What has changed in your life since September 11, 2001? Remembrance thread.

In My Humble Opinion
61

I was about a month into what turned out to be a year-long stay in Mississippi. I was the only New Yorker (I’m from upstate) anybody was aware of on my campus, and had already gained a small amount of notoriety for that alone - the girls in my residence hall all seemed to recognize me as “the Yankee girl,” at least. For weeks after 9/11, people I had never seen before would offer their condolences for the grief they imagined I was suffering.

I was ten days past my very first weekend with Gunslinger, and I wasn’t going to see him again for a month. I was afraid the world was falling down. I was afraid it was the start of war. I wanted to drop everything and run back to Texas on a Greyhound.

I didn’t have any way to place a long-distance call, so I was unable to contact my mother until she called me. I couldn’t get online because the school’s network was so jammed with students trying to get information about what was going on. My father is a trucker and at that time had two different runs he would make - one to New York City and one to Pennsylvania - so I was terrified until I found out my mom had heard from him. He’d been about 40 miles from where the plane went down in PA, and he was stuck at the terminal until further notice. I don’t know if interstate shipping was frozen anywhere else or if it was his specific company or his specific terminal - is anyone else aware?

I was a mess for weeks. I didn’t lose anyone I knew, but it was a huge jar to my system. I’d never lived under threat of attack before; I’m too young to really remember the Cold War, and even the military efforts that have taken place within my lifetime never touched us here at home. Gun was in ROTC in high school, and I had this vague idea that this made him more likely to get dragged off to the front if we went to active war (I still don’t really understand how the military worked, but that made sense to me at the time, anyway, even though I now know it was pretty illogical). I was terrified and alone. I accepted the hugs from random strangers - something that I would normally have avoided - because I felt so isolated and scared.

It faded, though. Echoes remained throughout the rest of my stay in Mississippi - new people would meet me, learn where I was from, and ask if I’d lost anyone in the WTC even if I explained that my hometown is nowhere near the city.

Oddly, even while I was a wreck inside, I was the logical one in emails with my high school friends. They feared nuclear attacks, and I was the one to explain that our town is too far from NYC for even the biggest bomb I could find information on to send damaging fallout our way, even if it wouldn’t have to go over a mountain chain or two.

Even more oddly, I had never been to New York City (except on a class trip during which all I got to see was a homeless guy peeing on our school bus, and the UN building) until just this past January. I went again in June or July. Both times I went to the site of the WTC, contemplated and felt sad, but both times I headed back uptown and forgot about it. The buildings themselves meant nothing to me when they existed. To me 9/11 wasn’t really about some buildings going down, it was about the idea of somebody kicking American ass on American soil when we hadn’t tried to kick their ass on their own soil first…

I’m extremely unelegant and rambly in this post. I apologize. It’s the first time I’ve tried to gather my thoughts about it.

62

oops i forgot to say what i was doing. I woke up that morning at a time much earlier than normal… maybe 45 minutes eariler. I go and sit down on my computer around 6 am pst. I still remember what was said and who said it. the exact words were “kiddies, youre all watching history being made hehe.” At that idea i had no idea what was going on yet. Just that second i go wake up my brother and tell him that something really big is going on but i dont know what it is. right then, the phone rings. it was my dad and i can quote his exact words too… “turn on your tv, all hell is breaking loose in new york.” I turn on the tv, everyone runs into the room because im pretty sure i was telling everyone to wake up. my dad was still on the phone but no one was saying one word. He had one of those moments where he walked into a 7-11 to buy something, and 10 people were standing there watching tv without saying a word. no one said anything for the next 10 minutes. i go to school and everyone is of course watching tv. everyone also watching the sky as the military planes fly by making more noise than weve ever heard anything in the sky make.

for some reason i remember every little thing i did that day. i remember going home and turning on the tv. i remember a lot of things the anchors said and evidently took a shitload mental pictures if youd like to call them that. i was probably just scared that bush was going to do something stupid like launch crazy ass missiles at random countries…

63

Everything in my life has changed since 11 September 2001, but little of it due to the attacks.

