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Where Were You When You Heard About 9/11? Print
Monday, 11th September 2006 (by J.D.)This article is about Odds and Ends
There’s no way I can write about personal finance today. My mind won’t go there. It’s stuck in remembrances of five years ago.
It was about 7:10 a.m. Pacific. I had just arrived at work. One of my brothers came into my office. He looked glum. “What’s wrong?” I joked. “Did you have a fight with your wife?”
“A plane hit the World Trade Center,” he said. “It just collapsed.”
I laughed. “Right,” I said.
“I’m serious,” he said, and I could tell from his face that he meant it.
I ran to the warehouse to fetch the half-functional 13″ TV that we’d last used the morning of the Oklahoma City bombing. I took it to my office and plugged it in. We found a coat hanger to get better reception. We watched replay after replay. We watched the the second tower collapse. I spent the morning glued to this Metafilter thread (which is a fascinating real-time group reaction to the events). The telephone was silent — nobody called to order boxes.
As the day progressed and the name “Osama bin Laden” came to the fore, I began to research his possible motivations for attacking the United States. I printed out all of the articles I could find. Now, five years later, most of those online articles have disappeared, but I still have copies in a notebook that I keep on my shelf. It contains information that existed before the attacks became politicized.
The passage of time — and political machinations on all sides — has dulled the pain. Sometimes I want to peel back the scab, to recall how raw and vulnerable and shocked I felt. I want to be reminded how awful it was. I want to cry.
Where were you when you heard?
[Cooperative Research has an amazingly detailed complete 911 timeline. CNN's September 11: chronology of terror sticks to the essentials.]
September 11th, 2006 at 6:13 am
I was a senior in high school, and rushing to get to AP Music Theory from Physics on the other side of the building. A crowd of students had gathered around the TVs in front of the main office. As I passed by, I saw the second plane hit. Running to my next class, I had a similar experience to yours, with roles reversed - upon telling my teacher what had happened, he looked at me with dark, serious eyes and said, “How could you make something like that up?”
Class was adjourned to the next room where we watched replay after replay. Sometime that afternoon, students made their way to the local park, which is high enough that we could see the smoke coming from New York.
September 11th, 2006 at 6:20 am
Being in Australia meant that the events of that day happened at night.
I was just heading off to bed and switched on my bedside radio. Very early reports were starting to filter through.
I jumped back out of bed and told my wife Pauline that something had happened in the US. We switched on the TV and a short while later they started reporting what was going on.
There was only limited shots initially that were played over and over until they got more cameras into the area.
We stayed up most of the night watching things unfold.
September 11th, 2006 at 6:32 am
I was in 9th grade about to take my first Algebra II test of the year. Our school withheld the information until ~1PM probably so kids who had parents who commute to New York didn’t panic (there were a lot of them). My teacher continued to pass out the test and have us take it anyway.
My dad was in New York that day working for a hospital (St. Vincents). He walked the elderly there home and bought a guy lunch. A woman he walked home asked if he thought her Yoga class is cancelled. He was floored and told her, “Lady, this is the biggest thing that’s happened in our lifetime. Yes, Yoga is probably cancelled”.
When I got home I watched TV and just talked outside with friends and neighbors until all of our family came home safely. It was surreal.
September 11th, 2006 at 6:44 am
My wife and I were at a conference in Kenya at the time and it was a huge shock to all of us at the conference. It pretty much shut down the conference and I just remember sitting in the bar watching BBC news with a whole bunch of people from all over the world for the next few days.
Our trip out of Africa was an interesting experience as flights were cancled and security was very intense.
September 11th, 2006 at 6:44 am
I was working as the IT guy at The Salvation Army in Buffalo, NY on 9/11/01. I was sitting at my desk looking through catalogs for equipment that I needed to order. I needed some sort of office supply and made my way over to the mailroom where they were stored.
From around the corner, I heard a radio report about some sort of plane accident. I didn’t pay it much mind, but it did seem a little curious to me.
I went back to my office and switched on the radio, which is when I heard about the whole thing. We pulled out a TV and watched for the next few hours as the second plane hit, the towers collapsed, and word came about the Pentagon and flight 193.
