There are certain days that linger in our memory, days that are so stunning and unexpected that time freezes and—even 20 years later—we remember the events and feelings almost as if it just happened. September 11, 2001, is one of those days for most of us, I think, just like the assassination of John F. Kennedy for those old enough to remember.
Where were you on 9/11, that fateful day in America’s history? And how do you remember feeling then? Did you wonder how the country might change?
I shared my thoughts yesterday about these questions, but I would love to hear from you—and for us to take this chance to hear from each other. I have another question I’d like to ask, but I will hold off until tomorrow for a special Sunday discussion thread.
I was waking up and heard the radio, so I turned on the TV. When I saw the second plane fly into the World Trade Center, I turned to my wife and said, "Looks like war with Afghanistan." Sadly, Dubya got distracted from it and decided it would be good to go after that old meany his dad didn't like: Saddam Hussein. Dubya didn't accept the surrender in December, 2001 and just lost focus. SCOTUS installing him was a huge mistake.
We're on PDT so I was home, getting ready for work. The television was tuned to the Today Show and we saw the reports of the first hit and then in real-time, the second hit. A clip from that show is available now on YouTube including an interview with an author, a couple of commercials, people standing outside hoping to be on camera. Just another day in NYC. And then the unbelievable happened.
It's hard not to make a comparison to what it would be like today with everyone having a camera in their phone.
I took a small TV to our business and we spent the day watching the news unfold. No work got done, the phones did not ring. In Las Vegas, everything like that has a ripple effect on our economy. No travel, tourism, large gatherings, etc. We eventually lost our business because of it.
I was in my new home in Florida, retired. My son was in Special Forces with whereabouts unknown. I was terrified. It a
also was my oldest grand son's 19th birthday. I immediately called him to see how he was, given the events. He said he was leaving college and enlisting. He did, served several times in Afghanistan. He also married and had a daughter. Shes 17 now and has a boyfriend who was training in the military to be deployed to Afghanistan. So after20 years, the war, resulting from the attack today, is finally over for my family. Thank God!
I was at work opening the office when my husband called. Put the tv on. I sat as I watched the second plane hit the other tower. I called my boss. Told him to come to the office immediately. My husband and I were supposed to go to New York the following day. We were going to stay at a friend's apartment less than two blocks from the WTC. Missed my first broadway show; missed a wedding etc. You know what I miss now...unity among the people in this country. The coming together the first few days, weeks and months brought a feeling not had since the days of World War II. Those days are gone. That mindset is gone. I don't know if we will every get it back. I saw the WTC being built. I worked around the corner. When I saw the empty space for the first time, I could only think of all the workers who built these magnificent towers. When I returned again, I went high up into the sky in the new tower and at the reflecting pool thought of all (and I mean all) of the lost souls on that fateful day.
My wife and I were in the Federal Building in Boston. We had arrived early to be first in line at 8am to register the new business we were going to operate as an offshoot of our industrial software consulting business in France that we were shutting down due to the changes in business practices tied to the nascent Internet (we had arrived separately during the first two weeks of August). We had submitted our documents and had just stepped in the elevator when someone walking by us as the doors closed said a plane had hit the World Trade Center, and when we reached the shopping center at the Lechmere MTBA stop where we were going to have coffee, we found a few dozen people frozen in front of a store with a TV showing the news just as the second plane impacted the South Tower. We were able to take the train to our new apartment before seeing any more news, but our greater concern was the status of our two young sons who were just beginning their studies at the Bilingual (now International) School of Boston in Cambridge. We called at about 10am and were told to recuperate our children as soon as possible, which we did. We then followed the horrific news in real-time, though that was quite upsetting and difficult, and spoke with a few familly and friends on the phone.
In response to your last two questions, I will try to be brief with the three remarks that were provoked by these phone calls and our situation:
1) I spoke with my father, a WW2 veteran, who compared this with hearing the radio of FDR's speech and the newsreels of Pearl Harbor... but he was less certain about what 9/11 would foretell with this direct question: "Why would someone do this? To what end?"