I still remember the night though.

It was around 9 PM on the night of 11 September on my side of Australia. My brother was on the Net (as always) so he heard the news of the hijackings first. I switched on my television and saw the smoke coming out of the side of the first tower. I was watching when the second plane came in.

I was still watching when the towers came down. At first, no one knew what was going on – I thought a bomb had gone off – but soon we knew. By this time, my whole house was up out of bed and watching.

The next morning at uni (I was in my fourth year), I had a morning taxation law lecture. My lecturer was too upset, however – he had taught in the US – so he cancelled the class. I met up with my usual bunch of friends and we had lunch at an upstairs cafe on campus.

The cafe staff had dragged out a TV into the dining area, so we turned our seats and kept watching the news. All Australian channels had by this time tuned into the same broadcast feed. At this time, they were still showing the footage of people – tiny as ants but recognisable as real humans – leaping from the towers rather than face the fires inside. They later withdrew those images.

On my way home, I stopped off at a friend’s house for a beer. We watched more of the news.

–

It’s difficult to determine what exactly it is I take from the memory of 11 September. New York City is, after all, half a world away from my home. Despite the media attention, it’s a distant new story to most of my fellows. A terrible incident to be sure, but ever so far away from our day-to-day lives.

Reading YOUR stories, however, brings an element of reality to the tragedy. So thanks for that, all of you.

64

So many thoughts and feelings are already shared that mirror my own.
I lived overseas for a number of years until my return home a year before 9/11. My first job back even sent me to NYC to review a client’s proposal to us. One evening we went to the Towers and rode the elevator up to the bar at the top that night. I distinctly remember standing at the windows looking out, and down(!), that night.

A year later, a dot com job turned into a dot bomb (and out of work in Silicon Valley), we watched the second tower crash to earth only after a phone call from friends in the South called us in California and told us to turn on the TV. Fear? Not really, although Mrs. Duckster cried her eyeballs out when we saw the second tower go down live on TV. Anger? Not quite sure now that I think about it. Uncertainty? Hell, yes. Would we be going to war? Would a war go away the way with nukes? Would this attack slow my return to finding a job because potential employers would retreat even further as a result of their own unfounded fears?

(Only days later did it dawn on me that I had started reading a new novel the previous night, Tom Clancy’s Executive Action. I’ve never picked it up since.)

What has changed? I see my fellow Americans back to being just as rude, arrogant and self-centered as ever, if not more so. America certainly had become less gentler and less nicer while living overseas. But in these past two years, I see so many with chips on their shoulders, ready to pick a fight over the smallest non-issue, politically polarized far beyond anything I’ve ever seen before, including Vietnam. Only now are some openly questioning our government’s threats to civil liberties and the Constitution, yet so many more don’t see this as important! I see so many bull**** lies coming from my boss at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, yet no one really calling him on it. And as a federal employee, I see there’s so much more going on that is truly frightening, yet the public still doesn’t know (nor care?) what may be in store for all of us. (I’m on a national incident team and while we coordinate and direct forest fire fighting for the most part, if the national threat levels go to orange or even red, we could go anywhere in a national emergency. As to our emergency plans, go read a Tom Clancy novel. He’s not that far off from reality.)

Even one poster in this thread would rather walk all over the First Amendment just to keep nukes out of the hands of terrorists. For me, we can keep one and prevent the other, if people would just pull out their fingers out of their asses, quit looking in the mirror, question government authority and take personal responsibility. We really do need to take care of each other, give a little, give back a lot and fight this f*ing, selfish ignorance.

When the next attack comes, all bets are off. I’m a student of history and politics, including a professional historian for a while. Another attack with the present attitudes in America leave me with serious doubts that this 227-year old grand experiment of constitutional and democratic freedoms may disappear in my lifetime, or less.

