Your Memories From 9/11

[java]

The 2 that stand out to me on that day, getting the call that my BIL was missing(he was a NY transit cop) and my neighbor bringing over a photo of her BIL for me to show to my BIL so he could look for him. My BIL survived, her BIL did not.

And standing at the school bus stop talking with a friend after the kids got on the bus, and noticing a very low flying plane. Very low. It was the plane that crashed in PA.

 

[jsrj21]

I was off that day working on my house installing kitchen cabinets and listening to Imus in the morning on WFAN in New York. I heard them say that they "think" a small plane hit the tower. I ran to the TV and saw the first tower billowing smoke.....then from there, we know what happened. My family and I live in Norwalk, CT [about 50 minutes from NYC] and I knew a few people directly affected by this tragedy. It was such a somber time for this area and the entire country. My son was at school and my wife called me from work and asked me to pick him up....I obliged but reluctantly really. I didn't want to scare him and really wanted to maintain a level of normalcy. I don't remember what I told him when I took him out of school but he was ecstatic! I gave him the biggest hug and we went home. I remember having a lump in my throat and an empty feeling. To be honest, I was just flat-out pissed!!!!!!

 

[Mokat76]

It was a beautiful sunny day in central Missouri, much like it was on the east coast. When I heard about the first plane, I hoped it was an accident, but when the second one hit, it was if an electrical shock went through my body. My first thought was, "We're at war." I knew it was terrorists so I didn't know who we'd be at was against, but I knew.

Then as the other two planes went in I felt an overwhelming combination of grief and fury. I was frantic after the Pentagon hit; I had friends in the building. Fortunately they all were among the survivors, as I later found out.

No one did much at work that day or in subsequent days. We were consumed by the utter devastation and tragedy.

To this day, the senseless cowardice of those heinous acts shocks me. Our nation's immediate response, and that of most of the world, uplifts me.

Never forget.

 

[tazdev3225]

I had just finished my morning shift at work, I was a School Crossing Guard at the time. I went to get gas in my car and for some reason that day I had the news station on the radio instead of music. I heard that something had happened just before I arrived home. I ran in to put on the TV news and saw the second plane hit. It was a moment transfixed in time. I called my mother to see if she had heard anything, she was a crossing guard also. My mom just kept asking me where in NY are the towers and I couldn't tell her because I didn't know. My youngest brother was a grad student at Columbia University. We couldn't reach him for hours and the waiting and worrying was hard.

Then we heard about the pentagon and mom became more frantic as another brother was scheduled to be at the Pentagon that day. The plane actually crashed into his friends office. Of course we couldn't get through to him either. Thankfully my brothers were ok but I couldn't even begin to fathom the pain others were going through knowing their loved ones weren't coming home.

I had a trip to Disney World scheduled one month later and my kids begged me not to go. I told them if I did that then the terrorists won and I wasn't letting them win. It was the oddest experience landing in Orlando and seeing National Guards with M16's walking around, just very surreal. Disney began inspecting bags by then so that was a new experience. When we were at the Orlando airport I left my backpack with my aunt and her friend while I went to get a soda, wrong move. I had the National Guard all over me. They were making announcements not to leave your bags unattended which was understandable but I didn't do that. They had me flagged to have everything searched before I was allowed to board the plane.

I recently found out that a friend was in Tower 2 when the plane hit. His supervisors had his company evacuate as quickly as possible and run from the building. He survived because of that supervisor. Hearing him describe the details as he watched people fall from the building and seeing a plane crash into his building was horrifying and even as I type this I am in tears.

 

[Soldier's*Sweeties]

I was a sophomore in Spanish class in Trinity FL.

A teacher down the hall had a son in one of the towers. That was how we found out. We heard her in the hallway just scream the most God awful, heart wrenching scream you can imagine. Apparently her son called to tell her goodbye.

An announcement was made shortly after that it would be okay for teachers to stop instructing and turn on the televisions. It was kind of mind numbing. I mean, I knew it was a big deal, but I didn't really GET it.

My dad came and picked me up around lunch. We hung out at home watching the news.

I remember the teacher screaming and my dad saying "Unbelievable..." over and over again.

 

[RedAngie]

I was in San Diego on business (lived in the San Francisco area).