2) I spoke with a friend in CA who was a professor of Political Science at a large university and who was specialized in the role of politics in warfare (and vice versa). He told me, quite simply, that this changed everything because the Muslim world would become the "common enemy" that the US had lacked since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the apparent end of the Cold War. This was before the perpatrators had been clearly identified to the public beyond the emerging images of Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden. And for what it's worth, he immediately predicted that any attempt to "fix" Afghanistan beyond retaliatory strikes would fail, but he did not anticipate the incomplete efforts that would soon supplanted by the mission to unseat Saddam Hussein while "fixing" Iraq. I'm not sure I agree that it was inevitable that we "lose" in Afghanistan, but the approach would certainly have had to have been different and more focused and fully cognizant of the errors made in Vietnam.
3) As for myself, having worked in government for a short time and on international engineering projects for the previous 20 years, it seemed obvious that everything would be disrupted for a while. As for the war in Afghanistan, the assassination of Massoud on September 9 reverberated every time I read or heard that the principal leaders of Al-Qaeda had managed to escape.
All that said, the surreal nature of the collapse of the Twin Towers and the stories of heroism on Flight 93 and at the Pentagon were hard to fathom. The longterm implications for our country and the world seemed to unfold far more slowly with those tragic images and accounts and their immediate aftermaths in the foreground.
As best I can recall I was awakened early by Julia, who was always an early riser to come into the living room to see what was happening on the East Coast of the country. Later in the day after hours of news coverage. I put out our American Flag to hang from on of our widow facing the street. I wanted to do something American, so I ate hotdogs. It seems silly looking back at it now. We are a country steeped in too much arrogance, injustice, stupidity and denial. I can not adequately articulate how I feel, looking back these 20yrs. with all that has happened and all that we have absorbed that is connected to 9/11/2001.
The muted noises from an otherwise energized Madison, Wisconsin is what I recall. Memory picks up not only the mundane things I did on 9/11, but the quiet to be found in places around this city that usually are bustling with noise.
On the way Downtown, I stopped for coffee at Borders. In the parking lot, an employee who I always chatted with over the years had arrived for work. We looked at each other, just shook our heads, and walked in silence through the store door.
On Capitol Square, I recall how quiet it was. People were out and yet the loudness of the city was calmed by the horror that had struck the nation. No one was yelling or screaming across the street. It was a serene sadness. Signs were going up at banks and stores; each of the signs had been individually created. Each shared the same purpose: alert customers that the place of business was closing at a certain early hour considering the terror in New York. No two signs were alike.
The Capital Times had printed its afternoon edition, and it had landed in the news boxes, one of which was located outside a restaurant on Mills Street. On the front page, a searing image of one of the towers on fire dominated any print about the story. Inside the restaurant, the mood was somber. All were watching CNN and eating slowly. Big windows faced the street where young college kids, usually energized, were instead huddled around one who had bought a copy, all reading in disbelief.
I was working as a physical therapist on a rehab unit and I knew about that the attack had started before I had to cover care on a different floor. I was watching the TV in one patient’s room and saw the towers on fire and I knew it was terrorism and I was so angry. Then, I had to move onto where there were no more TVs on. I came back to my unit after 10:30 and asked my colleague for an update. He said, “The towers are down.” I was confused, so I asked what that meant. He said they had completely collapsed. I then understood how many people had likely lost there lives and the rest of the day was very solemn. Very heavy.
I was at work. On a conference call with a team in Germany. A co-worker walked by and whispered that a plane hit the World Trade Center. That seemed odd but the call continued. What seemed only minutes later, that same co-worker rushed by saying another plane hit the second tower. All I remember is saying,"excuse me, but I think my country is under attack,"hanging up the phone and rushing downstairs to the only TV we had in the building. I remember being afraid. I remember wondering how many planes were out there. I remember the worry that the Sears Tower in Chicago could be hit. Then I recall driving home to pick up the girls from school, thinking about how I would tell them about the events of the day.
I got a call from a friend living in D.C. She saw the Pentagon get attacked. Turned on the TV. It was unreal and overwhelming. Understandably she has never been the same
I was living in the Dallas TX metro then--as a matter of fact, we were selling our house to move to Houston where my husband had already begun a new job. I was up with the 3 boys (5, 3, 1 yrs), sending the oldest off to kindergarten. We'd watched Dora the Explorer on PBS while having breakfast.
It was not until the woman who was buying my house showed up with her inspector that I got any inkling something was wrong. I answered the door and she looked stricken. "Have you heard? A plane hit the World Trade Center!" I thought how awful that was because, in Dallas, the World Trade Center is a building right next to a major freeway...it is near Love Field... so in my mind, a Southwest Airlines jet had crashed into that building 20 or so miles from my house.