65

I was working in Kosovo on Sept. 11. I had just finished up for the day and had stopped in to the UN building in Prizren to send a couple of emails. I noticed everyone was gathering in the TV room. As we were watching it unfold they announced that the Pentagon had been hit. I said out loud (pretty much to myself) “my sister works there.” A woman with a Scottish accent I had never met said “call her” and handed me her cell phone. I called her home and found out she was okay. Since then I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for the Scotts.

All over Kosovo, Muslims who were grateful for our intervention against the Serb atrocities poured into the streets. People gave blood, cities held spontaneous candle light vigils, strangers hugged me and mosques flew the American flag. I was so glad to be experiencing all of this.

The next day, as I was riding with my Kosovar colleague to our job site, he started telling me about the day the Serbs came to his home and told him and his family to leave. When he got to the Albanian border that day, Chetniks were picking the attractive women out of the line of refugees to take to the rape camps. He told me how he and his wife talked about what to do if the Chetniks took her. She told him to let them, there was nothing he could do and if he tried to stop them, they would still take her and kill him, leaving their children orphans on the border. They didn’t take his wife, thank God, but they still had to plan for it. He told me he would never forget what America did for him and his people. As we spoke, tears were streaming down his face.

As far as how it has effected me: I’m sorry to make this political, but I have seen this administration manipulate fear of the unknown to launch a needless war in Iraq, while ignoring the important work left to be done in Afghanistan.

I have seen Iraq transformed from a country in the grip of a maniacal madman into a country in the grip of a thousand maniacal madmen. I have read the list of the dead in the UN bombing in Baghdad and seen the names of former colleagues from Kosovo. I have seen political dissent labeled treason. I have seen the rise of easy jingoism in the form US flags on gas guzzling SuVs and the denegration of reasoned debate as helping the terrorists.

Finally, on a personal level, I am sitting in an office in Kuwait. On Saturday I board a C130 and re-enter Iraq. A lot of you might ask what Iraq has to do with September 11. That’s a very good question.

66

I was talking online with an American on September 11, 2001.

My attitude towards Americans has changed:

I admire and respect the American people more than I did before.

67

One of my co-workers is a Lt. Colonel in the Army Reserve, who serves at the Pentagon when on duty. The first thing I thought when I heard that the Pentagon was hit was that I was very glad she was safely at her desk across the hall from my office, and not downtown that day. She was, however, acquainted with some of the people who were killed.

I also remember that morning that we were hearing a lot of false reports about attacks in downtown DC: there was a bomb at the State Dept., a bomb at the White House, and so on. There was very much a what the hell is happening? feeling among the people at our agency–more bewilderment than anything else–and I was worried for friends who work downtown.

I only heard about the Towers collapsing on the car radio after we were sent home, and could only watch the footage on CNN once when I got home before I turned the TV off.

The thing that’s changed most in my daily life because of 9/11 is the heightened level of security that surrounds us at work. I never used to know where my ID badge was; it would sit in a desk drawer or purse pocket for months at a time, and I’d have to scramble to find it when I did need it. Now, it’s always worn visibly around the office. I present it to the guards at the front desk every morning before going through the gate. We didn’t used to have guards at a desk, or a gate. In spite of–or perhaps because of–these precautions, I feel much more vulnerable as a federal employee than I used to.

68

As a college instructor I find this difficult to believe. Sad.

As I said I was in Arizona when the atrocity hit. Upon reflection and remembrance I have a video tape of CNN footage from that morning. A friend made the tape. He pressed record the minute he saw what was happening. He got everything. And I mean everything. The first three hours the editors did not have a chance to edit the people and bodies falling out of the building. So the first three hours you can see this on national television.

I tear up sometimes when I think about watching people falling out of the buildings. Or when I see the french documentary of a certain engine company in New York…This is the documentary where everything was caught on tape. It has been edited to not show the people falling. But you don’t need to see them in the video. Because ever few seconds you hear things slaming down in the background. I do not need to tell you what those ‘things’ were…

Today is a day to remember. Not only to remember what happened, or where you were, but to remember we are still at war. It is the American way to want to forget, to want to pull the wool over our own eyes and think it didn’t happen.

