Remembering 9/11

[MusicMan]

Where were you that morning?

I was driving into work when Lance Zerlein interrupted an interview with the news.  I watch the tv the whole morning at the office.

What I distinctly remember was that the BFT was one of the only sites I could get to (all the news sites had swamped) and we spent the day providing each other updates.


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[JimR]

Mine was exactly the same. I thought it was two small planes and a horrible ATC snafu until I got to the office and turned on the TV.

[subnuclear]

I was on graveyard shift at the accelerator I did my graduate work at and I drove home very tired. For some reason, I had my car radio on to something called the "Man Cow morning show." He was babbling something about a terrorist attack, but he was a gas bag, so I went home and slept till 1 pm. My advisor called me and told me I needed to come in and watch the equipment all night (even though I wasn't on shift) and I needed to do all these security things before they would let me in. After expression some confusion, he made it clear what had happened.

When I showed up for shift at the accelerator there was an Indian post-doc there and he was convinced the end of the world was coming. He was about as scared as anyone I've seen. Anyway, I let him go home and me and another student sat there and looking for information on the internet. Probably checked BFT, too.

[Bench]

I was at my office in Boston which was in the same building as the FBI.  We were told to evacuate the building immediately.  I went to the office building next door and saw the first tower collapse.  The second one collapsed when I was on the subway home.  Fighter jets were circling the city as I walked from the T stop to my apartment. 

My brother was scheduled to start working at a law firm in WTC1 on Sep. 10th, but randomly decided to push his start date back a week to the the 17th.  Only one person from that firm died that morning (heart attack), but I'm very glad he made that decision.

[NeilT]

My experience was similar to Jim's.  I was talking to my parents on my car phone, and they told me about a plane hitting the World Trade Center.  I figured it was a Cessna.  My sister called to tell me to go home because she assumed all office towers were targets.  I was online here, and in the early afternoon went to Bering's Hardware to be around people and stood in an aisle and stared at the parrot.  Odd memory, that.

[Mr. Happy]

I was frantically working on some draft documents for a client meeting that morning, when my e-mail started hopping, all with the subject line WTC. I didn't open any of those e-mails and, frankly, was annoyed by the sheer number of e-mails. It wasn't until I arrived at my client's offices that I was informed about what was going on. I saw both towers fall on television. I actually had a voicemail from someone at Cantor Fitzgerald about an estate that I was handling that had arrived the day before. I have always wondered whether that person made it out alive, because that firm lost a lot of people.

[Ty in Tampa]

I had just gotten out of the shower, getting ready for work in only a towel, when my boss called to tell me a plane had hit the WTC. I turned on the television just in time to see the second plane hit. I stood in front of the horror that played out on my television for what seemed like an hour but was more like 20 minutes, staring, until another call jostled me out of my stupor. I dressed and went into work where my coworkers and I sat around the conference room table and watched every report we could. All day long. Went home but like Neil, I had to be around people so I called a buddy and we went to a pub in time to watch the President. When I finally got home again around midnight, it felt like the day had been a week.

[Jacksonian]

I'd heard about it on the radio, but at the time they were talking about it being a Cessna or somesuch.  I got to work and had to teach class immediately.  The students were asking about it, and I gave them what I'd heard.  I didn't know the extent of the disaster until after I got back to my office.  I saw the rest unfold on tv.

The biggest emotional impact to me was not being able to reach my sister who was working and living in Manhattan at the time.  All of the cell service of course was down so getting in touch with her was impossible until she was able to start contacting us.  Her office building was just outside the evacuation zone as it turns out.  But she said when she got to work that morning she stepped out of the elevator in just enough time to see the second plane flying low and then hitting the second tower.  Needless to say she and all her coworkers were pretty fucked up about it for quite some time.