My car was at SFO, and I could not get it that day (closed airport), so I kept the rental car for the next three days until they reopened SFO and I could get my own car back. Avis, the car rental company, was super great. No drop off fee, and they didn't bat an eye when the person renting the car didn't return it.
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Budget car rental also waived drop-off and late fees. Maybe all the companies did. ExH rented a car from a downtown SF location on 9/12 and said he would return it to LAX on 9/13. As it happened, the LAX location was closed, so he called a local Budget franchisee a few blocks away (at a storage unit place) and they said sure, drop it off here, they'll get the car to LAX when it reopened. I actually returned the car about 30 hours after he rented it, and they just charged for the one day, and weren't fazed that he himself didn't return it.

I didn't see the second plane hit, but I was amazed that the networks were able to get on the air in time for many people to see it happen live.

 

[Disney_traveler]

I was a junior in high school. It amazes me how clear I remember it. We were in first period English and my best friend had gone to the office because her mom brought her money. She came back in the room and said to me, "Mom said something to me about s plane hitting the World Trade Center." That's all we knew at the moment. Bell rang, we went to 2nd period Physics and the teacher had a radio on and that's where we heard everything. As sophomores, we read Alas, Babylon and all of us were wondering if that was to come. I was scheduled to fly with an extracurricular team to national competition a month later. It would be my first time to fly. I was terrified but we weren't about to give up this once in a lifetime opportunity.

 

[Missy1961]

My sister who is a physical therapist, was going to be teaching a class and needed a full day babysitter so I was at home that day. (At the time, I worked in midtown Manhattan)

She brought Samantha (who was 2 1/2) over at about 7 AM. Sammie and I were going to watch movies, then go to Toys R Us so she could "help" me pick out a baby doll for her cousin's first birthday. After her mom left, we watched "Cinderella". When the movie was almost over, I changed and dressed her and sent her out of the room to get her sneakers. The movie was done, and when it was finished rewinding, the TV went back on, and since I had it turned to MSNBC (which was unusual for me, I usually watched repeats or sports in the morning), and I saw the first Tower fall. When she came back in the room, I quickly turned the TV off.

I live in suburban NY, and I had no idea what would happen next. My first instinct was to stay home, but I decided to go to Toys R Us as planned. I remember thinking how beautiful the weather was, and I was still in shock that something happened. (Remember, I had no idea what had happened.) TRU had a radio on, and the cashier told me some of what happened when Sammie's attention was diverted.

When we got home, I put her down for a nap and watched the news coverage with the closed captioning. My brother-in-law (Sammie's dad) called me at one point and he told me what had happened. We both were in shock. I remember when my sister came back - I usually sat in the living room with Sammie, but that day, we were in the den, which was in the back of the house. She ran in the room and grabbed her daughter in a big hug. They ate some lunch with me and went home.

It was weird. Another one of my sisters usually worked in Washington DC, and she was having surgery that day. I had been at home with my niece, not at my job in NYC.

I will never forget. Never.

 

[mnrose]

Budget car rental also waived drop-off and late fees. Maybe all the companies did. ExH rented a car from a downtown SF location on 9/12 and said he would return it to LAX on 9/13. As it happened, the LAX location was closed, so he called a local Budget franchisee a few blocks away (at a storage unit place) and they said sure, drop it off here, they'll get the car to LAX when it reopened. I actually returned the car about 30 hours after he rented it, and they just charged for the one day, and weren't fazed that he himself didn't return it.

I didn't see the second plane hit, but I was amazed that the networks were able to get on the air in time for many people to see it happen live.

It was right in the middle of the Today show....and after the first plane hit, they went to the scene with cameras. Not sure where they were from? Maybe across the river in Jersey City? Or helicopters? Traffic helicopters routinely are up at that time of day in Manhatten, and pretty simple to divert your camera to the World Trade Center. I had happened to flip on the TV (Today Show was my number one go to station in the morning) as soon as I woke up).

 

[fairymum]

I was in my early 20's and worked in Colorado Springs at the time. I heard the news as I was driving to work and they had TV's on around the building. After an hour or two we were told to leave the building and go home. Our location was very close to the Air Force Academy.
Drove a coworker home to her family that day and stopped to spend a few minutes with them rather than go home to my empty house. Her toddler was playing barefoot outside and put a dirty footprint on my khaki pants. That image is sealed in my brain as vividly as it just happened. They were so apologetic and I had this deep sense of how inconsequential of a thing it was.
It was days before we could confirm everyone was ok on the East Coast. I didn't have kids until 2008 and now I struggle with how to make them understand as they grow up how much changed on this day so many years ago.

