September 11th Remembrance Thread (done a slightly different way) (JFK, assassin, DNA)
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I was distracted with other things and not aware of what was happening until the first tower collapsed. I found out by trying to make airline arrangements. Once it took hold as to what was happening, there was disbelief, dread, and confusion. The morning seemed to stretch on forever -- that's what people remember. My daughter was at school and came home with lots of questions that really could not be answered. We assumed that we were probably at war but with whom? There was no other news since there were three attack sites and rescue/recovery efforts were underway and images were played over and over. We learned some early information from some cell phone calls from one of the planes -- Flight 93, I think. There was a heroic effort to regain control of the plane before it crashed in Pennsylvania. We really did not know much about what happened or how bad it was until later. There were messages of support and sympathy from other countries. There were reports of where the President was or what city officials were doing. I recall images of thousands of people streaming out of Manhattan on foot crossing the bridges.
September's Morn
Each year we gather our painful remembrances
of a sun swept day.
It was a Tuesday, not unlike many others…
an election day.
We stopped to cast votes as we went to work. We were
confident and young.
A short line to vote…Not too much of a delay
---But it was enough.
We walked holding hands. First came noise, then came the news
as people ran past.
The sunlight was dimmed - sirens wailing…a crushing sound
as towers crashed down.
We remember it – it was a roaring silence.
So impossible.
We walked together. Thousands walking together.
Walking in silence.
Friends and lovers – gone. We remember those we lost and
cherish those we found.
The scenes are burn scars – always to be encountered --
on September’s morn.
I was in One World Trade Center and got out alive.
The rest of the day was spent trying to get home. Manhattan is an island, and like many other people who worked in the city, I lived in New Jersey, on the other side of the mile-wide Hudson River. Bridges and tunnels were shut down. I got home at 8 p.m., by boat, train, and several cars, and there was a lot that happened to get me there.
The day still devastates me. I worked in 2 WTC for many years and when we moved out, our space was taken by Cantor Fitz. At that point i was in in Mid town...CitiCorp Center with a clear view to the towers.
Sitting in a cramped trading room, the woman behind me got a call from her boyfriend who worked for one of the money brokers in the towers. He was trapped. So we had a front row seat to the view, and the goings on. I'll leave that part of it there.
I lost many friends, colleagues and competitors on 9-11. I am certain that at least one of the people who jumped was a guy who sat across from me on the trading desk when we both worked at the same firm. Joey was a crazy SOB and i am sure he wasn't hanging around. "Fu ck if it was a quarter mile down; I'm going."
There were many others with whom i had worked and know their families.
But the above post caught my attention. Our disaster recovery site was on lower Broadway, right near the towers. Our business continuation plan was to transfer phones and trading capability off-shore (London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, etc.), but of course, after the first hour none of the phone lines worked. Even our "dedicated" lines to London were down from an overwhelming amount of voice and data trying to get through the pipe.
So, we got the H out of the CitiCorp Center and went to a private apartment. Hit a local Chinese grocer and munched while trying to make phone calls. All transportation was shut down, and military jets were screaming over Manhattan. Never, ever saw that before. That air space is never used for military activity due to the heavy airline traffic.
By 9-11 i had moved out of the city and lived in NJ. Option one was to get a hotel room. Forget about that ! Option two was to get a car and have them take me home. Nope. Option three was to try and get my own car out of the garage...and even then, how would i route myself? Fortunately my car was in a hotel space where they had a generator and could run the lifts which brought the cars up and down from the underground garage. By 8 pm i had my car back, but so what? The bridges and tunnels were closed..i recall that they opened the GW off and on, but every time they got it open, some knucklehead would call in a threat and they shut the bridge back down.
What options? I finally drove north on the Henry Hudson and wound my way all the up to the Newburgh Bridge on I-84. That was "only" a couple hours out of my way. So up to 84, across the bridge, then down the Garden State to pick up Route 46 west. I was home by midnight.
And stayed there for several days. NY Stock exchange was closed, as were many of the global exchanges. Nothing we relied upon to do our jobs worked well, if at all.
The "commute" is only one small remembrance of that time. To this day i do not watch any of the film, the history stories, or anything else to do with that day. I guts me to the core.
I lasted in NYC for a couple more years until we had that major blackout in around 2004. We walked down the stairs in the CitiCorp Center, thinking all along about the subway lines (E, F, 4,5 and 6) which merged under our building and how easy it would be to blow the whole shebang to hell and back. And why not? Citi would be a "nice" global target with big headlines if that was your thing.
That was it. I was offered a job in London, but no....maybe it was time to call it quits. I had a good run. Sadly, too many people i know did not. Today, just like many other days, we remember those souls, their children, their parents and their many, many friends who grieve at the waste which was inflicted on our Nation that day.