Clearly, my reaction was not what my buyer expected. She gave me an odd look and said, "Turn on your TV." We were just in time to see the second plane hit Tower One...then I knew. She and I, along with the Home Inspector, stood motionless, speechless, in front of my television as the towers fell, as the horror unfolded. I spent the morning of 9/11 with two people I did not know, but we were standing close, using each other for support as we saw the beginning of a new era sparked by violence.
I was home, getting ready for work. Turned on the Today show to see the first tower in smoke. As the anchors were speaking the second plane hit. I could barely move the rest of the day. I knew life changed forever for the entire world.
Then, as now, I was working as an attorney for the state of Connecticut. At some point, all non-essential employees were sent home. That is basically everyone but cops, prison guards and health care workers. I turned on ABC news and watched Peter Jennings until he signed off late that evening. I saw him struggle to keep it together on a few occasions, not just the one he admitted to. I remember feeling profoundly depressed, a feeling I had never experienced before or after.
I was sitting at my desk in my office in Washington Hall. Across from me was a West Point cadet, one of my students, we were discussing academics. My office mate, a CPT, came bursting into my office, “a plane just flew into one of the towers!” The cadet looked at me, I looked at him and we both said “Nah, he’s messing with us.” We continued our meeting. Soon, CPT B ran back into the office “the second tower is hit!” The young man and I smiled and meandered out of the office and walked down the length of the hall. Classrooms on both sides were filled with cadets and their teachers, but there was no sound other than the CNN commentary emanating from the huge projectors in each of the classrooms. Wall sized televised images of the burning towers were everywhere you looked. Shock and sadness and anger and fear...all at once. I comforted the Plebe with me and sent him to report to his company...and all of us waited. There were orders and briefs and warnings. The next days were blurred. Security tightened, The Academy is considered a national monument and there was concern we could be targeted. My Information Literacy and Critical Thinking classes continued to meet but the lessons morphed into what 9/11 would mean, for the academy, the nation and themselves. In the coming weeks and years I heard a lot of “I am here to kick Usama’s ass Ma’am” and they meant it. There was a sobering...Army Football paled, OPP’s and academic endeavors took a back seat. These young men and women, training to become Army Officers turned into warriors. Not one deferred, all were chomping to serve. I spent 20 years at WP. Not because of the money or the prestige but because of those wonderful “kids.” My cadets were true patriots, servants so brave and courageous, I was honored to know them. The attack held special meaning for us. I will never forget. I remember the day, I remember that Plebe, and I remember the many cadets who in their time, sat across that same desk...till they graduated, commissioned and went to war. Twelve of those I knew well did not come home. I will never forget those cadets, the young lieutenants and their soldiers who sacrificed so much to defend our country and keep us safe. I pray we all remember 9/11 forever. Thank you for this forum. I needed to say these things.
I was in the shower when my husband ran up and told me a plane hit the first tower. It took me a minute to proceed the information. how could a plane hit a building like that? Then, I realized it wasn’t an accident. Iran downstairs and we watched in horror as the second plane hit, then the Pentagon, and Flight 93.
I lost my 17 yo son in a car accident 3 weeks before. It was and is a horrible loss, but he would have enlisted the next day. I support the armed forces, and today is indescribably linked to my son’s death.
We live by an international airport. What profoundly struck me in the days following 9/11 was the silence. Not a single plane in the air. Total silence. Silence.
I was freelancing in Canton MA stationed in an opened cubicle with other artists on the other sides of the walls. When the first plane hit somebody said aloud, “a plane just hit the World Trade Center!” My first thought was it must be a small plane that had lost control. Because I was freelancing I hesitated to leave my station but everyone began gathering around one artist’s computer. I had to join them. We all watched in horror and total disbelief. It became obvious when the second plane hit this wasn’t an accident. We were all shell-shocked but I felt responsible to return to my work. Trying to stay focus on my assigned work while others were chattering and surmising required herculean effort. I was stunned, finished the day, raced home and sat in front of the television for what seems like days. What a horror show.
