Memories and reflections on 9/11

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

I've told my "where was I" on 9/11 story many times so I thought I'd do something different this year. I want to recount some memories of that day that are separate from the period of the attacks (8:30-11:00 am EST or so).

I remember the following about 9/11/01

- I remember waking up at 7 am that morning. I had just started college a week or so ago and had classes at 8. I climbed out of bed and stared out my window: It was a beautiful, clear sunny morning. A near perfect late summer day. I remember saying to myself: "well, it's another day". Little did I or anyone else know that we were about to experience a day that would change history forever.

- I remember the chaos after the attacks. No one knew what was going on. Planes grounded across North America, all kinds of wild news reports flying around. Were there other planes? Other terrorists? And if there were, where were they going?

- I remember going to the downtown core of my hometown (Ottawa, Canada) and finding it practically deserted. They had it shut down. No vehicle traffic at ALL. The only way to get in was to walk across the bridge from the Quebec side. The streets were barren. No cars, no people. A very odd sight for what is usually a busy lunch hour for the thousands of people who work in the private and government offices around the area.

- I remember feeling numb, almost physically sick by the end of day having watched the 9/11 coverage non-stop. It's the only time I ever remember practically EVERY SINGLE CHANNEL on TV was doing wall to wall coverage on the attacks. You couldn't escape it. I ended up watching a movie to try and distract myself.

- I remember going outside around 6:30 PM or so and playing some street hockey, all the while thinking about the people in NYC and Washington, still in relative disbelief at what I had witnessed earlier.

- I remember going to the U.S. embassy downtown that night and seeing the sea of people there and the wall of tributes in front of the the building (http://www.aco.nato.int/resources/si...s/Embassy2.jpg)

This photo doesn't do it justice, the flowers and memorials covered twice as big an area as you can see in the picture. I remember how peaceful it was there. There were candles flickering, people saying quiet prayers, some people crying, but a lot of us just stood their silently both out of respect and because we were so shocked at what happened.

- Perhaps most of all, I remember the tremendous wave of national unity that came over America in the days after the attacks. Suddenly racial and ethnic lines didn't matter. For awhile, definitions such as white, black, hispanic, asian, european. Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist and Atheist were replaced by a single word: American.

The people of the United States had been attacked as many but afterwards stood as one and vowed to rebuild and restore the nation as one. It was a remarkable time of TRUE patriotism.


9/11 was Pearl Harbor for a different generation. A day which changed America and the world profoundly.

But 9/11 also marked the end of a time of relative peace and prosperity. The Iraq War in 1991 ended quickly. The USSR collapsed in 1992. Other than the Kosovo battles there were no major military conflicts from 1992 to late 2001. And the conflicts that were going on were on the other side of the world as they had mostly always been. America felt safe. Times were good in the mid to late 1990s.

But 9/11 brought an act of war to our doorstep on a level not seen since that "Day of Infamy" sixty years earlier. Every year I rewatch some of the 9/11 footage and it still seems so surreal. I keep having to remind myself that it ACTUALLY HAPPENED. I am not watching visual effects, I am watching a real life disaster unfold before my eyes.

Few who lived through it will ever forget that day and few would argue it changed the course of all of our lives.

[Sunshine]

I went to the dentist office and was in the chair when we heard about the first tower. My aunt, uncle, and cousin lived in manhattan at the time...we couldnt get ahold of them...no cell service. I remember being so relieved when my grandmother finally got a call thru.

[Andara Bledin]

Other than paying a lot of attention to the news reports, it was a day a lot like every other day for me.

I got up, I went to work, I went home.

The only person I personally knew in any of the affected areas was unharmed.

Life went on.

^-.-^

[Pixilated]

I was still working fulltime at the newspaper, so it was pretty much THE central issue at my workplace as we scrambled to rearrange the paper so as to pretty much empty page 1.

I'd gotten up late (I worked evenings) and was driving to get a coffee when I heard that President Bush had been taken to an underground bunker. I didn't know any details yet and was wondering whether I ought to go back to bed ... or possibly go crawl under it.

We had the editorial department television on all night, watching news updates and replays of the actual attacks. I think much of what might have been our horror was blunted because it seemed so surreal -- we could see it, but we couldn't quite believe it was happening.

[Seraph]

I woke up really early for some reason, turned on the TV, and saw the footage of it right after the first place hit. I remember feeling like I'd been dipped in an ice bath, and screaming for mom and dad to come in and see the television.

Within minutes, it'd changed from feeling icy cold, to a sickening nausea as Mom hysterically tried to dial her family, especially her sisters who worked at the WTC.

I just stared and watched the news throughout the whole thing. When the towers started collapsing, and you saw the people jumping....mom lost it. My dad was doing all he could to comfort her.

We found out the next day that my aunts weren't there, one had a day off, the other overslept by a few minutes and was running down the street when the plane hit. My cousin was not so lucky, as well as a family friend.

[Sunshine]

Cyber hugs to seraph. :-(

[Eireann]

I had checked my email first. It was my practice at the time - turn on the computer, open Microsoft Outlook, and see what I had received. There was an email from my mom, who was at work. That was my first inkling that something very bad had happened.

I was glued to my computer, which didn't have a very fast connection - as for that, the computer itself was only 512 MB. I turned on the radio and found the BBC station. I will always remember one young woman whose fiance was working in the World Trade Center that day. She said, "I know he's all right. I know he's all right..."

A few days later, she was interviewed again, and I could tell from her voice that she was fairly well doped up with tranquilizers. By that time, there was no denying that her fiance was gone. I don't remember her name, but I've often wondered what happened to her.

All the flags on the embassies here were flying at half-staff. The American Embassy had huge floral bouquets in front of it - from then-President Vaclav Havel, from the Czech Veterans Association, from individuals. Stuffed animals and postcards showing the Twin Towers had also been left. The crowd was immense.

