Where were you on 9/11/01? (Orlando, Weston: office, rain, working)

[rcnkat]

I was in my living room and saw the news...and couldn't believe my
eyes.....I instantly called my husband and went to a local dollar store
where I remembered seeing some US Flags on sale and bought won right
away and put it on my car....I cried for days...
I will never forget!!
God Bless America Always.

[algia]

I will never forget that day.....we just woke up (in FL, same time zone) and as always I was watching the Today Show and my husband's dad called, and they were talking about casual things and he was telling my hubby that a plane hit the WTC and I remember the two of them talking about it as it was a small accident...and then as we were watching, the second plane hit! we were speechless...........in awe, couldn't believe what had happened and then the Pentagon etc...back them my hubby was delivering papers and I went with him all night, I was terrified! especially when we were hearing how these people trained in Fort Lauderdale etc.... freaked me out to the point that the next day we had ADT install an alarm system! matter of fact since that happened I refuse to fly anywhere, I used to fly all over before that, and since then I am absolutely terrified of flying and won't fly ever again!
My brothers son worked in a building right across from WTC and I remember my brother being completely freaked out until he got word that his son was ok. I can't even imagine what the families are going through.
We visited NY City last year for the first time and it was from excitement calling everyone we knew, to sweating every time we heard a plane fly by!
GOD BLESS EVERYONE IN NY NOW, AND ALWAYS, I HAVE THE GREATEST ADMIRATION FOR THEM. EVERYONE THERE IS IN OUR PRAYERS.

[RobinRS]

Orlando and 9/11 will always be entwined in my mind. On September 6th, 2001 I had just signed a lease on an apartment in Lake Buena Vista. My dream was finally coming true to actually live in Orlando rather than merely visit it now and then from South Florida. I was home in South Florida getting my stuff together for the move and I didn't have the TV on. I saw everything after it happened on TV about 2PM that afternoon after a phone call from a friend. My first thought was sadness for all the people involved in the attacks. My second thought was how coordinated these attacks were.

I remember being concerned about moving out on my own after this awful attack on our country. By the time I actually moved into my apartment in late September, things had settled down a bit and I got to see all the Theme Parks practically empty. It was extremely surreal. I remember being so happy about finally being in Orlando, but concerned about whether the U.S. was going to snap out of totally understandable fear and start traveling again.


So, it will always be a particulary strange time for me. Again, I was very saddened and upset like everyone else about the attack, but I was also, at times, euphorically happy about being in Orlando. To so many, it was a time of terror and uncertainty. For me, as I watched the replay of that morning, this morning on MSNBC, I still felt that little bit of happiness creeping in because I WAS happy after the move to Orlando. That's how much Orlando meant to me in 2001 and 2002.

[THASPECIAL]

Thanx for the responses everybody

[NYC8]

I was in NYC, Midtown, working... actually in a meeting. One of my coworkers who was in the meeting with me, cell phone kept ringing, and ringing. He stepped out to take the call...came back into the conference room, with a look on his face I will never forget. He said we had to stop the meeting because the WTC was hit by an airplane. Needlesstosay, everyone ran out to make phone calls to loved ones. I called my mother & sister in law to see if she heard from my brother who worked in 4 WTC. THey had not but was trying to call him. He was a floor broker on the commodities exchange , but his hours were 10-2pm so I had a feeling was was not at work yet . Thankfully he was on the train at the time the plane hit, got off and went back in the other direction to go home to LI.

Then I tried calling a guy I use to date. We remained friends. We had played phone tag for a few weeks and was trying to get together for dinner...we had just seen each other in late august. He was a fireman in Midtown, in fact his fire dept was located on the same street as my office so I heard the fire trucks pass my building where I worked. I looked out to see if I could see him on the truck. I called his cell phone , it kept ringing & ringing and I got voice mail ( i left several messages) I called his home and left messages. I was not sure where he was , if he was working or not. I continued to try his cell for sometime, it would just ring, he never picked up. Eventually, it stopped ringing......it would just go to voice mail then not even that. I walked around like a zombee . I called the hot line to find out he was MIA. He was killed with the rest of his group. His body was found sometime later in tack. His funeral was extremely hard, I will never forget him.... I never want to hear those bag pipes again...too much to handle. He is an American Hero. May he rest in peace.

