9/11, what did you do that day? How did you find out?

In My Humble Opinion
161

I am in the Central Time Zone here in the US. I go to work very early, as I’m a baker IRL and had no radio or TV on. The cafe is located in the public library though.

A little before 9:00AM local time the kitchen manager arrives and says he heard on the car radio that a plane had crashed into the WTC. Now he’d pranked me before so I told him that was a sick joke but he insisted that this time he was telling the truth. So we both, along with one other co-worker ran into the library’s main section where there were TV"s under those sound suppression hoods. We watched replays of the second plane hitting, and were horrified. The librarians were rushing around getting out books about New York and skyscrapers in general, anything that featured the WTC. They made a display, with city maps of NYC.

But then it was back to work. Slow as hell that day, but we were open, and nobody had their mind on the job.

I know a guy whose brother died in one of the towers. He was on a floor about where the plane struck, and couldn’t get out. But some way he managed to get a call through to his brother and at least they were able to speak before the brother died.

162

I worked across the street from the WTC at the World Financial Center (closer to the Hudson River), as I had for about seven years. I also thought of the incident involving the B-25 and the Empire State Building, and assumed, when I was told about the first plane, that it was one of the sightseeing 4-seaters that flew along the Hudson. But then someone walked by my office door and said that a second plane had hit the other tower. I instantly thought, “My God, this is a terrorist attack.” I called my husband in New Jersey to say that I was okay and headed home. My boss came by: he was walking around out floor telling everyone to go home. For maybe the first time ever, I didn’t bother to log off and shut down my computer, just grabbed my briefcase and walked out. When I left the building, there were cops directing us to walk north, but I ignored them and started down to the NY Waterway ferry terminal to get across the river to Hoboken, NJ. I looked briefly at the two flaming towers; deep red-orange and some yellow flames and lots of smoke, and began to sob without tears. I didn’t look long. Because of some earlier experiences, I knew that the least amount of time anyone is exposed to trauma is the best. But I was just consumed with rage. When I got to the ferry dock, the NY Waterway operators were just filling up boats and not collecting tickets, just evacuating people ASAP. As I sat on the ferry, crossing the Hudson, some immortal idiot woman behind me said cheerfully to her friend, “I bet this means we get the whole week off.” I pretty much lost it, turned around and said “Are you SERIOUS? Do you think anyone on this boat cares if you get the week off? Listen, lady, there are people dying right now up there in those buildings. Have some respect. Have SOME RESPECT!”

In Hoboken, it took NJ Transit quite a while to decide if they would run trains, but eventually, around 11:15, after both towers had fallen, I got a train out to my town. When you leave the Hoboken train terminal, there’s a clear view of lower Manhattan and you could see this immense plume of ash and smoke. People were either quiet or weeping. I heard one guy call his wife on his cell phone and tell her to go get the kids out of school and bring them home. He wanted to hug his children.

I was back at work in emergency quarters on Thursday and it wasn’t until exactly a month later that I really had a breakdown. Got up, said “I can’t go to work today,” called a shrink I knew and spent an hour on the phone sobbing. It took me three years before I stopped leaping out my skin every time I heard a sudden loud noise.

163

At the time I had just left a Reserve assignment in the Pentagon to go to another Reserve post. I was in my office in my civilian job talking to my active duty contact working on some final paperwork for the reservists who had worked for me in the Pentagon when I heard a background commotion over the phone. My contact said, “There’s people screaming in the hallway that some planes have struck the world trade centers!” We both hung up and I walked into the conference room next to my office and told the people there, “Turn on CNN. Planes have flown into the WTC.”

Shortly after we heard the report that a plane had flown into the Pentagon.

Due to my civilian and Reserve responsibilities at the time it was weeks before I was able to check on my contact. She lived.

164

Well fuuuuck. That choked me up.

165

I was on a kayak trip. We were at the Ocoee river in E. Tennessee. We were camped at the top of Chilhowee mountain. Got up in the morning, got our gear together and hopped in the truck to head to the put-in. Turned on the radio and they were talking about the plane crashing into the first tower. We listened as we drove down the mountain and soon they were talking about the second plane hitting the second tower. We got to the put in and there was a ranger with the radio in his Jeep broadcasting the latest as a group of stone faced kayakers listened in silence. What to do? Should we put on, have fun paddling while this is going on? Pack up and go home? Drive to NY and help out? After listening for a while people gradually headed for the water and put on. We did too. That night some more friends joined us. They saw the video which we had not. They assured us that as bad as we may think it was, it was worse. We paddled again the next day and the day after.

Had fun, fuck you terrorists!

166

My wife called as I was getting ready for work, and told me to turn on the TV. I actually watched the second tower collapse live. I remember driving to work down the Peninsula from San Francisco, expecting anything. At one point five fighter jets in formation flew along highway 280, slow and low. Surreal. I was imagining having to run some invading soldiers over or something, and then picking up my wife and heading into the Sierras, Red Dawn style.

167

Weird… not sure how I missed this thread the first time around.

Anyway… worst day off work evar. I’d taken 3 days off work (Friday the 7th, Monday the 10th and Tuesday the 11th) to go to Shreveport with my girlfriend at the time and her friends to celebrate her birthday. The trip went ok- didn’t win any money, didn’t get laid, but had a good time nonetheless. Got home late on Sunday. Slept in Monday, and screwed around.

Tuesday, Sept. 11th I had taken off because I had a job interview, and didn’t really want to explain to my bosses that I wanted to take a Tuesday afternoon off. So my plan was to sleep in, loaf around all morning, then go to my 3 pm job interview, and then come back and play video games.

I was awakened just after the second tower was hit, by a friend of mine calling me to tell me about it- ISTR that I’d told her I had the day off. So I spent the rest of the morning watching the news with my roommate, who was unemployed at the time. We heard the first reports of the Pentagon attack, as well as watched both towers fall live on TV.

