Thinking of my dad today. 23 years ago today, he had a triple bypass in the earliest surgery slot. They wheeled him into operating at 6 am PST. I walked into the waiting room, where the tv was on. It was a bit of a day.
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I was stationed at NAS North Island, San Diego on my twilight tour. That morning I was just pulling into the parking lot of AIMD Avionics when over the radio the news station said "We have unconfirmed reports that a small plane has hit one of the World Trade Center towers."
I thought that maybe it was foggy like when that B-25 hit the Empire State Building in 1945.
I didn't think much of it and went inside to my office and got to work. Not much later there was a commotion outside my door as sailors were rushing to the gedunk where we had a TV that was always on CNN.
I asked the Warrant what was going on as he walked by and he said "Another plane hit the WTC!"
*Another* plane? Uh-oh! I followed him to the gedunk and watched the replays of the second plane hitting the South tower.
I knew this was a terrorist attack and that all major military bases would be locked down very soon (Anti-terrorist training ten years previous). I told the Warrant this and that guys with kids in daycare should probably be sent home.
A friend was a bond trader in Philly. She was on the phone with Cantor Fitzgerald when the plane hit and the line went dead. That industry was devastated. My friend said it was a first name business so she couldn’t search for who was gone. She just knew when they never answered their phones again.
Oh man. My mom had the first of what would be 6 major nerve block procedures on her back that day. She was super resistant to painkillers so she was on a 3X dose of Versid and was still just woozy. Some idiot nurse came wailing into the OR with a TV on a rolling cart so my mom got to watch.
Dumbasses in my hometown I guess. I called my mom freaked out (I was 16 and had just moved into boarding school across state), and she was like wheee not sure what’s happening, can’t do anything, byeeee
My son worked in the Seattle federal building & they sent everyone home fearing more attacks. I held my breath until he drove into my driveway. My daughters brother-in-law was on the NY subway that went under WTC & we waited hours to find out the train had been stopped & he was safe. It was a day.❣️
I was on the N train late to work because I stopped to vote in primary. Bypassed WTC due to smoke condition, when I got out I heard a plane (#2) fly overhead then crashing in distance. Burning Microsoft manual in the air, plane engine through Chase window on Bway, kept walking north to get home.
Mine died early in the AM of the 10th, so we had his funeral around noon on 9/11. We had guests who listened to CDs on their way in, so had no idea what the officiant was referencing until after the funeral. A bit of a day, indeed.
I don't know what is worse - people like you who will forever have the two events linked in memory by personal sadness, or those who will forever have things like wedding anniversaries and birthdays linked to it by a coincidence of dates. My condolences on your loss.
I remember watching it unfold and calling home to talk to my wife to tell her to turn on the tv. I was thinking of my son — we had just brought him home the month before — and what kind of world he’d inherit.
I remember the day but I cried harder the next day because my son's school called to pick him up because there was a bomb threat they were taking seriously. He went to a Jewish elementary school in SW Ohio. I knew the world was going crazy.
I too was up early, with NPR and then TV.
My brother worked in an office next to the WTC (and later the hole left).
My parents were on a plane, heading to NYC from Rome.
It took the whole day to find out everyone was OK.
And I was on disaster alert at work for fear of a West Coast event.
The plane returned to Rome; my parents spent a week going to England, Iceland, Canada and then home.
I reached my brother in the PM - he walked to upper Manhattan and was ferried with other commuters across the Hudson to NJ on private boats.
And work was so quiet, almost everyone cancelled.
I'm so sorry for your grief. In the time since 9/11, you seem to have raised awesome kids and have a loving, supportive family. We cannot ask for more than that.
I was laid off at the time so I saw it live from the beginning. They said 50,000 people work in each building. When the towers collapsed, I thought I witnessed 10,000 people dying. That number is what devastated me. It turned out to be fewer, but that feeling never went away.
I debated chucking a tape in before I headed to work (between the 1st and 2nd) thinking should record as events will be retold differently than as first covered. Didn’t do it. Spent aftnoon calling next 2 shifts to have ID on as Natl G blocking frontage to plant w/ large caliber do not fuck arounds.