Three days later, I was deployed by The Salvation Army to the World Trade Center as part of an emergency disaster team. I was there for a week, witnessing the devastation and — more importantly — the boundless compassion that people can have for one another and the extraodinary resiliency of the human spirit.
September 11th, 2006 at 6:49 am
I was at home instead of at work, which was unusual. I was waiting for the Salvation Army to come pick up some old furniture. I was wanting a ‘new start’. My co-worker called me and asked why I hadn’t come to work yet. (He had already heard about the World Trade towers and thought something had gone wrong with me.) He told me to turn on the TV and there it was. I was in Boston, where the planes had taken off from.
September 11th, 2006 at 7:01 am
I was in bed. My mom called me.
I had just started grad school, and I didn’t have class on Tuesdays. It was my “sleep late” day. I had just moved here, and I really didn’t know anybody.
I spent about 8 hours sitting in front of the TV, transfixed. Then I tried to figure out where I could go where I could be around people. I didn’t need to interact, I was just sick of being alone in my teeny little grad student apartment.
I went to the public library around 5 PM. Fortunately, they had decided to stay open. I got something to read, I got to be around people. I felt a little better, but not much. At least it was something.
September 11th, 2006 at 8:25 am
I overslept that morning, and just as I was parking my car at work, the guy on the radio says he’s received confirmation that a plane hit the World Trade Center (so, probably a few minutes before 9 a.m.).
I didn’t think much of it at first. I had already snapped off my radio because I was running late, so I assumed that some fool in a Cessna wandered off-course and managed to hit the easiest-to-avoid obstacle in the sky. I also thought briefly about how a B-25 once hit the Empire State Building.
Besides, someone had tried to mug me the night before, and I was concentrating more on how I was going to deliver my harrowing tale to my coworkers. (Needless to say, no one was really interested in hearing it.)
Nobody did any work that morning; we just kept trying to reload news Web sites. If someone managed to get a refresh, we’d all rush en masse to his or her cube. Eventually, our director sent us home, and I had to explain what little I knew to my then-wife, who worked night shift (and thus had slept through it all).
I lived less than a mile from the airport back then, and it was eerie just how quiet things were with all the air traffic grounded.
September 11th, 2006 at 8:42 am
I was at work and I was chatting online with a girl in Japan when she told me that a plane hit the world trade center. Within seconds I was messaged by a person from London giving me more information. I found out about the horrific acts of terror from people on the other side of the world. My stream of information continued from these sources because everything on the internet that was news related became virtually inaccessble. Loading the front page of Yahoo became a challenge.
A TV was set up in the office and I watched both buildings collapse. It was a shock to me as it was to the rest of the world. I loved those buildings, some of my fondest moments of New York were on top of those towers. The people who are responsible for this should be made to suffer the same that they’ve inflicted on others. Their memories should never be forgoten.
September 11th, 2006 at 8:44 am
In August of 2000 I spent some time in Manhattan. This was way before my digital age of photography. I had done some research into a good film-based point-and-shoot and decided on the Olympus Stylus Epic. I picked it up for the trip because it was small and had great optics. I took about 10 rolls of pictures in three days, and the link below takes you to the best image I captured of the World Trade Center.
There is a strange and somber backstory about this picture. About a year after my trip to New York I bought some frames to hold some of my pictures. I chose this picture, a picture of me and Les Paul, and a picture of a church in Boston. After framing them, I placed them on my hutch so I could remember my travels. The very next morning, as I was getting ready to head to work, I receive a phone call from my mom:
“Something terrible has happened, turn on the TV”
I did so, just in time to see Tower number Two collapse to the ground. I turned away from the TV in shock, horror and dismay, only to come face to face with this picture I had just framed and admired the night before.
http://lanescheideman.blogspot.com/2006/03/wtc-august-2000.html
September 11th, 2006 at 8:50 am
i was on a plane over the pacific (heading back to chicago)…after a spontaneous weekend trip to germany and surprising my wife with an engagement ring.
After circling awhile over the atlantic, we were forced to dump fuel and land in Gander, Newfoundland, where we spent the next 5-6 hours in the plane on the ground…looking out the window at the other jumbo jets parked next to us. Then we spent the next 6 days sleeping on school classroom floors and church pews. The pilots (who were from the now bankrupt and non-existant Belgian airline Sabena) told us afterwards that they also had no clue what was happening.