I walked into school today from the parking lot. A student said, “Hey prof.Phil…whats up?”

Me: Remembrance!
She: Remembrance of what?
me: What days today Shelly?
She: September 11, 2003…:eek:…Oh I see. Thanks for reminding me::frowning:

69

I was going into NYC from New Jersey that morning to meet with a client in the garment district. I was heading towards the Holland Tunnel when the first plane hit. I didn’t see it hit but when I happened to glance at the skyline I saw the smoke and fire coming out of the tower. I turned on 1010 WINS, a NYC news station and heard the announcer say that a plane had hit the WTC. All traffic had basically stopped and some people were getting out of their cars to get a better look.
I was talking to the guy in the car next to me when I saw a huge orange fire ball out of the corner of my eye and a split second later heard a muffled boom…it was the second plane hitting. I remember hearing the sounds of unbelief coming from those standing around me. We were a good 1 1/2 to 2 miles away from the WTC and it all seemed so unreal.
I remember seeing pieces falling off the buildings that I later learned were people jumping and I’m glad I didn’t know it was people at the time.
As the towers burned I was looking towards the Statue of Liberty expecting it to blow up as well.(Anyone who lives near by should know exactly where I was)
Then the first tower fell, followed by the second.
I was numb.
After a while the traffic started to move…the police were sending everyone back towards Jersey. I tried calling home on my cell but I couldn’t get through.
I finally got home around 3:30 PM and saw my wife and 2 girls sitting on our front porch waiting for me. I live in Clifton NJ and my family watch the whole thing from our backyard ,it has a beautiful view of the city.
My life has changed alot since that day…I no longer take things for granted…I enjoy every second with my kids.
I have supplies set aside incase something worse happens and have a plan in place to get everyone together.
I still go into the city. It’s a great place with alot of great things to do.
I thought about moving further away but this is our home. To leave would be a small victory for those that hate us.

70

It was my first semester as a junior at the university. I had transfered there after completing my 2 year degree at a community college. I was supposed to meet two of my closest friends who had transfered with me for lunch that day. We were going to meet in front of the campus bookstore.

My first class was from 8am until 9:20am, although I believe class let out closer to 9am that day. Throughout this class, we knew nothing. No one had a cell phone on. No one stopped by our room to let us know anything.

Around 9am I walked to another building for my economics class. As other students started to come in, I started to hear about the events happening. At first it was, “a small commuter plane has crashed into the trade center.” Then it was, “it looks like it was a much larger plane.” By the time class started, the second plane had hit. We didn’t cancel class. I don’t know why we had class or why I didn’t just leave.

During class another teacher stopped by and let us know that something was going on near the white house. They had seen the smoke on television. Someone in class wondered aloud if the trade center building would fall. I remember very clearly our professor saying, “the trade center buildings will never fall.”

Class let out. The skies were so blue, so clear. Planes had been grounded, but fighter jets were flying. I met one of my two friends in front of the bookstore. The other friend had stayed home sick that day. We called her to let her know what was happening. It seemed so surreal.

We went to the student activities center and watched the tvs there. I watched the towers fall…then over and over again as the footage replayed. They evacuated the downtown of the city I live in, and my friend left to get her children from schoo. (They were in the area being evacuated.)

For two hours I watched the tvs at school before it first hit me. Suddenly I was crying. I was scared. I wanted to be with my family. My mom had been in NYC just two weeks before. I sat down outside and tried to get a line on my cell phone to call my mom. The skies were so blue that day.

I still tremble and cry when I see the videos or pictures of the planes hitting or the towers falling. In that moment, I am watching the lives of hundreds of people ending simultaneously. I am watching the moment that changed my life.

My school did not cancel classes on that day, but in the two years since then, I have not gone to school on September 11th. I remember September 11th.