I was in the UK, watching lunchtime TV and it cut to the news. I think I saw the 2nd plane hit on TV but I’m not sure. I called my mum at work.
Later, I heard a friend of friend I’d stayed with a couple years earlier in NYC had meeting elsewhere that day so wasn’t beneath the towers when got hit.
My dad was in hospital with cancer on 9/11. I had worked overnight at a newspaper Editorial desk working out our Tuesday edition. I woke up to the phone ringing- him calling from the hospital worried about my then-girlfriend, now-wife who took the subway through WTC to work everyday.
My dad called me to say some guy flew his plane into the World Trade Center. As we watched the second plane hit. I asked him “was that a replay…?” All I heard was him turning to my mom and saying “we’re under attack.”
My Dad was on a Sierra Club backpacking trip. A week above timberline somewhere. When he came down he was wondering why everyone was flying American flags.
I’d Fedexed him the Extra of the Washington Post and the next couple days papers.
I was in Bishop, CA. Having just completed the High Sierra Trail, I was awake early looking forward to using indoor plumbing. Turned on the TV and it had not happened yet. Seeing the first one, my response was, how did that happen? The 2nd prompted "Someone really hates us."
My dad was in the hospital in the last stage of cancer. He was aware on the day as we watched TV. He died on 9/15. My brother drove straight thru from OR. My sister couldn’t get out from Boston so didn’t get to CA until he was gone. Our personal troubles colored by our national tragedy.
My mom was in surgery as well, my son's first day of kindergarten...my husband got a migraine..usually dark room, closed eyes, but with everything he had to do a lot of taking. Who knew if you do that whilst having a migraine you can't form words and everyone is saying STROKE..more hospital. Horror.
Thinking of my father as well, he would have turned 90 today, but he died of cancer in 2008. I remember telling him Happy Birthday in 2001 and us talking about the mixed emotions of that day. I miss him.
I was a 1L living in MST, put on the morning news and saw tower two fall. The Univ. was closed later that day due to bomb threats and that night police helicopters flew over our neighborhood shining lights in people's windows. The next day no prof talked about the attack until my last class.
A women in that last class said her brother was missing, her bother was NYPD and later was determined to have died in one of the towers. A second law student's cousin (at the school but not in that class) was on the Newark plane.
I was teaching English and woke up to one of my coworkers telling me the towers had collapsed. I was the only New Yorker around and i knew too many ppl that might be dead. I knew people who had been in the towers at the first attack. I couldn't concentrate in the classes I taught....
As soon as i could i got on the computer and was able to chat with my brother everyone i knew had gotten out and he knew one person who died. In the middle of that conversation. BOOM!! GLASS SHATTERING!!! PEOPLE SCREAMING!!! A pressure cooker had exploded in the appt next door.
I was 59, at my dad's house while he was recovering. I heard on the radio. I told dad, as gently as possible. A few hours later I went back to my house b/c Dad kept asking if I agreed with the attack. The family always accused me of being anti-American. It made me sick.
I'd just gotten a temp job at a place that sold (among other things) analog cell phones (not everyone had digital coverage yet). This was day 2 of training. We spent the day watching the news. Training was rushed so we could get on the customer-service line and explain shipments were delayed because
I was 9. All I clearly remember is the rising panic amongst the adults & our teacher trying to explain it in a way we could understand. Pretty sure we were let home early.
I had flown back from Seattle to Texas the day before. My brother woke me up after the plane crashed into the first tower. After the towers fell, my phone rang for me to go into work as a security guard. The next couple weeks were 12 hours days as office building security in Dallas.
How security guards were supposed to prevent a terrorist attack always mystified me. 9/11 did not teach me good things about the intelligence of the American people.
My grandmother’s funeral was that day. When we arrived at the cemetery my brother said he heard on the radio that a plane hit one of the towers. We thought it was a small plane that hit. We then went to a restaurant and everyone was huddled around a small TV and we then realized what was happening.