I still have the newspapers I bought that day, and for a few days after the event. It was all anyone could talk about. The Czech government had a military crew waiting at the airport for the U.S. government to give the word; they were fully prepared to fly to New York to search for survivors at Ground Zero. The Czech Red Cross was swamped with calls from people wanting to donate blood. A mobile phone company offered free calls to American citizens wanting to call the States.

And I spent a lot of time on this site, sharing my shock with the members at the time. Of those members, MadMike is still here, but most of the others are gone.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I was in my second week away from college. My roommate woke me up with the news. He seemed sort of nonchalant about it.

Walking around campus, seeing masses of people gathered around every TV set I passed, indicated that this was indeed a Very Big Thing, something I had never seen before in my life. Specifically the "where were you when X happened" thing.

I remember going to the gas station near campus to gas up my car, even though it really wasn't needed. Rumors were flying that gas stations were jacking up the prices of gas. That didn't happen, at least not locally.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

I was in my second week away from college. My roommate woke me up with the news. He seemed sort of nonchalant about it.

Walking around campus, seeing masses of people gathered around every TV set I passed, indicated that this was indeed a Very Big Thing, something I had never seen before in my life. Specifically the "where were you when X happened" thing.

I remember going to the gas station near campus to gas up my car, even though it really wasn't needed. Rumors were flying that gas stations were jacking up the prices of gas. That didn't happen, at least not locally.

I remember a similar panic around the time of Hurricane Katrina. Although prices did go up, they didn't shoot through the roof as feared.

[Anglesmith]

It was my second week of high school, and I remember my brother waking me up (three hours behind here on the West Coast) telling me a plane had hit one of the WTC towers.

I didn't believe him, went back to sleep. When I did finally get up and get ready for school, as we were leaving we saw the first tower collapse. It didn't register that that had actually happened till we got to school.

My high school choir had taken a trip that April to New York for a competition.

[Greenday]

I was at the seaport a few blocks away that weekend.

I was in second period chemistry in 8th grade when they told us. It was one of the only rooms with cable. We watched the second plane hit live. My mom pulled me out of school by fourth period.

I knew a couple people who worked there but one had off and the other was out on a call in a different state.

[KiaKat]

I lived in Manhattan. Worked downtown all that summer at an environmental advocacy group, about two blocks from the WTC. Used to eat breakfast at the plaza before heading over to the office. My girlfriend at the time was a graduate of the high school that sits across the West Side Highway from the Center, and she still had a number of friends there. My roommate was dating a girl from another well-known performing arts school. Because the three of us were over 18 and out of school, and most of our friends were not quite there yet, there was a flurry of faxes and phone calls from parents to the schools, asking them to release their children into our custody so we could bring them home.

The trains were shut down. I don't know why, but that's one of my big memories of that day - having to walk through the streets of Manhattan because there were no trains, no cars, nothing. Groups of people huddled around radios and TV's. A clear sky, gorgeous weather, the sort of day I would have been happy to just walk around in, absorbing the sights and sounds of the city. But the city was silent.

I was supposed to work that day. Not at the advocacy group - I was doing some political stumping, and my territory was going to be the ACE subway entrance right at the WTC.

I overslept. My building's wiring was crap, and the power cut out around the same time the alarm was supposed to go off. My girlfriend was stuck in her mom's house in Brooklyn. She called me, frantic, about five minutes after the first plane hit. When she heard my voice, she sobbed.

We didn't have a TV. I didn't see video of the attack until weeks later.

But we stood at Sixth Avenue and West 3rd St and watched as Tower 7 fell in a plume of dust and smoke, backlit by the blazing sunset.

The sunsets were gorgeous for weeks. I know it was because of all the particulates in the air, but my still-somewhat-adolescent brain was convinced it was some random Deity apologizing for allowing the free will that caused such evilness.

[auntiem]

At the time, I wasn't in the habit of checking the news before leaving the house for work. My first sign that something was wrong was the woman at the coffee shop crying and trying to express herself (English wasn't her first language and she was so upset she kept mixing in her language with her English).

Work was chaos - contacting hotels to extend stays, rent cars, rebook flights all without knowing when flights would be going out or how many days it would take. I had people stuck all over the place. I didn't have anyone in NY, but a friend had parents that were supposed to be on a big tour that day - we finally got thru to their hotel and they were safe.

I didn't see any footage until after work when my SO picked me up and took me straight to the bar. Plenty of people came in to discribe it to me and one airline rez agent said she saw it happen out her apartment window.

The Alaska Air crash (Aug 2000) hit me worse emotionally, probably because a few reasons - it was the first crash* that I may have booked someone on the flight (I had plenty of people on that type of aircraft - those planes were a big part of the fleet) and about a third of the people on it were friends, family and staff of the airline personel so you were more likely to talk to someone who knew someone on that flight. My roomate found out a few days later that his ex-girlfriend was on the flight.

To this day whenever I hear that a plane has crashed I automatically go thru my mind "do I have anyone on that flight?" even though that can't be possible.

*not the first crash (oh, I mean "unscheduled landing") for me personally

[MoonCat]

I was at work when it happened. I still have the string of computer messages sent around the office by people who had radios or internet, who were keeping up with the details and sending the info around to the rest of us.

My sister and brother had to take one of our cats to the vet that day. The cat was getting acupuncture for a pain problem, and we had an appt. scheduled with the only vet in the area who did acupuncture and reiki on pets.

The one thing that made me feel better was reading the beautiful messages of sympathy from around the world. I went online at the library and read all of these stories for a week. I printed them out and kept them.

[Andara Bledin]

I kept copies of all of the web comic tributes that got put up afterwards, as well as many, many other inspirational images.

^-.-^