stands out in my memory is an interview with an emergency phone operator who took a call from one of the passengers on the third plane. They both knew he was going to die, and she promised to stay on the line and be with him at the end, if he would promise not to hang up.

That made it real.

I had a colleague at work who had very different political views from mine. I'm sure she didn't like mine anymore than I did hers, but we worked together and we obeyed the rules of good officeship: we didn't discuss politics or religion. I worked with this woman for many years and she had two sons. Her boys used to come visit her at work and of course we all fussed over them when they were little. I always used to chat with them and share goodies I had in my office with them. Her youngest son had just graduated from college the summer of 2001. His first job was with a company located in the WTC. He didn't make it out. I cried hard when I found out about him and he's the one I always think of first on this sad anniversary.

 

[JagFarlane]

We are all well aware of where we were on the morning of 9/11. But where were you the day the US attacked Iraq? Probably not thinking of the 7299 civilians murdered by the invasion alone.

Morning of 9/11: At home, just getting up and getting some coffee. Was a part-time computer engineering student at Ocean County College in NJ. Flicked on the tv to glance for the weather and watched as the video played of a plane crashing into the towers. Stood in shock for a few minutes, then began to wonder where the hell my dad was, cause all I could remember was that he had to go to one of the towers sometime that week. Fortunatly, later on found out he was due in on the 12th.
Received phone call from my SAR president informing us to be ready to go at a moments notice, if we were needed. As well as informing us of the equipment to bring [most importantly, our climbing gear]

US attacking Iraq: At home. Had DEP'ed into the US Navy a couple of months prior and awaiting to go to bootcamp. Watched it occur on the tv as I talked to my friend Erin, both of us shaking our heads at it and me stating it was going to be a long war.

 

[Lady_Guenivere]

I had just sent the kids to school and was getting ready to take my 2 year old to a Mommy and Me class. My friend called me and told me to turn on the tv..I watched for a few minutes and no one new what happened really. The second plane hit and then it was clear that it was an act of terrorism. I watched as the buildings crumbled and felt a sickness in my gut that did not leave for weeks after...I still get that same sinking feeling whenever I think about it.