I was in Europe, and at the time of the events I was in a tense meeting without any access to media whatsoever. At the end of the meeting (would have been around 10.30 Eastern), someone came in the room and told us what had happened. It sounded insane to me and I said something to the effect of "good one" to the person. They however insisted it was true and we found a TV somewhere. When I saw the live shot of Manhattan, my heart sunk. I knew instantly that war was inevitable and that it is a major world historical event.
We sat around for a while in front of the TV trying to process the events. Plenty of debate. Some people were very fearful for what America would do in revenge, and there was tons of speculation about who is responsible. When I finally went home it felt surreal. I called my brother, and we talked about it while I was walking to the train home. The thing I found most bizarre was how peaceful and normal everything around me was. There was a light rain and temperatures were autumnal. This not being New York, D.C. or even the United States, it had no immediately apparent effect on life in general.
I am pretty sure a significant % of people I encountered on the train had no idea what had happened (this was before smartphones naturally, and it was late afternoon, it would have been quite common then for people to only find out about the news once they got home from school/work). I remember seeing a young couple laughing and flirting, and thinking to myself that those two souls have no idea yet that everything's just changed. With bad news there's always a 'before' and 'after' and sometimes that threshold between ignorance and awareness is a brutal divider. I feel like 9/11 was one of those red letter days that functions as such a divider.
Once I got home, I turned on CNN and it stayed on continuously for the next week pretty much. I recall going to some pro-American rallies and signing the condolences book at the U.S. embassy in the weeks thereafter as well.
First I remember that my flight which was supposed to be around noon was of course cancelled. Then I remember calling my kids' schools to tell them I wasn't flying that day and would be home that evening. Then at lunch I went to mass. It was packed. I distinctly remember some woman that I knew getting out of her car and looking around with surprise and saying "Goodness it's crowded today - is this some sort of feast day or day of obligation or something?" I said, "Have you turned on the news today?" She said "No," and I remember thinking "Oh goodness, I have to tell her," and when I told her, her face just crumpled. I remember holding hands with strangers in church as we sang O Beautiful For Spacious Skies and other songs, and I remember we were all crying.
Then I went to the store and bought literally the last flag they had. I took it home and hung it on the porch, but then I had to go back to work so I did so - even though none of us got a bit of work done that day. My teenage daughter told me that when she got home and saw that flag hanging there, she just walked up to it, hugged it and started crying.
That evening we took that flag and drove around town with the flag flying outside our sun roof. We were surrounded by other people doing the same thing. I remember people stopping at intersections and just standing there lighting candles as dusk fell.
My son later told me that he was just sure I was in the air flying (I was a corporate trainer and I'd left that morning intending to fly out of state), and when his teacher called him up to the front of the room, he thought "This is it - my mom is dead." Instead, she told him that I'd called and I was fine and wasn't flying. He said he got back to his desk and began crying with relief.
Lots of tears were shed that day, even though we were in Texas and far from the Pentagon, the field in Pennsylvania, or the WTC. We are a military family and I remember when my boss ran back into the room and said "The second tower was hit!" I looked at him and said "Well, we're at war." And we were.
My two sons were 12 and 14 then. My oldest went into the military a few years later and he told me many times it was because of that September day in 2001.
I'll try to keep this light.
I use to greet the morning with "Who are we at war with?". Well, after that day, I stopped that.
I was finishing up my night shift but then my boss was using all my knowledge of links of where to get information to get the news on the attacks. By the time my classes for the day rolled around, at least one tower had collapsed.
While I do have diaries around that time, somewhere, I think that after I was done with school, I went home and went to bed, and went into work that night.
Unfortunately, I can't say that I really was shocked to this because my memories had so much about terrorism before. What I did worry about, though in the afterwards, was whether or not this was to be a Reichstag Fire.
Finally, on a different note, I had bought an AR-10 the week before; their cost escalated from that day as their availability shrank.
I quit my job in disgust, as the company didn't even suspend training classes during the attacks; while the televisions were all on CNN live. 2 fighter jets broke the sound barrier going who knows where; rattled the windows at home.
But what really stood out back then was how differently people behaved, if only for a month. Unlike these days, everyone was nice to one another; and more appreciative of what they had. It was also the end of the innocence in many ways, the end of freedoms we once knew; this is why so many my age still miss the 90's.
Several days afterwards, this song was written; and played often on the radio.
As back then we still listened to the radio.
By 9-11 i had moved out of the city and lived in NJ. Option one was to get a hotel room. Forget about that ! Option two was to get a car and have them take me home. Nope. Option three was to try and get my own car out of the garage...and even then, how would i route myself? Fortunately my car was in a hotel space where they had a generator and could run the lifts which brought the cars up and down from the underground garage. By 8 pm i had my car back, but so what? The bridges and tunnels were closed..i recall that they opened the GW off and on, but every time they got it open, some knucklehead would call in a threat and they shut the bridge back down.
