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I spent the weekend in New York with family, able to see the former skyline on the expressway. Tuesday morning I took a flight to a military base overseas. Mid-flight, the pilot announced an emergency landing (2001, that's long before smartphones with the latest news, and there was basically zero wifi infrastructure publicly available at that time). Then we landed in Elmendorf AFB, where the pilot laid out everything that's been happening while we were in the air.
I had to stay in a hangar on cots for the next few days, until planes were allowed to fly again. Despite the shock of the events and the piercing cold of late-summer Alaska, the group was friendly and made the best out of a terrible situation.
I was at work and I got a terrible pain in my stomach and then my aunt called me and told me to turn on the tv in the breakroom or the radio right beside me . I did and I will never forget the images I saw and I also lived near a military base and my sister was in the 17th floor of a building working I called her and told her to get out of the building because she was very close to the base . Then the pentagon got hit . I told her to leave the building and leave it then . She told everyone while I was on the phone what was going on they all got their things and left to go home . She went to her kids school and got them and went to my parents farm in the country . She stayed there for almost two weeks and never turned the tv on . a few days later my aunt called and said they could not locate steven her son who was a firefighter and later we would learn that his whole ladder company was gone in the attack . My uncle still makes that trip every year and he is getting older and my aunt has since been reunited with steven in heaven . I will never forget that day 16 yrs ago nor should any of us . And when someone tells me that we are wrong for closing our borders I tell them that they would feel differently if they lost a loved one on that horrible day .
I was on the phone, talking over some issues with a volunteer organization with another volunteer and planning a meeting. I had CNN going on the background (strangely, I don't usually watch CNN, but the phone rang as I was flipping channels, and I never bothered to turn it off.) We were chatting, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a report about a plane hitting the WTC -- it caught my attention, and I told my friend, "Wow, a plane just hit the WTC!" We both thought it was just a general aviation plane that had gotten turned around in NYC airspace. He turned his TV on, too, and we chatted about it for a minute -- we had both spent time in NYC, and I had been in and out of the WTC quite a bit when I lived in the NYC area. Suddenly, the second plane hit. We were both stunned, and my first words were "That wasn't an accident . . ." He was silent and said, "No . . . ". We said muted goodbyes and hung up, and I yelled for my husband to come out of his home office to see the news. He was a little grumpy at being interrupted, but grew instantly serious as he watched. I didn't realize tears were running down my face -- all those people trapped in the Towers, the people who chose to leap to their deaths rather than die by fire . . . we basically watched TV all day, increasingly incredulous. When we picked the kids up from school (5th grade and 7th grade), they were full of news: "Did you know two planes hit the World Trade Center today?!" We had friends who worked in highrise buildings downtown who were told to evacuate and go home. Another friend, a doctor, couldn't fly back from a college tour with his son in New England, and ended up renting a car to drive from Boston to Atlanta because he had surgeries scheduled. He stopped in NJ the next day, to see the NYC skyline with the smoke rising from Wall Street, and was so moved that he later volunteered for the Army Reserve as a doctor and was sent to the Middle East on three tours.
We all had a sense that what we were witnessing was a game-changer, and that life would never be quite the same.
Doing what we do every year on that date, celebrating Aunt Dolly's birthday.
Ok you just made me laugh. Then I thought how sad to have this memory on your birthday every year. My brother's anniversary is also 9/11
Quote:
Originally Posted by KathrynAragon
About an hour later, I suddenly realized something - I hadn't thought of it till that minute, but I suddenly realized that my kids thought I was on a plane somewhere. So I immediately called their school and asked the office to please let them know I hadn't gone anywhere, I was fine, and that I'd pick them up after school.
My son told me that he was sitting in class, all in a knot inside, thinking his mom was in a plane somewhere, and the teacher called him up to her desk - and he was absolutely certain she was going to tell him his mother was dead. Instead she told him that I'd called to let him know I was fine. When I picked my boys up that afternoon, they nearly knocked me down running to hug me. We just held each other and cried
This made me literally tear up. To think of my kids so worried that I had died. Your poor son. I bet that haunts him to this day.