Five days after the attack I was in NYC for a wedding. I made my way down to Wall Street attempting, unsuccessfully, to get a reporter I was on the subway with to take me with him closer to the scene. Everything was cordoned off. I stood beside the NY Stock Exchange building looking over the unspeakable destruction. I scooped up dust from a windowsill which I still have.
Besides the visuals that are seared into my mind from looking at the site I was stunned to see fully armed military personnel walking by us on the other side of the cordoned off line. That stunning scene core-shook me since I had never witnessed anything like that in our country. I knew at that moment things had changed for us citizens.
Today is my granddaughter’s 15th birthday. She was born on the 5th anniversary. I am taking her out to breakfast. Fortunately, I have that happy occasion to mitigate reliving that life-changing tragedy.
I was just about to start teaching my history class here in Toronto, when my colleagues and I heard the news. One was so traumatized by it she had to go home for the day. It was a surreal day for sure, one I will never forget. We are still living under the shadow of it more than 20 years later. The world changed substantively that day.
I was in Connecticut teaching a college class. First time I had been dropped off to work—car repair. When the second plane hit, the entire college and area evacuated…we were close enough to be able to see the smoke from NYC. Had to wait in a parking garage to be picked up. Was terrifying, especially since had no cell phone to get info. Listened to car radio on way home. Another time an even is burned into memory.
I woke to someone on the radio saying a small plane had crashed into one of the twin towers in New York. Having a tv near me, I switched it on. Looking at the video footage I remember thinking that this was not a small plane. Just then, the second plane hit and then I realized this was a terrorist attack. In shock, I prepared to go to work. I was fortunate to be able to walk a trail system to my job, and as I walked along the trail I noticed no one would look at me directly. An eerie silence pervaded as all air traffic ceased. I remember thinking “we’re going to war”. The rest of the day was a blur as the implication of the attack washed over me.
I had to let my first class of the semester at The New School University the day before. I had a Monday/Wednesday schedule. On Tuesday I was home working on a story for a jazz magazine. A friend called me early and told me to turn on my TV, and he told me what had happened. As we were on the phone the second plane hit. I was in shock. People were in long lines at ATM’s and supermarkets. I went up on the roof of my building later and saw the Towers fall. Heartbreaking beyond belief. God bless them all. #NeverForget
I grew up in Brooklyn, NY. There are six FDNY firefighters in my family: my dad and his 3 brothers, and a maternal uncle and cousin. My mother's sister also married a firefighter.
By 2001, my uncles had retired. September 11, 2001 was my first day at an MFA program in Southampton, Long Island. That morning, I woke up excited for my first fiction workshop. I was twenty-nine, and for eight years had been writing a novel. This program would put me on the path to finishing the book, maybe publication.
With an hour before class, I turned on the TV and saw that the Today show was reporting on an accident. A plane had flown into the World Trade. I touched the screen, the flames, leaping from the broken window. Everybody who was right there must be dead, I thought, horrified. Then the second plane hit.
My dad's firehouse was in Queens, Ladder 158, the Swamp Dogs and my cousin was in Brooklyn, Ladder 118, Fire Under the Bridge.
I had no idea if they were working but I wasn’t worried. Neither would be going all the way into the city. The South Tower fell. The North tower fell. I called home. No answer. No answer. No answer. Finally, my mother picked up. She and my father had been at the dentist when the announcement came that all FDNY had to report to duty. Dad drove home, dropped my mother off in the driveway, and took off.
“He went to work,” my mother said as I stared at a screen full of billowing ash. But that’s dangerous, I thought stupidly. He had been a firefighter since I was five yet I'd never once been afraid when he went out the door.
Later, I learned that my cousin had been on his way home to Long Island when he heard the news and immediately went back to Brooklyn. Six men from his firehouse were killed. Had Tommy been working, he would have been one of them.
343 firefighters were killed. For context, in fire-families, you grow up knowing that the most killed in a single day was 12, at the 23rd Street Fire in 1966. The most killed in Brooklyn was 6, Waldbaums in 1978.
My family was spared by circumstance, luck and the era of the attacks.
On the morning before 9/11, my wife and I went to the Pittsburg airport to catch our flight home, in Sarasota, Fl. It was about 7:00 in the morning and the airport was very busy. We noticed there was a group of Muslim women and girls enroute to somewhere. They were chatting seemingly nothing unusual. After a while, we were notified that our plane was cancelled and we were required to take another flight to St Louis, then to Sarasota. The delays that day were long and we did not reach Tampa until late at night, about 10:00 PM. After the taxi ride home we did not get home until just before midnight. The next day, 9/11, we slept in until our daughter called to see if we made it home, then told us to turn on the TV. The rest, as they say, is history.