[JimR]

My PONY League baseball coach was a guy named Jerry Hughes. He now is married to Karen, and she was Counselor to the President on September 11, 2001. Their wedding anniversary is September 10 so she did not go with GWB to Florida but instead stayed in DC with Jerry. We were at their house in Austin one night, and after the other guests were gone, she told us her story of that day. She was in the shower getting ready to go to work when her two phones lit up. Her story is much like ours here except she drove to the White House and then went into the bunker.

[Dark Star]

I was driving to Cleveland that morning, for work. Cleveland, Texas, that is. I was somewhere around Votaw when I started hearing the news coming over the radio (probably the same show Music Man was listening to.) Then my wife called. She was at home sick that day with our children, and she filled in some details from what she had seen so far on TV. She was afraid the country was under attack or something, and urged me to come home.

At that moment, everything seemed kind of surreal to me. I had pulled my Trooper over to the side of this empty, rather desolate farm road (FM 787?) to take the phone call. The location where I'd pulled over, there wasn't a car or a house or a building (or any people) in sight. I got out of my vehicle and stood in the middle of the road, which was cut through the forest there, with tall pine trees all around. I was basically out in the middle of the woods, not to say nowhere. And half a continent away, in the biggest metropolis in the country, planes were flying into buildings that were collapsing onto people who were dying in the streets. Literally, all hell was breaking loose, and at that point I had no idea of the scope of it. I was standing there in the still and quiet, looking up at a sliver of sky, alone in the piney woods, 9/11 in NYC could have been a million miles away.

So I got in the Trooper, and turned it around. And drove back home,. Back to reality.


We've met a lot of great men who weren't so great
We've seen modern day saviors who couldn't even stop the rain
We've heard the word of God from a surface-to-air missle
And felt the hand of Allah from a hijacked plane

We've seen the fire in the sky in the morning light
We've seen the buildings tumble into the maw of the city
And when the dust cleared and there was nothing left
We saw the sun setting down on the horizon, so pretty

Me and my doppelganger, we're alike, you know
Wherever I wander, that's where he goes
We don't take no crap, we don't pay no mind
We just thank sweet Jesus for the sweet sunshine

[GreatBagwellsBeard]

My PONY League baseball coach was a guy named Jerry Hughes. He now is married to Karen, and she was Counselor to the President on September 11, 2001. Their wedding anniversary is September 10 so she did not go with GWB to Florida but instead stayed in DC with Jerry. We were at their house in Austin one night, and after the other guests were gone, she told us her story of that day. She was in the shower getting ready to go to work when her two phones lit up. Her story is much like ours here except she drove to the White House and then went into the bunker.

Karen spoke at my college graduation in May 2002.  Everything was still very fresh, and I recall her as a very fired up speaker.

I had an 8AM class that day, and then a lull until an afternoon class around 1:30 or 2pm.  As was my habit, I went home after the early class.  I was reading on the couch when my mom called and asked if I was watching TV.  My Luddite mother would never ask a question like that unless it was important.  The first tower was smoking, and I was still on the phone with her when the second plane hit.  Something between a yelp and a scream came out of my mouth in that moment.  I never went to my afternoon class.

[Ebby Calvin]

I was unemployed and sleeping when my phone started ringing incessantly.  I finally answered after screening it a few times - it was my mother, who was a Delta flight attendant and scheduled to fly that morning.  She said, "Don't worry, I'm alright."  "Great, mom, good to know."
Then she told me to turn on the TV.  At that moment the second plane hit.
I read somewhere that one of the planes that was supposed to attack (but was grounded before it took off) was to leave from IAH.  I choose to believe that report was false.

[Craig]

I actually learned about it first on the BFT. I was living in Vegas, so was in a later time zone, and woke up well after everything had started. All the usual websites were down so I figured I was having internet problems, but I was able to connect to Astros Connection. One of our members in New York -- I think toddthebod -- was giving updates from the area. That's when I realized something terrible had happened and turned on the TV.

[Nate in IA]

I was living in Colorado Springs at the time and remember driving to work on the south side of town and noticing no airplanes in the air.  No contrails, no nothing.  Eerily quiet.    Got to work and found out what was going on.   We didn't get much work done that day and things changed over the coming days.