71

I do not understand why classes were not canceled. I was gone inAZ but my classes would have been canceled that day. My collegues all canceled their classes. Then again being so close to the city, many students had family there.

72

Classes at my university went on as normal. Most of the professors cancelled theirs by their own choice, but my English professor refused to let us even talk about it, and made a subtle dig at me for being from New York. This later became a regular occurence.

73

I’ve never really thought about how 09/11 changed me. I’m not sure if it’s changed me at all. I remember being a little scared that day and I didn’t want to be at work. I wanted to run home to my fiance and my kids and I remember watching the news for weeks afterwards. Other than that I think I’m still the same person I always was.

The day started out the same as any other day. I dropped the kids’ off at the sitters and drove to work. I was listening to the Bob & Tom radio show and they started talking about a plane crashing into the WTC. I thought they were joking at first but could tell by the tone of their voices that they weren’t. A few minutes after they first started talking about it I was at work. I ran up to my desk and turned on my computer and my phone rang. It was my fiance (now my husband). He was listening to the same radio show and asked me if I knew what was going on. I started looking at news sites online and could only find one small article but no details. It was too soon. One of my co-workers came to my desk and told me they were watching the news in one of the offices. I went into the office and saw the smoke billowing from the first tower. All that smoke. It was awful. I looked out the window and noticed what a beautiful sunny day it was here. It started out as a sunny day in NYC too… but turning back to the tv I saw all that smoke again.

We continued watching the news and all of the sudden we saw the second plane hit. Everyone in the room gasped and then there was nothing but silence. It was horrifying. My jaw dropped to the floor and stayed that way for several minutes. No one could even speak. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing.

A few minutes later I went back to my desk and called my fiance and told him what was going on. He remembers seeing several planes turn around and head back to the airport after all planes were grounded. We called each other several times that day and I didn’t get any work done that morning and very little in the afternoon. Most of us in the office stayed around the tv for a good part of the day. We saw the towers fall. Again, dead silence. It was awful. I felt so bad for all those people who had died and were hurt. I can’t imagine living in the city and seeing the smoke and ash. I know that I wanted to go home so badly. I wanted to hug my fiance and my kids. I certainly didn’t want to be at work that day. I find it strange that I even remember what I was wearing that day. I don’t know why I would remember that but I’m sure I’ll never forget it.

74

I was in Georgia, putting the final touches on a show. It was a national tour that was supposed to open that night. We had done most of our load in the day before, so we just had a small crew in to help us double check, clean up, whatever. One of the local crew came out on stage and said that a plane had hit a building in New York. We all kind of shrugged and went back to work. A couple minutes later, someone else turned on the radio.

We all stopped working and went outside to the tour bus, inviting in the local crew as well (something that never happens). We had satilite TV on the bus, so we just sat there watching CNN. I kept trying to call my many friends in NY, but I could never get through. At about 2pm or so, we had a meeting with the full cast, crew, and producers. We decided to cancel our opening night, and “try to do something tomorrow.”

This was the very start of the tour. We had only known each other for about a week and a half. Most of the actors were from NY. The producer had friends in the Pentagon. We were all in a city far from our homes and loved ones. My personal feelings of helplessness were unbeleivable. There I was, down south, trying to put on a damn musical with a bunch of people I barely knew.

I guess the biggest thing that’s changed for me is how I look at my job. I no longer work on tours, but the biggest thing is that I’ve found worth in my work. I spent a few months after 9-11 being fairly disgusted with myself for not being able to help anyone, to do anything. Now, I see that theatre does exactly that, and that many people use my work to escape from things like this. I guess the most important thing that I did that year was to continue with the tour, and bring an escape to people’s towns.

Thanks for sharing, everyone.

75

Scroll over to the first page where I decribe what a flashbulb memory is. Basically, an event that you have witnessed that is quite literally stored in an area in your longterm memory that your hippocampus has deemed accessable at all times. Reference people who were alive when kennedy was shot. I bet they can tell you what they were wearing, where they were etc…etc… with amazing clarity.