We were refugees.
In retrospect, even though i no longer have any contact to any other passengers or hosts, to me Sept. 11 is not as much a day of sadness for loss of life…whether it be the victims, their families, or even our troops fighting an unnecessary war. Sept. 11th is a day which proves to me first-hand, that even in the worst circumstances, a community can come together and help tens of thousands of strangers in their moment of need.
Thank you Gander, for opening your homes and hearts.
September 11th, 2006 at 8:52 am
I was at home with a week old infant. I wrote about it today on my own blog, and in remembrance to a man I have never met, but died on this day saving others.
September 11th, 2006 at 9:18 am
I was on the bus when I heard about it. I called my husband said he should go downstairs and turn on the news. Then I got to work, where my boss was working away, quite unaffected. I was stunned by that. I was on the internet all day, reading every news report I could, trying to understand.
When I got home that evening, my husband was watching the news. At that point, I could not watch or listen to any of it anymore. All those lives lost. All those people who lost someone. I could feel the despair all the way from New York (I am in Washington State).
That was the week I decided life was too short work in an office, and 2 years later, I started working from home after changing careers.
September 11th, 2006 at 9:48 am
It was a Tuesday, and I was working at a small weekly newspaper as the managing editor. Anyone who works for a weekly paper will tell you that Tuesday is the worst day for anything bad to happen because it’s the day you put the newspaper together.
I had been working in my office for about an hour or so when I think my boss (the publisher) told me about the towers being hit. Unfortunately, our office didn’t have a television, so I spent the day trying to get information from the Internet, which was completely jammed. Thank goodness for NPR. My staff and I worked like crazy to redo our front page with local reaction on the attacks.
It’s always bothered me that we didn’t have a TV. I never felt like I knew what happened. I was probably one of the few people I knew who didn’t see the plane crash into the second tower or the towers collapsing on live TV. I had to wait until later that evening. I’m in the news business so it’s ironic, I guess.
A few years later around the anniversary of 9/11, the pastor at my former church made a profound statement that I will never forget: “God does not equate love with length of life.” I’d never thought of it that way before. God loves us no matter what - good or bad. If we die before we are born or live to be 100 or die tragically in the middle of our lives, it doesn’t mean he loves us more or less.
Some people try to justify why “God would let this happen” and some people just get mad at God. But it doesn’t really matter, God remains the same, and he will be glorified by his creation despite the good or evil that takes place.
September 11th, 2006 at 10:12 am
Florence, OR, staying in an anal retentive b&b:
http://bluehole.org/2006/09/where-was-i-on-september-11-2001.html
September 11th, 2006 at 10:50 am
I was asleep when I was awakened by a phone call. It was a friend of mine in Tokyo, I hadn’t spoken to him by phone for over a year, so I knew something major was happening. He blurted out, “What the HELL is going on over there?” I was still fuzzy, so I told him I was asleep and didn’t know what he was talking about. He just said, “Go turn on CNN, I’m watching it now.” I turned it on, and we watched together as the second plane hit. I thought it was odd that due to satellite lag in transmission, his exclamation of “Oh F*%&” was a couple of seconds behind mine. I don’t recall what we said after that, I was in shock, but I remember we didn’t talk too long, once it became apparent it was a terrorist attack.
It was only last week that I discovered a good friend of mine was killed on 9/11. He was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to hit the WTC.
September 11th, 2006 at 11:23 am
I was getting up that morning, preparing to go to work at a government office. I wasn’t even really awake when I first heard on the radio, thinking someone said a plane had crashed into the Space Needle in Seattle. I was worried - I have a lot of friends in Seattle, but then a few minutes later they repeated what they had said, and the sharp sense of discombobulation was redoubled by the realization that it wasn’t an accident in the least.
I didn’t know what to feel, or what to do; whether to go into work or stay home. No one else was in the house, and for a long moment, despite the voice on the radio, the world seemed really quiet.