What options? I finally drove north on the Henry Hudson and wound my way all the up to the Newburgh Bridge on I-84. That was "only" a couple hours out of my way. So up to 84, across the bridge, then down the Garden State to pick up Route 46 west. I was home by midnight.
This is one of the reasons why I would never live in New York. The logistical challenges of evacuating Manhattan are overwhelming. It's akin to being in a jam-packed building with only a few emergency exits and the building catches on fire. Only the people who are right next to one of the exits have any hope of getting out before the panicky crowd jams them up.
This is one of the reasons why I would never live in New York. The logistical challenges of evacuating Manhattan are overwhelming. It's akin to being in a jam-packed building with only a few emergency exits and the building catches on fire. Only the people who are right next to one of the exits have any hope of getting out before the panicky crowd jams them up.
WELL, that is why I don't wear nylon in office buildings; just cotton, wool, leather. I think the team shirt we have is something meltable so if I have to wear it, it is over the cotton and if disaster hit, my knife would be cutting it off in a blink.
Lessons from this but then again, lessons from, in a case history, of a Cobra helicopter crash of decades before.
BUT....once again, that is one of those things in that my pretty little head is so loaded with knowledge like this. I was "built" to think like this, of such things.
*To clarify the post above (since I think it might have been too confusing to follow), I am essentially asking if anybody remembers 9-11-2001 from the perspective of the afternoon, evening, and nighttime hours.
Pfft.. of course I do. I truly thought my life was over.
We pick up in the afternoon. I got on a train at 11 am out of the city. The train travels on the main highway. There were troopers every mile. The train was packed with people.. every seat, standing in the isles. People passed around phones for people to call their loved ones.
They made the train travel at 5 miles per hour -- the entire route - because of fear of attack.
This consequently made me get home at 2 PM.
My dad picked me up... probably a sign he had dementia.... he said hardly anything. When I got home my brother gave me the verbal doings (he had been home and seen everything live) This was the first time I saw the video of anything.
As we stretched into the evening I remember it being hot and I remember being glued to the screen. Unable to move except going to the bathroom.
I was floored and internally angry when they told me I was going back to work the next day. I was mentally not there for about 4 months after.
Interestingly when I got to work the next day (even though this was day 3 of the job) I knew the place I was working wasn't going to be my future and I wanted to go someplace where I could make a difference. And that is where I am now... until Biden gets me fired for failing to inject an untested chemical into me.
Stay for just a while
Stay and let me look at you
It's been so long, I hardly knew you
Standing in the door
Stay with me a while
I only wanna talk to you
We've traveled halfway 'round the world
To find ourselves again
September morn
We danced until the night
Became a brand new day
Two lovers playing scenes
From some romantic play
September morning
Still can make me feel that way
Look at what you've done
Why, you've become a grown-up girl
I still can hear you crying
In a corner of your room
And look how far we've come
So far from where we used to be
But not so far that we've forgotten
How it was before
September morn
Do you remember
How we danced that night away
Two lovers playing scenes
From some romantic play
September morning
Still can make me feel that way
September morn
We danced until the night
Became a brand new day
Two lovers playing scenes
From some romantic play
September morning
Still can make me feel that way
September morn
We danced until the night
Became a brand new day
Two lovers playing scenes
From some romantic play
September morning
Still can make me feel that way
September morning
This was a day that is forever etched into my memory.
I worked remotely, but had a partner in crime that was based in NYC. Part of our territory was zip code 10048, which was the zip code assigned to the Twin Towers in 1971. My partner had an 8:30 appointment to see clients of ours in tower #1. As was quite common, traffic had gotten the best of him, and he was going to be late, so he called me to ask if I would inform the client that he was on the way. I was on the phone with him when he said "Something just hit the WTC".....and then his phone went dead.
I logged in to a website, and all the headline said was "a plane had hit the WTC". A few of us in the office started to speculate that it was a small plane, but after a few minutes of watching the headline not change online (this was 2001, remember), we could tell something was up.
The very next phone call I received was from my partner's wife. She knew that he should have been in the building at the time the plane hit. Her voice is something I'll never forget --- they had young kids, and I could tell that she was absolutely terrified. I began to assure her that her husband was not in the WTC, but she was so distraught that it took me several attempts for her to accept it. His phone was dead, and she had no way of contacting him. At that point, unbeknownst to me, he had begun the 15-mile walk home out of the city. Transportation was shut down, as were all communications. Amazingly, he made it home before dark.
Between the two towers, we had 44 clients, 38 of whom vanished that day. Tragically, one of the remaining six was so overcome with survivor's guilt due to missing the train that morning that he committed suicide 3 months later.
I remember getting in my car to head home, and when I started the car, the local radio station was playing "Tuesday's Gone" by Lynyrd Skynyrd. For years, every time I heard that song, I replayed that morning.
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