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I saw the Challenger explode (wow, that was 30 years ago!!) on live t.v. at school. The teacher ran and turned it off. Many of us were in tears.
9/11 - I was in the military, just cleaning up from P.T. My first call was to my mother to ensure her that I was o.k. I couldn't reach my sister (she was on a Navy ship), and wouldn't be able to for several days.
The hallmark "Where were you when Kennedy died" question that I suppose defines the Boomer generation has given way to the "Where were you and what were you doing when 9/11 happened". I'm not aware of any others.
Me neither, except maybe the Challenger explosion. Michael Jackson was just a celebrity. I am sure his life had value, but all I remember was being mad that Farrah Fawcet got barely a mention when she died that day too. Oh, and being annoyed that every single morning the only thing the morning shows talked about was MJ's death. I imagine there were many untold deaths of really important people in that time period that we never heard about, like military people dying in our wars, while the GMA people were blathering on about Jackson's death for weeks on end. Ugh!
I was four when the Challenger exploded. I just remember it being on TV and my parents watching. When OJ's white Bronco chase happened we landed in the Minneapolis airport after our Disney World trip. I was in my dorm in college when 9/11 happened. Classes were cancelled and it was eerie having no planes fly overhead.
Oh, thanks for the reminder of the time the news pre-empted my home team's game in the NBA Finals to watch a whole lot of nothing happening. I was so mad that night! Believe me, basketball fans in Houston and New York were apoplectic about that interruption. Then when they finally went back to the game in progress, we had to hear Marv Albert apologize for not showing the OJ Simpson chase!
I was the Wing Supervisor of Flying on September 11th, had to orchestrate the recall of the wing's airborne aircraft and the closure of the US airspace in the vicinity. The wing commander sent a bunch of us home a couple hours later and brought us back late that night, and at 3 AM until almost 8 AM the next morning I was flying over a city in case the terrorists tried anything again. The 11th is something of a blur, I was so busy for several hours, getting an air defense plan and checklist ready before being sent home (we'd never had to do air sovereignty before.) The 12th actually stands out to me more, because as the sun came up I noticed way below traffic start to fill the freeways and major streets, school buses picking up kids (with their strobe lights on them), the downtown area getting its normal congestion, and life was more or less going on. Different, but going on still.
My husband and I were in suburban Md for a few days before 9/11. We scouting out the area due to an upcoming job transfer and had traveled there by car from suburban NY with our docile 7 yr old golden retriever. We were scheduled to check out of our hotel for the drive back on the morning of 9/11 but the evening before our dog suddenly began howling for no apparent reason. This was extremely unusual since he had been fine the previous few days and had never exhibited this behavior before. So we decided to pack up and head home a day early before anyone complained. Back home the next morning we saw what unfolded on tv at the WTC. We were already in shock over this unbelievable act of terrorism but came to realize had our dog not behaved so uncharacteristically we would have been stuck in NJ since all the bridges and tunnels in and out of NYC were shut down. It was surreal and made us wonder if any other animals exhibited strange behavior before 9/11 since it was not a natural occurance like an earthquake. I'll never forget it!
For this kind of question, people usually refer to the deaths of presidents.
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