Where were You on 9/11/01?

[JHR]

I was sitting in one of my attorneys offices, and watched the entire thing on TV.

 

Left his office and went and picked up my children from school, went home and loaded all my guns.

[Golf_Beauty]

I will never forget that day. Never. It is etched into my very soul and reminds me to live every day of my life to the fullest as if it were my last. I was in the hospital after a failed suicide attempt. I won't get into particulars about what led me to that decision, but it's safe to say that my "problems" were microcosmic compared to what the world witnessed that day.

[Riuzzi]

I was at work after school. We heard it on the radio and everyone pretty much stopped what they were doing and gathered around the radio. Still hard to believe that it actually happened and so many people lost their lives and loved ones...just seems so unreal.

[dannypharvey]

i was off school ill. i was so 'ill' that i had to watch Saving Private Ryan on the telly downstairs. when i stopped the tape there was a news feature about the WTC being hit by a plane. i didn't think much of it, because i didn't know anything about these buildings, until i realised it was on all but one channel. i remember watching live as the second plane hit WTC2. you couldn't see the point of impact because the camera was facing directly at the north tower from some distance away. at first i thought it was a replay of the first plane hitting because i obviously wasn't expecting another jet to fly into the WTC and also the news readers had gona silent. then it dawned on me that the tower was smoking whilst i watched it and it couldn't of been the first plane. after that i didn't know what to think of the situation. i didn't see either of the towers collapse because i coincidentally left the room to go to the toilet at the exact time of each collapse. one abbreviation did occur in Saving Private Ryan that had relevance to 9/11... FUBAR.

[kkhere]

6th grade math class

[CowtownTexas]

I was single at the time and was still laying in bed from a long night out. My mother called to ask if I was watching TV. Just as I turned on the set, the 2nd plane hit. I thought it was a mistake. I only remember being very confused. Even though I'm in Texas, I had several friends in NYC and two people I went to college with were lost in the attack.

 

I've thought about that day alot recently. I can vididly remember putting together our families plan in case of terrorists attacks here. I also remember sitting on a friends porch that night noticing the absense of airplanes in the air. For a few days, I noticed every single time a jet left the local military base.

 

The world changed forever that day.

[Hoover98]

I was in pharmacy school and in class that morning from 8-10. Not a word of it was passed onto any of us and as I drove home around 10:30 or so, I noticed that the traffic LEAVING downtown Houston was really heavy for that time of day. I turned on the news radio station here in town, and the first thing I heard was, "The World Trade Center is no longer standing." I didn't think I heard him correctly, but then they started going on about how all skyscrapers had been evacuated, etc. and that traffic in the downtown area was really backed up. I spent the next 10 hours on the couch watching the various news channels in complete shock as to how someone could even CONSIDER, let alone carry out the senseless murder of so many innocent people.

 

After watching the footage last night on CBS of the two brothers who were filming a documentary of the fire dept. when it all happened (which was amazing, by the way), all of the feelings came back to me of that day and the days that followed. I'll never forget what my grandfather told me when I went by to see him the next day. He said that he just sat there and "cried like a baby" at the thought of what those people were going through. He just kept saying that we all of a sudden now live in a different world, and he was 100% correct.

[JKB]

I was in Grade 6 and my principal came on and was like students something awful has happened... please go get your books and go to the buses for home to be with your families.... I like in a small town in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

[scrumpy]

I was playing golf at my home course (Old Capital Golf Club, Corydon Indiana) with 7 of my buddies. As we were approching the #9 green, the head greenskeeper drove over to see if we had heard the news. We went into the club lounge and watched it all unfold. When we walked in, the first Tower was about to fall. It was awful and I'll never forget that day.

[HipCheck]

Well, it seems as though I've drawn the short straw on this one.

 

I was at work in central NJ when my wife called me hysterical. She worked in Downtown NYC. "A plane hit the the World Trade Center! My dad's tower!" My father-in-law worked on the 100th floor of the North Tower.

 

I tried to view anything on the web: foxnews, cnn, usa today, but all servers were jammed. Finally, I got thru on CNN. The still image of a burning North Tower it tattooed in my mind. I will never forget that image.

 

I went home, got my dogs and took off for my in-laws house in southern NJ. I heard everything else unfold on radio, getting to my mother-in-law's house a few minutes before the North Tower fell. Obviously, I could not believe what I was watching. We never heard anything from him. No 911 call. No eyewitness account.

 

My wife and her sister got out of the city about 8 hours after it started. I was driven to the bus station so I could drive my father-in-law's car home. That was the longest 5 minute drive of my life.

 

The most difficult time was the 2 weeks following Sept. 11 though. Not knowing his fate. Not knowing where to go. What's safe? What to do? Reports and phone calls about someone with the same name in a hospital in NJ, but it wasn't him. Submitting a razor and toothbrush for DNA samples. Not wanting to go back to work much less leave the security of the house you're sitting in. Crying at the drop of the hat. Thinking you'll never be happy again. Pondering life in general. Feeling angry enough to...well, feeling extremely angry.

 

Still, we are a bit luckier than others. 8 months later, we found some remains, identified thru DNA. We gave him a burial. His wallet made it through in nearly perfect shape. Nothing melted. Nothing charred. His World Trade Center ID tucked neatly inside.

 

My wife lost here father and her hero. I lost a man to look up to and my golfing buddy. Every weekend before September 11, I play a 'tribute round' for him, at the same course we played for our last round together, September 8, 2001.

 

We also knew about 40 people who died that day, including my wife's co-worker who sat next to her at work. He was in the South Tower, at a meeting my wife would have gone to if she had won the flip of the coin which gave him the account he was visiting.

 

Truly a horrible time, which never, ever goes away.