September 11th, 2006 at 12:52 pm
I was exiting the NYC subway system at Rector street, a few blocks South of the WTC towers. The 1 train had bypassed my intended stop (Cortland - WTC). As I walked up the stairs to street level I saw one of the towers engulfed in smoke and flames, with papers falling from the sky. People were standing on the street watching in horror. My first thought was of my friend who worked high up in one of the towers. My second thought was that this was an air traffic control accident, but when I heard that both towers were hit, I knew it was terrorism and I decided to get out of downtown in case they tried to take out the NYSE as well. When the first tower came down it sounded like a jet plane flying a foot above your head. I haven’t heard anything that terrifying before or since. We all thought it was a bomb. No one imagined the entire tower would collapse. We just started running away from the area. The whole area was covered with smoke and debris and it looked like a war zone. I didn’t know that the tower came down until I got into a cab where Howard Stern was on the radio announcing the news. Luckily I got away safely and my friend was also safe.
September 11th, 2006 at 1:25 pm
Copied from my post: http://livingyellow.blogspot.com/2006/09/five-years-ago.html
I had a terrible time waking up this morning. I just didn’t want to get out of bed.
Not unlike five years ago…
My alarm was set to the NPR newsradio station. Not a good idea, as I would often just lie there and listen to the news, losing track of time. But this morning was different. The first sounds on the radio were “we don’t know what’s going on. A plane. An airplane - it hit the tower. It was like… something’s happening, hold on. There’s another one! There’s a plane headed for the other tower - it hit the tower. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on.” Then an anchor voice “this is NPR, we have on the phone someone in New York City, where it sounds like a second airplane hit the World Trade Center.” And then they began asking questions of the person on the phone. There was no television in our apartment, so I just lay there listening…
I was paralyzed. What was going on? It doesn’t matter what time it is. Ah man, yes it does. I have the exam in Jazz History today. I’ll fail if I don’t go to class…
My roommate was already gone, but I knew she’d be back from classes soon. “Turn on the news” I left a sign on the door. I walked in shock up the hill to my class. I just couldn’t believe it.
In class, the teacher just told us to start, and then left the room to watch on the television in the next room. Why did he make us stay there? What an insensitive jerk!
Then, the kids in the classroom began talking. “What’s happening?” Someone asked. “The World Trade Center has been hit,” an answer. Then someone made a joke. A joke. The classroom was laughing. Laughing! People around me were laughing, and who knows how many people just DIED! I wanted to scream at them. I don’t remember if I said anything, but if I did it was something along the lines of “don’t you get it? People are dead.” I began crying. I left the room and walked home, crying.
What did this mean for our country? What did this mean? What could I do? How can I help? Why?
I didn’t attend any more classes that day. Instead a friend and I went out to a local pizza buffet that had televisions, so we could watch the news.
Five years later, we have all sorts of “security” and all sorts of controversy over that security. We have more war. We have more enemies. “The problem” has not been “solved” and I don’t think the “lesson” has been “learned.” (Sorry for all the quotation marks…)
I would love to post a beautiful quote or poem about peace here - but nothing that fits my feelings comes to mind.
September 11th, 2006 at 4:11 pm
I was living on the west coast, going through the beginning of a divorce and living in a house I was seriously rehabbing, which had to be sold as part of the divorce proceedings. A lot of stress, living in this house and under a deadline to get it finished so I could get on with my life.
The TV was the only furniture in my living room - the walls were down to the studs. I come into the living room and sit down in front of the TV. I’m putting on running shoes to go for a morning jog - I was working evening shift that day. I see that silly little banner running across the bottom of the screen, and noticed it said something about the WTC. I go into the kitchen to get some juice. I come back to the TV and they have switched to live footage of the WTC - all I can see is smoke. I just assume there is a big fire. NYC Fire Dept. is great - they’ll put it out.
After I come back from the kitchen a second time I see the second plane impact. It was like getting punched in the stomach. I knew this had to be an attack of some sort. And after hearing about the Pentagon and the crash in PA, knowing that my life and this country would never be the same.
Later my soon-to-be-ex calls - her stepdad is a Army chopper pilot and may have been at the Pentagon. Phone lines are jammed and there is no way to call the east coast. We are civil with each other but there is nothing much I can offer. We later find out he was ok and spent most of the day ferrying officers from a Fort in VA to the Pentagon to check on members of their units.
Never did go jogging that day. Still waiting for the government to speak straight with us and seriously deal with those who want to destroy Western Civilization.
September 11th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
I was just being roused back to consciousness in the recovery room of the hospital after surgery to donate a kidney to my brother.