I was waking up and heard the radio, so I turned on the TV. When I saw the second plane fly into the World Trade Center, I turned to my wife and said, "Looks like war with Afghanistan." Sadly, Dubya got distracted from it and decided it would be good to go after that old meany his dad didn't like: Saddam Hussein. Dubya didn't accept the surrender in December, 2001 and just lost focus. SCOTUS installing him was a huge mistake.
We're on PDT so I was home, getting ready for work. The television was tuned to the Today Show and we saw the reports of the first hit and then in real-time, the second hit. A clip from that show is available now on YouTube including an interview with an author, a couple of commercials, people standing outside hoping to be on camera. Just another day in NYC. And then the unbelievable happened.
It's hard not to make a comparison to what it would be like today with everyone having a camera in their phone.
I took a small TV to our business and we spent the day watching the news unfold. No work got done, the phones did not ring. In Las Vegas, everything like that has a ripple effect on our economy. No travel, tourism, large gatherings, etc. We eventually lost our business because of it.
I was in my new home in Florida, retired. My son was in Special Forces with whereabouts unknown. I was terrified. It a
also was my oldest grand son's 19th birthday. I immediately called him to see how he was, given the events. He said he was leaving college and enlisting. He did, served several times in Afghanistan. He also married and had a daughter. Shes 17 now and has a boyfriend who was training in the military to be deployed to Afghanistan. So after20 years, the war, resulting from the attack today, is finally over for my family. Thank God!
I was at work opening the office when my husband called. Put the tv on. I sat as I watched the second plane hit the other tower. I called my boss. Told him to come to the office immediately. My husband and I were supposed to go to New York the following day. We were going to stay at a friend's apartment less than two blocks from the WTC. Missed my first broadway show; missed a wedding etc. You know what I miss now...unity among the people in this country. The coming together the first few days, weeks and months brought a feeling not had since the days of World War II. Those days are gone. That mindset is gone. I don't know if we will every get it back. I saw the WTC being built. I worked around the corner. When I saw the empty space for the first time, I could only think of all the workers who built these magnificent towers. When I returned again, I went high up into the sky in the new tower and at the reflecting pool thought of all (and I mean all) of the lost souls on that fateful day.
My wife and I were in the Federal Building in Boston. We had arrived early to be first in line at 8am to register the new business we were going to operate as an offshoot of our industrial software consulting business in France that we were shutting down due to the changes in business practices tied to the nascent Internet (we had arrived separately during the first two weeks of August). We had submitted our documents and had just stepped in the elevator when someone walking by us as the doors closed said a plane had hit the World Trade Center, and when we reached the shopping center at the Lechmere MTBA stop where we were going to have coffee, we found a few dozen people frozen in front of a store with a TV showing the news just as the second plane impacted the South Tower. We were able to take the train to our new apartment before seeing any more news, but our greater concern was the status of our two young sons who were just beginning their studies at the Bilingual (now International) School of Boston in Cambridge. We called at about 10am and were told to recuperate our children as soon as possible, which we did. We then followed the horrific news in real-time, though that was quite upsetting and difficult, and spoke with a few familly and friends on the phone.
In response to your last two questions, I will try to be brief with the three remarks that were provoked by these phone calls and our situation:
1) I spoke with my father, a WW2 veteran, who compared this with hearing the radio of FDR's speech and the newsreels of Pearl Harbor... but he was less certain about what 9/11 would foretell with this direct question: "Why would someone do this? To what end?"
2) I spoke with a friend in CA who was a professor of Political Science at a large university and who was specialized in the role of politics in warfare (and vice versa). He told me, quite simply, that this changed everything because the Muslim world would become the "common enemy" that the US had lacked since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the apparent end of the Cold War. This was before the perpatrators had been clearly identified to the public beyond the emerging images of Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden. And for what it's worth, he immediately predicted that any attempt to "fix" Afghanistan beyond retaliatory strikes would fail, but he did not anticipate the incomplete efforts that would soon supplanted by the mission to unseat Saddam Hussein while "fixing" Iraq. I'm not sure I agree that it was inevitable that we "lose" in Afghanistan, but the approach would certainly have had to have been different and more focused and fully cognizant of the errors made in Vietnam.