 

[MrsCobraBubbles]

I was 20, had the day off from work and college classes. I took the dog to the vet that morning, apparently I was in the car while the towers were falling but I had no idea because my dog was an anxious passenger and the radio seemed to make his anxiety worse so I always kept the car rides quiet and soothing for him and never switched on the radio. I still remember getting home and turning on the tv and being shocked that all of this could be happening while I was having such a normal day.

I had invited my in-laws over to enjoy our bounty of zucchini and to celebrate our first wedding anniversary with us and I spent the rest of the day cooking and reassuring my terrified grandmother-in-law, who had Alzheimer's and I regularly watched her when I wasn't working or in class. She was obsessively watching the news and completely freaked when a bunch of fighter jets flew low over our farmhouse, because the news was announcing over and over that all flights had been grounded but there was a plane unaccounted for that was somewhere over Pennsylvania. So these loud jets were flying over and shaking the whole house, she became convinced that the missing plane was falling out of the sky or maybe being shot out of the sky and would fall on the house. I thought she would have a heart attack and I became irrationally pissed off at the US Air Force, or whichever branch those fighter jets belonged to.

My mother-and father-in-law came to dinner and even my husband's siblings showed up, it was very reassuring and healing to be surrounded by family for dinner that evening. We ate zucchini parmesan and fresh corn on the cob for dinner and had homemade-from-scratch carrot cake with homemade frozen yogurt for dessert. I swear I can still remember how everything tasted, and it's so weird to me that to this day I remember the food I prepared on 9/11/01 better than all those awful images from the TV. Possibly that's some sort of coping mechanism.

 

[Nayan]

I don't remember where we had been a couple days before but I do remember we were all sick on that day, enough so that my DH at the time stayed home from work. He decided to go surfing and I was in no mood to argue so I told him to go, as my son and I were quite content to lay on the couch and watch cartoons all day.

After I had thought he left, I decided to take out the wastebasket and saw him sitting in the driveway, listening intently to something. He motioned me over and said 'you better turn on the news. Howard (Stern) just said a plane has crashed into one of the Trade Center towers'. My mind immediately thought back to a stunt plane hitting the Statue of Liberty not long before this and told him that's probably what it was, but I'll flip over to the news.

I told our son that I would set him up in his bedroom and switched his TV to what we had been watching, then switched over to CNN in the living room. I remember seeing that giant hole and thinking to myself 'that wasn't a small plane', just as the second plane hit. I couldn't believe what I was seeing and a feeling of helplessness just washed over me. I knew then that things had changed forever.

 

[FINFAN]

our sky today is practically identical to 15 years ago....vivid memories, never forget,

 

[Hannahinwonderland]

I was in the 3rd grade ( the same grade I teach now). I live on Long Island, and a lot of kids had parents or family members affected by the tragedy. I don't remember a ton, but I do remember my mom picking me and my sister, a first grader, up around noon. I felt panicky and didn't understand what was going on. My mom didn't really tell us anything, and my dad didn't get home from work in the Bronx until late, late, late that night. When he did get home, we watched TV together and my parents explained what was going on.

 

[LilyWDW]

our sky today is practically identical to 15 years ago....vivid memories, never forget,

I was actually thinking that just this morning. Just how similar the weather is today as it was all that time ago. Sort of freaky honestly. Not like scary freaky, but just weird freaky.

As for where I was, I was at home getting ready to head to campus when my father knocked on my bathroom door to tell me to come upstairs and watch the news. This was after plane one hit and before anyone had a real clue as to what was happening. My father was a retired police officer and later told me that it just felt like there was more that was going to happen, that this wasn't done. I was sitting on the couch when the second plane hit. At that point I was scared. My then boyfriend had just signed up with the reserves as had a friend of ours. I called him, begged him to find a way out of it, crying because I knew things were going to be so different then we had planned.

My mom was on campus and they shut it down, canceling classes and sending everyone home. We were in an area that had a possible target not too far away so there was a concern over that as well.

All I really remember of the days after was a feeling of sadness and fear plus just watching the news and seeing everything over and over and over again...