Both towers had just collapsed, the nurses and orderlies were
frantic, rushing around, telling me I was okay but the world was ending. Helpless and groggy, I could only lay there and let it happen.
Funny thing, I was lying in bed the night before wondering how different life would be after the surgery.
Donor and recipient made it through successfully.
September 11th, 2006 at 6:21 pm
I was an OB/Gyn intern in pre-80 hour work week Boston. I had been up all night in an intense surgery, then had to round on my onc patients. I took a shower, put on fresh scrubs, and walked out into a whole new world. Until that day, I was the only intern in my entering class who hadn’t cried about something. That day, I couldn’t stop. I saw my chemo patients with tears running down my face, and eventually just climbed into an empty chemo chair and watched TV with them.
And then they told us we couldn’t leave the hospital until we found out if we were getting transports from NY. (I have to confess I cried hardest at that) When I did get to leave, I walked home through the quietest city I’ve ever been in. No one was out on the street except the SWAT teams, which was just surreal.
September 11th, 2006 at 6:23 pm
I was in my sixth grade science class and an announcement came on the PA system saying turn on the tv to CNN…I had no idea what was going on at first..at least it didnt really mean anything to me but we watched all day at school and i saw the second plane hit
September 12th, 2006 at 9:12 am
I was in my office in Washington, DC. One of my co-workers, a emigre from Beirut, was sobbing when she arrived at work, and after what seemed like many minutes, she was finally able to tell us what was happening. We switched on the television and then heard that in addition to the World Trade Center, a plane had crashed in DC and there were mixed reports on bombings around the area–people could see the smoke but they weren’t exactly sure where it was coming from. It took a while to figure out what was really happening and where in DC. Those of us who lived in Northern Virginia were advised to sit tight, so I spent the day with my co-workers watching the television and sitting in stunned silence. First thing I did was call my parents and wake them (on the West Coast) to let them know that I was okay. Late in the day two of my co-workers drove me home (they also lived in Nothern Virgina) and DC was empty except for the growing military presence.
September 12th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
I know many of you have probably already seen this, but I thought I’d share this video that I just found [via waxy.org]: Septemeber 11, 2001: What We Saw. It’s about half-an-hour of amateur footage from an apartment about 500 meters from the World Trade Center. I just watched it, and I’m very jumpy, much as I was that morning.
September 12th, 2006 at 4:08 pm
At the time I was living in California, but I was on a business trip with Army folks to Ohio. We were meeting in a hotel and the staff came into our meeting room to tell us that we needed to take a break and come see the TV in the lobby. We all filed out and watched dumbfounded. When the second plan it, our group was kicked into action. The post commander and other Army officers called in and drove back to post to put all their troops on alert. The rest of us started calling home. I woke up my husband and called my parents to let them know that 1) I was in Ohio (I traveled so much it was hard to keep track of my location) and 2) I was fine.
After a couple hours of watching the TV, I rallied what remained of our group and we pushed through our meeting. By the end of the day, we knew, the airports were closed. Some of the group rented cars and drove back to Maryland. I was not up for a solo drive back to CA, so I moved to a hotel in Cleveland and waited for the airports to reopen. The rest of that week, everyone was in shock but very nice. The hotel let me use their washing machine because my trip turned out longer then expected. I was on one of the first flights out of Cleveland, and there were 14 people (not including staff) on the plane.
October 13th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
I was working on MillionDollarLegend.com at the time (formerly MDS) and I remember clearly writing about Catastrophism just minutes before the first plane hit. Then I spent the rest of the day just watching the news, over and over. It’s one of those terrible moment I’ll never forget.
June 26th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
William, that’s very low of you to put a shameful plug of your website in.
September 11th, 2008 at 10:13 am
i was in the first grade and when i got home,
i see my mom crying in the living room,
and i look at the t.v to see what’s wrong .
i remember watching the plane crash into the twin tower
and then i hear all the screams in the t.v
it was really sad .
and im on the website, googling stuff on 9/11,
but i hope that we will all remember .
February 24th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Being in India, It was late in the evening when it happened. I was glued to the T.V. the whole night. I hadn’t seen anything like that before. I was in school when it happened. Both the towers were hit before I came to know about the attack.