Since Vix (second tower hit) survived, I lost no friends. Who did you lose?
Weirdly, no one, and I lived and worked in Central Jersey.
Pretty much everyone I worked with knew someone who died, though. I felt badly for them.
A guy I went to high school with was a fire chief who died in one of the Towers. I hadn’t seen him since graduation forty years ago.
Two women who were former co-workers (and friends) worked at Cantor Fitzgerald. One of them was married and had a baby, and she usually brought her to the company’s daycare. On that morning, the baby was running a slight fever, so she left her at home with her husband. Because of that, the baby survived. Since then, the husband has remarried, so the baby (now almost 9) has a new mommy and baby brother.
I lived and worked in NYC for 25 years, so may have known others as well . . . but I’ve never gone through all the names. It seems that every New Yorker lost people.
I didn’t lose any people, but in the aftermath it seems as if I lost several of my constitutional rights. And it wasn’t Al Quaida that took them from me.
This thread is more about people who were lost, however. Great Debates would be a better place to discuss constitutional issues and there have been many debates about those topics in that forum.
I live in NYC. I don’t know anyone who either worked in the towers or was killed that day.
Well, ok, but I did kind of think of them as friends. 
The father of the two little girls I used to babysit for when I was in high school. Before 9/11, the family used to hire me every couple of weeks, so the parents could have an evening out. After 9/11, I was over there every weekend and a lot of weeknights, because the mother found it hard getting the hang of parenting alone and needed someone to watch her kids while she ran errands by herself. I also found out, later, that a lot of times she would have me come over to watch her kids, and a housekeeper come over to take care of her chores, and she would lock herself in her room and cry all afternoon.
I didn’t lose anyone personally, but one of my coworkers was an Air Force reservist who occasionally served at the Pentagon; she knew several of the people who were killed there.
[quote=“panache45, post:4, topic:509890”]
Two women who were former co-workers (and friends) worked at Cantor Fitzgerald. One of them was married and had a baby, and she usually brought her to the company’s daycare. On that morning, the baby was running a slight fever, so she left her at home with her husband. Because of that, the baby survived. Since then, the husband has remarried, so the baby (now almost 9) has a new mommy and baby brother.
/QUOTE]
All the children in the day care center were evacuated safely.
The day care center was in the complex, but not in the towers.
I thought that I didn’t know anybody who dies, but it turns out I did, and I found out in an odd way.
When I was in elementary school on Long Island, a game called Elimination (or Elimo) was all the rage. It was a form of dodgeball. This kid named Pepe Salerno was the best player. He was just about always the last one standing, and oy, you did not want to get in his sights, 'cause he would nail ya.
We continued through high school together. I didn’t know him well as he was a year older, but I did know that he was a big lacrosse player. You always knew the lacrosse players because they always wore one of those lanyard thingies hanging out of their pockets, and they traveled in a pack. A pack of little wiry muscley guys who were all pretty cute. I always remembered and noticed him because hey, he was the king of Elimo. He probably didn’t even know that I knew who he was. I didn’t have a thing for him or anything, but like I said, those lacrosse players were cute! Given the cliques in my school, there was no way I would end up dating one. But my boyfriend freshman year of college was a little wiry muscley lacrosse player. 
Fast forward to a year or so after 9/11. I was now living in Westfield, NJ, where a monument to the 11 people lost was built. I went over to look at it. There was a small obelisk for each person. One of the obelisks was festooned with flowers and there was a lacrosse lanyard looped around it. I went over to read it, and found “John “Pepe” Salerno” engraved on it. Pepe Salerno! Holy crow! How many Pepe Salernos could there be, but what was he doing in Westfield? I checked into it, and it turns out that it was indeed the same one. He just happened to move to Westfield at some point. And still playing and coaching lacrosse.
Too bad I never ran into him. He probably would have been tickled to find out that I still remembered his mad Elimo skills after 20 years.
So here’s to you, Pepe Salerno, lacrosse player extraordinaire and Elimo King.
I was hosting a community on MSN at the time and one of our long term members was Michelle. She had leukemia and she survived on bone marrow donations from her brother who was a New York Policeman. He was sort of wiped out- they were looking for him and then she never responded to emails etc.
The gate to hell swings on small hinges.
Someone I knew well was a specialist in toxic waste, and he was there immediately to help with the cleanup. Very shortly after he contracted cancer and died. I can’t say for certain that it was exposure to the stuff at Ground Zero that was responsible, but that’s been my gut feeling. The contamination was all over the place, and he couldn’t be as careful or as safe in dealing with it than he had been with other toxic spills.
I don’t understand this. He died on 9/11? Then you never heard more from her on your online community?
I’m also unfamiliar with the aphorism.
A college friend was killed in Tower 1, a very sweet man.
Not me personally, but my wife was friendly with several of the kitchen staff of Windows on the World. She was working at the Russian Tea Room at the time, and her boss, the pastry chef, had previously worked at Windows; some of his old crew would occasionally stop by RTR to help out, and my wife got to know them pretty well.
Windows was at the top of Tower 1, above the point the first plane hit. No-one working there that morning survived.
Not 9/11 but 7/7 - the U.K. bombing (hey, I’m British) - I was at a party shortly thereafter and two of those invited dropped in to say that they couldn’t stay because they were on their way to London to identify one of the bodies. :eek:
In 1998 a member of the Racquet Club hired my band to play for his daughter’s engagement party at the club. He was fairly senior in a futures firm that was on a high floor of 1 WTC and was competely wiped out. My former client was one of the first ten confirmed dead.