It was a world away in NYC but Cheyenne Mountain was still operational at that point and went into lockdown by the time I got to work.   My buddy in the reserves was called up to stand guard at the airport.    One of the oddities of that time is that I was on one of the first flights back in the air after they lifted the shutdown since I was flying a lot for my company at that time.

Memories of what life was like before 9/11 are fading fast since we now live in a perpetually scared state.

[BUWebguy]

I was in my first job, a year out of college, and was the first to arrive at work that day. I was turning on my computer, normal start-of-day stuff, when my boss called. "Are you watching TV?" he asked. "No." "Turn it on." "What channel?" I asked.

"Any channel," was his response.

Eventually, the rest of my coworkers trickled in. Several of us had TVs in our office, and we had them each on different channels; if one channel had some new information, we'd yell for everyone else to come watch. We were glued to those TVs the rest of the day. I wasn't one to hang out too much with my coworkers outside of work then, but around 5 or 6 several of us who were single headed to Chili's so we could eat and continue watching news updates at the bar. None of us was eager to be alone that evening.

At the time, I was working in college athletics, and all NCAA events were canceled for the next week or so -- which left us with nothing to do at work except continue to watch the news for the next several days. It was a very surreal experience.

[Duman]

I was driving from Birmingham to Montgomery for a training at a state office building.  I got in the car right as the second plane hit.  Security was much tighter in Montgomery and we got very little training done that day. 

My biggest memory related to 9-11 was that UAB hosted Army in Football on 9/22.  There had been no air traffic over the city since 9/11.  They got clearance for a army jump team to bring the flag in to the stadium.  When that plane's engine noise started to become audible over the stadium, you realized just how quiet the skies had become.  As the flag appeared, everyone of those Army football players snapped to attention and saluted in full football gear. Very moving moment. 

Army got beat badly in the football game but they had the most fans that day.  Everyone was aware that many of those guys would be boots on the ground before long. 

[Noe]

I was driving into work (Downtown Austin) when they interrupted the local radio broadcast to say a small cesna airplane hit one of the World Trade Center towers. I thought "Wow, that's sad, hope nobody is hurt". As the drive progressed, it got worse and worse in terms of the news reports, culminating with the news that two airplanes hit the towers and they suspect a terrorist attack.

I called my wife immediately to tell her to put on the news at home. She asked why and I told her. She turned on the news and watched in horror. I finally arrived at work and already all my co-workers were huddled in the conference room. Some said they were going home. The rest of us stayed. I was the lone one watching the telecast when the first tower came tumbling down. I screamed for everyone to come into the conference room. When everyone finally came in, I told them the tower had just collapsed... and right at that moment, the second tower came down. I was silent for a good long while. Some started to cry. I was stunned.

By the time the noon hour came along, the bells of the local churches in downtown started to ring and people were pouring out of the office buildings to go pray.

[das]

I was working in downtown DC and someone came into my office to tell me a small plane had hit one of the WTC buildings.  I walked down to a conference room with a TV and was surprised at how much smoke was coming from the building.  We went into COOP mode immediately since we had offices in and we supported customers operating out of WTC.  I wanted to stay and watch the coverage but had COOP work to do so went back to my office.  It was from there that I saw smoke rising from the Pentagon (I worked on the 12th (top) floor in the southwest facing office and it was only 2.4 miles away.  Within minutes, the sky as filled with fighters.  Very surreal.  Tough weeks following.  We lost 13 employees and many more customers that day.

[Phil_in_CS]

I was in the same office as I am right now, and opened my browser to check on something. My start page was the BBC World News, and they had a photo of the first tower in flames after the first place crashed. We had a TV here that a vendor had given us, but we had never unboxed it as there's no cable here. We got it set up just in time to see the second plane crash into the tower live.

When the first tower fell, the announcer  said "Something seems to have happened to the tower." My boss said "It fucking fell down, that's what happened. Aren't you looking at your own video?"