76

9/11 marked the beginning of my break from the Republican party. The event itself didn’t trigger that, though, more the response over the next two years.

Other than that, I can’t say my life has changed much at all. I guess that’s a good thing.

77

Where I was:
On my way to a new job, for my first real day of work (Monday was orientation) at a nuclear weapons laboratory. It was pretty surreal – all the gates were closed, and the guards all had their machine guns out. I work in the unclassified area part of the lab which, before 9/11, was pretty low security, so it was pretty weird to see the whole lab on high alert. They sent us home by 10:30am, and I spent the rest of the day watching tv and feeling sick.

How 9/11 changed me:
In the immediate months following 9/11, for the first time I truly felt George Bush was a good leader. Both because he took his time going to war with Afghanistan and because he strongly emphasized that the last thing we should do is completely change all that makes us great as Americans in response to this attack. These ideas to me spoke of a man of courage who didn’t want his country reacting blindly out of fear. Before that, I had only seen him as an incompetent tool of his advisors and party, whose policies I disagreed with. It was nice to feel partisan politics take a back seat to the good of the country, and see our leader working with the world to make things better.

Since then, I am shocked that I ever could have felt that way. President Bush sickens and terrifies me, for the exact same reasons I admired him initially. I think he has spent the last two years leveraging our fear from this tragedy to gain political advantage, without doing a thing to actually make us safer, and it infuriates me. From the war in Iraq to the massive tax cuts during a recession to losing focus in Afghanistan to pissing off the rest of the world for no reason to cutting our civil liberties and stifling political discussion, I think he has done more damage to this country than any other president in history. I think we’re in far more danger of another attack than before 9/11, and it’s a direct result of his policies.

I’m sick of feeling angry and betrayed every time I listen to the news.

78

I began an inner journey in which I discovered that people are more important than money or things. Even people that drive you crazy. This all led to an outer journey back to the place I was born and most of my family lives. Since 9/11, I moved to a different state, gave up a high-paying software job to work from home, got married, and became a Christian.

Although some of those things are seemingly unrelated to each other and to 9/11, I think that they all stem from a changed point of view. I learned that everything changes in the blink of an eye, and that I don’t necessarily have a long life ahead of me to accomplish all the things I’ve been putting off. I’ve spent more time thinking about what’s actually important to me, and not what I’m supposed to want.

Like someone else mentioned, I cry more easily at other’s tragedies. I’ve always been empathetic, but in the past couple years I’ve been a stinkin’ fountain. Other people’s stories break my heart much more than they used to. And heal it more, too.

I was never a very outwardly affectionate person. I’ve changed. I hug my husband whenever I can. I hug my nieces and nephews whenever I see them. I hug my mom, even though it makes her uncomfortable. Conversely, I miss my dad (who died in 94) less. I think I’ve learned more about how to hold onto people more loosely. We’ll lose everyone someday – I’ve gotten better at loving them now while they’re still here and letting go more easily when they’re taken.

Disjointed, aren’t I? :slight_smile:

79

I’m not sure my life has really changed that much. I’m older, my son is going to school. But I do have my memories of the time.

One that sticks out concerned the labour day weekend before. I was downtown (Toronto) with My wife and two friends. We had tickets to the BlueJay/NY Yankees game. The Jays were being beaten and we noticed there were so many damned Yankees fans cheering.

Above us were a whole bunch of guys wearing NYFD tee shirst and having a grand time at our expense. We exchanged a few unpleasantries as sports fans are opt to do, nothing serious. I guess it was a day trip.
Just some Firefighters on a dayoff having a few beers and watching their home team at another stadium.

I have always wondered if any of those guys were in the building, how many survived that day and how many were lost?

I watched the events unfold at home (I was sick with strep thoat that week) thinking that of those emergency workers lost could very well have been one of the guys jeering my team on that nice hot Labour day two years ago.

That always brings the whole incident home for me.