 

[Sydney2977]

I was at work and I remember one of my co-workers, whose mom worked at the Air Force Base, had called to tell him that a plane hit the Twin Towers. I remember thinking we both knew it was terrorism but our other co-workers were acting like it was an accident. Then as the store opened we were hearing bits and pieces of details from customers. My DH was working night shifts at the time so he was home with younger DS (15 months then) while older DS was in kindergarten. I called him to find out what was happening. He went to school to pick up DS- thankfully the school was connected by a gate to the base because the base itself was on lock down. I couldn't come home until after 6pm and I just sat at work scared and worried and sad for all those affected. When I got home my DH let me know he'd probably be getting a call soon. Sure enough around 9pm he was called and told to pack up. They shipped out about 3am. It was his first deployment, I had no idea where he was going, and I was terrified but I knew I had to be strong for my boys. I had to call out to work the next day because I had to find child care for DS. Thankfully there was an opening at this great daycare at a nearby church. The whole four months he was gone I had no idea where DH was and only received like one phone call a month. The other thing that really probably bothered me was that I had just lost my father exactly a month before on 8/11 very unexpectedly to cancer. He would have been the strong one for me during this time. I still think how lucky we are every time I think of 9/11 because though it was hard, it was NOTHING compared to those directly affected by it.

 

[maxaroni]

I had just come in from putting my then 3rd grade DS on the bus. Started my morning routine with the Today show on in the background. When came in, the first plane had just hit. No one knew what was happening and then the 2nd plane hit. I was transfixed to the TV all day. School was saying it was optional to pick up the kids from school. However, I wanted DS with me.

I grew up in North Jersey in a town that had an overlook, with lower Manhattan in the view. We could see the Twin Towers being constructed. Not close enough to to see the actual construction, but watched as they rose from the ground. NYC, is always "the City" to me. The landscape changed forever, along with our world. A horrific terrorist attack that I can't wrap my head around, 15 years later.

We will never forget.

 

[MrsJamesPSullivan]

I remember almost every minute of that day and even though there were people i knew in NYC that I had worried a lot about until we finally heard from them it was mid afternoon before it all really hit me.

I did the afternoon end of the school carpool and had been glued to the TV and computer all day until it was time to go get the kids at school. It was a beautiful sunny day in Northern Illinois just like it was in New York. It was SO quiet outside. There wasn't the sound of kids playing, there was very little traffic on the road, there wasn't a plane in the sky. It was so strange to look into the sky and see the beautiful blue and white fluffy clouds with no planes. We're quite a ways out but right on the flight path to/from O'Hare. There are *always planes up there. I can hear one heading west now. It was very eery.

Almost worse was when they started flying again. I was happy they were back but I had to watch every one of them to make sure they weren't coming down too soon or too quickly. I still keep an eye on planes I think are flying too low heading towards Chicago.

 

[katie01]

I had just given birth to our first child five days previously, so both DH and I were off of work. We were watching a home movie we'd made of our newborn son, and when it was over, the tv showed an imagine of one of the towers on fire, they said it had been hit by a plane. We were glued to the tv and when we saw the second plane hit, it was hard to even comprehend what we were seeing but we knew then it had to be the work of terrorists. As the previous poster who had been seven months pregnant mentioned, I wondered what kind of world we'd brought our son into. I still remember the perfect blue of the sky and how quiet it was in the days that followed, without the sound of planes overhead. My DH spent the rest of his days off that he had for our son's birth/first week home glued to the news, and in the coming months I started to slip into a paranoid sort of post partum depression where I had all sorts of thoughts about anthrax being put into our baby's formula or in the gift packages we were receiving in the mail (if you all remember the anthrax scare). Our son hardly slept at all so I'm sure the sleep deprivation fed into my paranoia. I also remember seeing tv specials about the women who were pregnant or had just delivered babies and lost their husbands in 9/11 and feeling such profound grief for them and for their children who would never know their fathers. Of course I felt the grief for everyone who had lost loved ones, it's just that those stories hit home as a new mother at the time.

 

[katie01]

I was pregnant on bed rest in NC. My family, friends were in NY. We heard from my brother 8 hours after. My parents were frantic. There was literally nothing I could do. My cousin, my aunt we heard from next. Boys I went to school with were there helping. Young guys, cops and firefighters. I thought they would all be safe too. Then we started hearing names. Names of people who didn't make it, names of the still missing.Classmates, friends, people who went to college with my brother, co-workers of his, a boy I dated.
Then we started hearing the stories. My aunt was late for work. My cousin had taken a vacation, my brother was working out of another office. Chance had saved them, but not others. It's a gift and a burden, my brother still carries.

I'm so sorry for all those you lost