3) As for myself, having worked in government for a short time and on international engineering projects for the previous 20 years, it seemed obvious that everything would be disrupted for a while. As for the war in Afghanistan, the assassination of Massoud on September 9 reverberated every time I read or heard that the principal leaders of Al-Qaeda had managed to escape.
All that said, the surreal nature of the collapse of the Twin Towers and the stories of heroism on Flight 93 and at the Pentagon were hard to fathom. The longterm implications for our country and the world seemed to unfold far more slowly with those tragic images and accounts and their immediate aftermaths in the foreground.
As best I can recall I was awakened early by Julia, who was always an early riser to come into the living room to see what was happening on the East Coast of the country. Later in the day after hours of news coverage. I put out our American Flag to hang from on of our widow facing the street. I wanted to do something American, so I ate hotdogs. It seems silly looking back at it now. We are a country steeped in too much arrogance, injustice, stupidity and denial. I can not adequately articulate how I feel, looking back these 20yrs. with all that has happened and all that we have absorbed that is connected to 9/11/2001.
The muted noises from an otherwise energized Madison, Wisconsin is what I recall. Memory picks up not only the mundane things I did on 9/11, but the quiet to be found in places around this city that usually are bustling with noise.
On the way Downtown, I stopped for coffee at Borders. In the parking lot, an employee who I always chatted with over the years had arrived for work. We looked at each other, just shook our heads, and walked in silence through the store door.
On Capitol Square, I recall how quiet it was. People were out and yet the loudness of the city was calmed by the horror that had struck the nation. No one was yelling or screaming across the street. It was a serene sadness. Signs were going up at banks and stores; each of the signs had been individually created. Each shared the same purpose: alert customers that the place of business was closing at a certain early hour considering the terror in New York. No two signs were alike.
The Capital Times had printed its afternoon edition, and it had landed in the news boxes, one of which was located outside a restaurant on Mills Street. On the front page, a searing image of one of the towers on fire dominated any print about the story. Inside the restaurant, the mood was somber. All were watching CNN and eating slowly. Big windows faced the street where young college kids, usually energized, were instead huddled around one who had bought a copy, all reading in disbelief.
I was working as a physical therapist on a rehab unit and I knew about that the attack had started before I had to cover care on a different floor. I was watching the TV in one patient’s room and saw the towers on fire and I knew it was terrorism and I was so angry. Then, I had to move onto where there were no more TVs on. I came back to my unit after 10:30 and asked my colleague for an update. He said, “The towers are down.” I was confused, so I asked what that meant. He said they had completely collapsed. I then understood how many people had likely lost there lives and the rest of the day was very solemn. Very heavy.
I was at work. On a conference call with a team in Germany. A co-worker walked by and whispered that a plane hit the World Trade Center. That seemed odd but the call continued. What seemed only minutes later, that same co-worker rushed by saying another plane hit the second tower. All I remember is saying,"excuse me, but I think my country is under attack,"hanging up the phone and rushing downstairs to the only TV we had in the building. I remember being afraid. I remember wondering how many planes were out there. I remember the worry that the Sears Tower in Chicago could be hit. Then I recall driving home to pick up the girls from school, thinking about how I would tell them about the events of the day.
I got a call from a friend living in D.C. She saw the Pentagon get attacked. Turned on the TV. It was unreal and overwhelming. Understandably she has never been the same
I was living in the Dallas TX metro then--as a matter of fact, we were selling our house to move to Houston where my husband had already begun a new job. I was up with the 3 boys (5, 3, 1 yrs), sending the oldest off to kindergarten. We'd watched Dora the Explorer on PBS while having breakfast.
It was not until the woman who was buying my house showed up with her inspector that I got any inkling something was wrong. I answered the door and she looked stricken. "Have you heard? A plane hit the World Trade Center!" I thought how awful that was because, in Dallas, the World Trade Center is a building right next to a major freeway...it is near Love Field... so in my mind, a Southwest Airlines jet had crashed into that building 20 or so miles from my house.