Three of the five people in our family saw the Pentagon on fire, one from the Watergate, one from high school, and me from the Fairfax County courthouse where all trials were dismissed
First year of my PhD program. I worked in the library. When my boss arrived he said a tower had been struck, and I thought "Cessna". Then another worker said the other tower was hit. And then someone said the Pentagon was hit. 1/2
I got a radio out and heard...I think it was Corey Flintaff on NPR describing the first collapse, and someone mentioning that 100000 people worked in there. I heard 100000 people were in there. And I thought, Jesus, 30 pearl harbors. Work was over. I crossed the quad to an undergrad dorm... 2/3
They had a TV in a public room near the entrance. The room was empty when I sat down, and I saw the second collapse, totally unreal. (I was having a dissociative event.) When I looked up hours later, the room had filled to capacity and I hadn't noticed anyone enter.
I live in Seattle. A dear friend called me at 6:45 AM to tell me a plane had crashed into the WTC. Still half-asleep, I was like "How did the pilot not see a building that big?" - thinking, ofc, it was an accident.
The second plane hit as I was watching it all on TV, talking to my friend.
A cousin worked a few blocks away from the towers. He and coworkers had to walk out. They didn’t get cell coverage till they made it over a bridge into NJ at roughly midnight. They could finally call home to say they were ok.
I was commuting to a customer site via DC 395 when the traffic stopped dead, cell phones stopped working, and an ominous cloud of black smoke started to rise in the direction of the Pentagon. I had the windows down and heard the murmurs of other car radios as I drove past the burning pentagon.
The quiet was strange and ominous. No one was honking their horns, we just moved at 3 mph past the pentagon. The lack of planes in and out of National added to the weird stillness. Heard the whipcrack of what we now know was the two ready fighters going supersonic headed towards PA planning to ram.
I was standing on the bank of the Potomac with the Washington monument behind me, looking at the Pentagon and trying to figure out how to get across the river when I and a rando near me heard that boom. He dove under a parked car. I didn't even have the sense to try. We thought it was another crash.
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I didn't think much of it and went inside to my office and got to work. Not much later there was a commotion outside my door as sailors were rushing to the gedunk where we had a TV that was always on CNN.
*Another* plane? Uh-oh! I followed him to the gedunk and watched the replays of the second plane hitting the South tower.
I was fortunate to not have lost anyone in the attacks. But I know a few guys who lost friends when the Pentagon was hit.
My brother worked in an office next to the WTC (and later the hole left).
My parents were on a plane, heading to NYC from Rome.
It took the whole day to find out everyone was OK.
And I was on disaster alert at work for fear of a West Coast event.
I reached my brother in the PM - he walked to upper Manhattan and was ferried with other commuters across the Hudson to NJ on private boats.
And work was so quiet, almost everyone cancelled.
Surgery 5 days after emergency c section. He was in PICU w me in surgery
Couldn't hold him/pick up x 6/8 weeks
Was afraid we wouldn't bond/he wouldn't ❤️ me
Finally I could finally hold him, but
1/
Only then I did look up to see the first plane hit the tower
I wondered what I had done to bring another into *this* world
But then I decided to look back down
He smiled w utter ❤️
2/
Unimaginable, PTSD invoking challenges were ahead of us but we were joyfully oblivious
We were protected from many horrors. My memories of that day are, guiltily, beautiful
And to answer my question back then 3/
He's taught me to be a better person & teacher
He's the reason we didn't just survive everything, but did so....eventually...*eventually* joyfully
On that horrible day, we chose love &
to fight together
And so we have for 23 amazing years
4/4
Later, I heard a friend of friend I’d stayed with a couple years earlier in NYC had meeting elsewhere that day so wasn’t beneath the towers when got hit.
I’d Fedexed him the Extra of the Washington Post and the next couple days papers.
Some fuckin' "new millennium", man.
First year of my PhD program. I worked in the library. When my boss arrived he said a tower had been struck, and I thought "Cessna". Then another worker said the other tower was hit. And then someone said the Pentagon was hit. 1/2
The second plane hit as I was watching it all on TV, talking to my friend.
At work the IT guy was in the board room hooking the large TV used as a monitor to an antenna.
Coworkers were from many countries. We all just stood and stared.
They dropped the hammer going northbound just south or almost directly over the Pentagon and not far off the ground.
It felt window cracking loud, but it probably wasn't.