The company with the job interview actually called me and proposed that we reschedule the job interview in light of the events of the day, and in a fit of hard-assedness, I told them that no, I’d already taken the day off, so we’d have the interview. Then, during the interview, I realized that I didn’t want to work for this company anyway, and literally stopped the interviewer mid-sentence and told him that we shouldn’t waste each other’s time anymore. I don’t think he’d ever had anyone not play the game, and ride out the interview gracefully, and then decline any job offer that was made.

But… in light of the events of the day, I wasn’t really in a mood to sit through any more of this guy’s BS, so I politely told him as much.

Driving home was really weird; usually the DFW evening sky is full of multiple aircraft going to either DFW Airport or Love Field, and that day, it was TOTALLY empty.

168

I was living in Tokyo, and got home a little late. I turned on NHK, the national broadcasters, and saw the towers burning. The reports were chaotic. I called an American friend who also lived in Japan and we talked for about an hour as we watched the news.

I would listen to the US military radio, and for weeks they completely changed the programing while Japan was pretty much back to “normal” within a couple of days.

My friend’s wife “Linda” has a sister who was living in Boston and was on an airline flying out to see them in SF that day, but not one which was hijacked. Linda was in a complete panic until her sister safely arrived. Linda had been afraid of flying from before, but could sometimes. However, she’s never been able to fly since.

169

Sobering, but good, to see this thread again. I already posted earlier - post 103.

170

I had just started seventh grade and this boy I knew from elementary school told me what happened at around 10am. I didn’t understand what he meant at first and thought he was referring to the 1993 bombing.

My history teacher let us watch TV, but most of the teachers kept quiet about what was going on because they did not want to upset students (which is why I found out about it so late despite being in the same time zone). We watched the news for that class period and then went back to regular classwork. School was canceled the next day, but after that we just carried on as usual although the history teacher who let us watch the news let us discuss it briefly and we made a card for a kid whose uncle had died in the Pentagon. I know it was around 10am that he turned on the TV, but I could be wrong because I do not remember watching the towers fall in real time which you’d think I’d recall, but who knows.

I’m not sure what others experiences were with talking about it, but my parents didn’t want to talk about it and I guess none of my teachers didn’t either, so I never heard an adult really, truly discuss that day with myself or other kids until my second year of college.

171

In addition to my two previous posts I wanted to add that friends of my parents have relatives in Jew Jersey. When the news came in about the attacks and the phone lines from Germany to the U.S. were totally jammed, those friends of my parents had a nervous breakdown because they were not able to get through to their relatives in New Jersey and (how it often times is when such events take place) you cannot think straight any longer and they interpreted the jammed lines as the worst.

We tried to comfort them and tried to talk rationally to them, trying to make them see that jammed phone lines does not mean the worst.

It is horrible how this day affected lives and people from all over the world, even those who weren’t actually related to any of it in any way - but still it affected them emotionally and psychologically. Just sad!!

And, AuntPam, your posting really moved me!! What a horrible experience!! And what a stupid comment from that lady on the ferry!!

172

Just the simple truth, Marvolo. It’s interesting seeing the experiences of others on this thread. Things changed forever that day. The thing that sometimes makes me the saddest is that every perfect blue September day for the rest of my life will be just a little sad. One of my friends lost a brother in (I think) the North Tower, and as a result, dedicated himself to a peace organization which reached out to Afghanis and Arabs. I have Muslim friends. They were as horrified by this as I was by Jim Jones and the Branch Davidians and the Westboro Baptist “Church”. All miserable hate-filled egomaniacal bastards, cloaked in a perversion of religious faith.

I worked at the time for a true gentleman named John Sprung. John is a former Air Force officer; as a kid he was a Freedom Rider in the South. Also an excellent finger-pickin’ folk guitarist. His song about 9/11 “Remember Me”, is one the best written about the aftermath.

173

Had the day off and slept through the whole thing. Looked out my window and saw a lot of smoke in the sky. Thought “Wow, there must be some kind of apartment fire in Adams Morgan. Hope people are OK.” It turned out to be the Pentagon, all the way in Arlington.

I invited some of the maintenance guys doing work on my building in to watch TV, and just stayed in trying to phone people I knew in NYC, including my sister.

174

I was in 10th grade US history class.

For the rest of the day, we watched the coverage.

175

I was not working that week, and being on the West Coast it was early in the AM and I hadn’t turned on the TV. I walked down to my local coffee shop to get a cup of coffee and heard someone say “a plane hit the WTC”. I immediately thought “Cessna” and wondered if there was any damage to the building. Then I heard “jet” and thought WTF?

Someone explained what was going on, and I went over to a buddy’s house and we sat in front of the TV for a few hours in disbelief.

Now, oddly enough, I had planned to play golf with some friends that day. We had a tee time set up and everything. We went ahead and played, thinking: what will not playing do to help the situation?

176

I posted already (and its true). That silly stupid dream 2 nights before about the 3 tornados (red, white, and blue)? The blue one that hit/flattened the tall apt building, the white one that hit/smashed the flat one-story grocery store, and the red one that passed overhead without hitting, leaving everything covered in white snow?

I don’t take cruises any more; dreams like that over deep water nobody needs.

177

I was in school and we watched it on tv and I was pulled out by my parents because we feared it would affect me or scare me.

178

Was email affected at all that day? I remember hearing that the phone system into and out of NYC (indeed, for most of the East Coast) froze up, but could people still reach their loved ones there through email?

179

To the OP, if one of the alternative stories wants to know about plane wreckage in DC, you can trust me when I say there was some, I saw it up close.
Taken away pretty quick, but it was there.

180

Are you saying the dream makes sense now?