Clearly, my reaction was not what my buyer expected. She gave me an odd look and said, "Turn on your TV." We were just in time to see the second plane hit Tower One...then I knew. She and I, along with the Home Inspector, stood motionless, speechless, in front of my television as the towers fell, as the horror unfolded. I spent the morning of 9/11 with two people I did not know, but we were standing close, using each other for support as we saw the beginning of a new era sparked by violence.
I was home, getting ready for work. Turned on the Today show to see the first tower in smoke. As the anchors were speaking the second plane hit. I could barely move the rest of the day. I knew life changed forever for the entire world.
Then, as now, I was working as an attorney for the state of Connecticut. At some point, all non-essential employees were sent home. That is basically everyone but cops, prison guards and health care workers. I turned on ABC news and watched Peter Jennings until he signed off late that evening. I saw him struggle to keep it together on a few occasions, not just the one he admitted to. I remember feeling profoundly depressed, a feeling I had never experienced before or after.
I was sitting at my desk in my office in Washington Hall. Across from me was a West Point cadet, one of my students, we were discussing academics. My office mate, a CPT, came bursting into my office, “a plane just flew into one of the towers!” The cadet looked at me, I looked at him and we both said “Nah, he’s messing with us.” We continued our meeting. Soon, CPT B ran back into the office “the second tower is hit!” The young man and I smiled and meandered out of the office and walked down the length of the hall. Classrooms on both sides were filled with cadets and their teachers, but there was no sound other than the CNN commentary emanating from the huge projectors in each of the classrooms. Wall sized televised images of the burning towers were everywhere you looked. Shock and sadness and anger and fear...all at once. I comforted the Plebe with me and sent him to report to his company...and all of us waited. There were orders and briefs and warnings. The next days were blurred. Security tightened, The Academy is considered a national monument and there was concern we could be targeted. My Information Literacy and Critical Thinking classes continued to meet but the lessons morphed into what 9/11 would mean, for the academy, the nation and themselves. In the coming weeks and years I heard a lot of “I am here to kick Usama’s ass Ma’am” and they meant it. There was a sobering...Army Football paled, OPP’s and academic endeavors took a back seat. These young men and women, training to become Army Officers turned into warriors. Not one deferred, all were chomping to serve. I spent 20 years at WP. Not because of the money or the prestige but because of those wonderful “kids.” My cadets were true patriots, servants so brave and courageous, I was honored to know them. The attack held special meaning for us. I will never forget. I remember the day, I remember that Plebe, and I remember the many cadets who in their time, sat across that same desk...till they graduated, commissioned and went to war. Twelve of those I knew well did not come home. I will never forget those cadets, the young lieutenants and their soldiers who sacrificed so much to defend our country and keep us safe. I pray we all remember 9/11 forever. Thank you for this forum. I needed to say these things.
I was in the shower when my husband ran up and told me a plane hit the first tower. It took me a minute to proceed the information. how could a plane hit a building like that? Then, I realized it wasn’t an accident. Iran downstairs and we watched in horror as the second plane hit, then the Pentagon, and Flight 93.
I lost my 17 yo son in a car accident 3 weeks before. It was and is a horrible loss, but he would have enlisted the next day. I support the armed forces, and today is indescribably linked to my son’s death.
We live by an international airport. What profoundly struck me in the days following 9/11 was the silence. Not a single plane in the air. Total silence. Silence.
I was freelancing in Canton MA stationed in an opened cubicle with other artists on the other sides of the walls. When the first plane hit somebody said aloud, “a plane just hit the World Trade Center!” My first thought was it must be a small plane that had lost control. Because I was freelancing I hesitated to leave my station but everyone began gathering around one artist’s computer. I had to join them. We all watched in horror and total disbelief. It became obvious when the second plane hit this wasn’t an accident. We were all shell-shocked but I felt responsible to return to my work. Trying to stay focus on my assigned work while others were chattering and surmising required herculean effort. I was stunned, finished the day, raced home and sat in front of the television for what seems like days. What a horror show.
Five days after the attack I was in NYC for a wedding. I made my way down to Wall Street attempting, unsuccessfully, to get a reporter I was on the subway with to take me with him closer to the scene. Everything was cordoned off. I stood beside the NY Stock Exchange building looking over the unspeakable destruction. I scooped up dust from a windowsill which I still have.