I was a senior in college. I just moved into a new house a few friends a week before and we still didn't have cable/internet installed so I didn't have any news source until I got into my car that morning and put on the radio. I think I had a 9am class and got ready and out the door and turned on the Howard Stern Show which I always listened to in the car back then and anyone that has heard Stern's 9/11 broadcast knows how surreal it was when you're expecting laughs and everything was dead serious. It took a few minutes for me to fully understand what was happening but I went to class anyway not knowing what I should be doing.. Everyone showed up at class that morning. The thing that always sticks out is that there was a Middle Eastern guy in my class and he telling everyone that Bin Laden was behind it before that was even being widely reported. The Middle Eastern student seemed slightly shocked the Bin Laden was able to pull something like this off on US soil but you could also see he was beaming with pride. That's the moment I knew the world would never be the same because I was sitting in a class room with a foreign student in a college in Massachusetts who clearly hated our way of life
I was driving home from dropping our twins off at elementary school. I was listening to the John and Ken show, notorious pranksters who often took things too far. At first I thought it was an odd prank. then I thought they are really going to far, this is not even remotely funny. I did not realize it was real until I got home and found my wife in tears.
I stayed home from work for most of the day. We had friends working in the towers, but of course there was no way to learn whether they were ok for months (they were none of them were there that day, one had taken a job elsewhere a few days earlier).
Some of the schools closed. The teachers could not teach. They gathered the kids in the common areas until parents came and got them.
That night or a day or so after, while planes were still grounded, a group of military jets came blasting down the coast, seemed like they were right over our house. They turned and went to supersonic speeds leaving a massive sonic boom (we figured this out later). All we knew was that at 2 a.m. or so we heard super loud rocket engines and then a huge BOOOM that shook the house. We dived out of bed and ducked beneath the level of the window glass then peered out looking for a fireball to see what had gotten hit. Then I realized there were no rational terrorist targets in Orange County, but when you are sleeping or half awake, it takes a while before your brain begins to function.
I was the Wing Supervisor of Flying that day, and had to orchestrate the recovery of our aircraft and the closure of the US National Airspace System. We saw on a TV in another room the 2nd WTC impact. After all of our aircraft were back in the chocks the Operations Group Commander called a meeting and asked who had any air defense experience... only two pilots in the whole wing did, I was one, so as the chief of Stan/Eval (the guys who check pilots periodically for abilities and skills) and the guy who also provided the inflight guide, I was tasked to build an air defense alert package in an hour. I knew a couple pilots at the Atlantic City Air National Guard who were former students of mine, and they emailed me their checklist, so it was easy to generate using their work. I was sent home at noon, "Come back at 2200 (10 PM) for words." On the way home I remember long lines at gas stations.
Tried to get some sleep, couldn't, kept seeing the United 767 hitting the WTC. Came back to work, was given words, a packet of authentication tables and coordinates, and told my takeoff was at 2 AM on 12 Sep 2017. My wingman and I left to orbit a city as part of the brand new Operation Noble Eagle from 2:30 AM until about 7. Normally under night vision devices one can see all sorts of airborne lights (airliners, FedEx) but there were only three that morning, a tanker from the ANG supporting us, a C-5 on a cargo mission, and my wingman. As the city below woke up, I noticed school busses with their flashing strobes, the freeways filled up, life was going on. Just not the way it had on the 10th. It was a really beautiful day, sunrise came and went and we were relieved by another set of F-16s. I just remember being very angry on the way back, seeing farmers in their fields below and small town America and how awesome this place is and thinking "Bastards! Y'all will NOT get away with this!"
there was a Middle Eastern guy in my class and he telling everyone that Bin Laden was behind it before that was even being widely reported. The Middle Eastern student seemed slightly shocked the Bin Laden was able to pull something like this off on US soil but you could also see he was beaming with pride.
Jeez.
Nobody took the opportunity to punch the grin off his face?
I was early to open the office and turned on the TVs for the stock ticker. SO was at LaGuardia flying right seat one of the first long legs of his hobby turned job. He was supposed to visit with friends of a previous life but could not make it. He never talks about it. Neither do I. Some of them did not make it.
It is generally a quiet day around our house. Remembering.
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