Besides the visuals that are seared into my mind from looking at the site I was stunned to see fully armed military personnel walking by us on the other side of the cordoned off line. That stunning scene core-shook me since I had never witnessed anything like that in our country. I knew at that moment things had changed for us citizens.
Today is my granddaughter’s 15th birthday. She was born on the 5th anniversary. I am taking her out to breakfast. Fortunately, I have that happy occasion to mitigate reliving that life-changing tragedy.
I was just about to start teaching my history class here in Toronto, when my colleagues and I heard the news. One was so traumatized by it she had to go home for the day. It was a surreal day for sure, one I will never forget. We are still living under the shadow of it more than 20 years later. The world changed substantively that day.
I was in Connecticut teaching a college class. First time I had been dropped off to work—car repair. When the second plane hit, the entire college and area evacuated…we were close enough to be able to see the smoke from NYC. Had to wait in a parking garage to be picked up. Was terrifying, especially since had no cell phone to get info. Listened to car radio on way home. Another time an even is burned into memory.
I woke to someone on the radio saying a small plane had crashed into one of the twin towers in New York. Having a tv near me, I switched it on. Looking at the video footage I remember thinking that this was not a small plane. Just then, the second plane hit and then I realized this was a terrorist attack. In shock, I prepared to go to work. I was fortunate to be able to walk a trail system to my job, and as I walked along the trail I noticed no one would look at me directly. An eerie silence pervaded as all air traffic ceased. I remember thinking “we’re going to war”. The rest of the day was a blur as the implication of the attack washed over me.
I had to let my first class of the semester at The New School University the day before. I had a Monday/Wednesday schedule. On Tuesday I was home working on a story for a jazz magazine. A friend called me early and told me to turn on my TV, and he told me what had happened. As we were on the phone the second plane hit. I was in shock. People were in long lines at ATM’s and supermarkets. I went up on the roof of my building later and saw the Towers fall. Heartbreaking beyond belief. God bless them all. #NeverForget
I grew up in Brooklyn, NY. There are six FDNY firefighters in my family: my dad and his 3 brothers, and a maternal uncle and cousin. My mother's sister also married a firefighter.
By 2001, my uncles had retired. September 11, 2001 was my first day at an MFA program in Southampton, Long Island. That morning, I woke up excited for my first fiction workshop. I was twenty-nine, and for eight years had been writing a novel. This program would put me on the path to finishing the book, maybe publication.
With an hour before class, I turned on the TV and saw that the Today show was reporting on an accident. A plane had flown into the World Trade. I touched the screen, the flames, leaping from the broken window. Everybody who was right there must be dead, I thought, horrified. Then the second plane hit.
My dad's firehouse was in Queens, Ladder 158, the Swamp Dogs and my cousin was in Brooklyn, Ladder 118, Fire Under the Bridge.
I had no idea if they were working but I wasn’t worried. Neither would be going all the way into the city. The South Tower fell. The North tower fell. I called home. No answer. No answer. No answer. Finally, my mother picked up. She and my father had been at the dentist when the announcement came that all FDNY had to report to duty. Dad drove home, dropped my mother off in the driveway, and took off.
“He went to work,” my mother said as I stared at a screen full of billowing ash. But that’s dangerous, I thought stupidly. He had been a firefighter since I was five yet I'd never once been afraid when he went out the door.
Later, I learned that my cousin had been on his way home to Long Island when he heard the news and immediately went back to Brooklyn. Six men from his firehouse were killed. Had Tommy been working, he would have been one of them.
343 firefighters were killed. For context, in fire-families, you grow up knowing that the most killed in a single day was 12, at the 23rd Street Fire in 1966. The most killed in Brooklyn was 6, Waldbaums in 1978.
My family was spared by circumstance, luck and the era of the attacks.
On the morning before 9/11, my wife and I went to the Pittsburg airport to catch our flight home, in Sarasota, Fl. It was about 7:00 in the morning and the airport was very busy. We noticed there was a group of Muslim women and girls enroute to somewhere. They were chatting seemingly nothing unusual. After a while, we were notified that our plane was cancelled and we were required to take another flight to St Louis, then to Sarasota. The delays that day were long and we did not reach Tampa until late at night, about 10:00 PM. After the taxi ride home we did not get home until just before midnight. The next day, 9/11, we slept in until our daughter called to see if we made it home, then told us to turn on the TV. The rest, as they say, is history.