[coolcats]

I was in London on a U.S. govt. trip, visiting a company that contracted with our agency. We had gone out to lunch, and were just finishing up when someone motioned us to the bar where they had CNN showing both towers smoking and then showed the Pentagon had just been hit. One of the guys sitting at the bar looked at me and said "you look just about old enough to go to war".

One of the women in our group started crying because her boyfriend worked at the Pentagon. We hurried back to the contractor’s office, where I remember one lady saying she was “so sorry” over and over again. We then flagged a cab to go back to our hotel. The cab driver had the radio on, and they were talking about how London’s financial district was being evacuated as a precaution. The others in the cab kept talking about how they knew it was Bin Laden that had done it. I was uncomfortable because our cabbie looked like he was Middle Eastern, and I didn’t want to make him mad (silly I know, but that’s how I felt at the time).

By the time we got back to our hotel, the towers had both collapsed. Spent the next several hours just sitting in the room watching the news coverage. Then I walked to an Internet café to try to send emails to my family, since I couldn’t get through on the phone. All the way there, everyone on the street was talking about it. I remember one Brit tearing up and asking “how anyone could be so cruel.”

I was stuck over there for almost an extra week. I was treated very nicely. The hotel did my laundry for free, the waitress talked to us about what was happening every day at breakfast. Then when I finally got onto a flight home, I remember looking at all the passengers, feeling paranoid. Particularly one group Muslim families where the women wearing burquas. I’ve hopefully outgrown some of that distrust.

[backtofla]

nyc8, so sorry to hear that. what a terrible day that was.

[Long Island Mermaid]

It was my first day in real estate and I was heading to training...while driving I heard about the first attack on the radio. Upon entering the office early a couple of people were there watching tv. As I entered, the 2nd building was hit...SUREAL...the broker started class but within a few minutes beepers and cells were ringing. One agent was also a fireman and was called out. We were dismissed... I remember how clear blue the sky was as I drove home that morning in a complete fog. I don't know when exactly it hit me that I had my brother working on the trading floor, an ex-brother-in- law, and others to try to track. Luckily, my family was okay, but I did lose several high school friends and my 2 friends' husbands from the town where I live now. A couple of my friends firemen and policeman have pulmonary (permanent) damage. My brother-in-law had been laid off from his trading firm a month before. Just the mention of 9-11 or hearing the songs tears me apart.

[satkins12]

I was still in high school...it was my senior year. I was in my car on my way to school, and I was running late because there was a bad accident and traffic was being re-routed. Someone had skipped the curb and crashed their car into a house. Anyway, I was late getting to school and just as I was parking and about to turn off my car, I heard them mention something on the radio about a plane hitting the WTC, and saying what a freak accident it was. I didn't have much time to think about it because I had to run in to class. I sat next to my friend and tried whispering to her in the middle of class to tell her what I heard but she didn't get what I was saying. Then, just before the bell rang to end 1st period, one of the other teachers came in and told us that we had been "bombed" by terrorists. No one even knew what to say to that, we all just looked at each other in shock. So my teacher immediately turned on the TV and we saw both towers smoking. When the bell rang we all got up slowly and went to our next class, not really saying anything. When I got to my next class we had a sub, and we all asked the sub if we could watch the news. He hadn't heard about it yet and we tried to explain it to him. He just kept saying, well your teacher wrote down that she wanted me to show you this video on the rain forest. We sat there arguing with him that we wanted to see what was going on and he kept saying, well I'm sure you can learn about it on your own personal time when you get home tonight, but right now we are going to watch this video because that's what your teacher wanted us to do. I just remember staring blankly at this documentary--fuming at the sub, and also worried about what was going on. The towers collapsed during that hour. I couldn't believe it when I got to my third hour class and we turned on the TV and they were just GONE. I remember all the confusion in that first day, everyone talking about it--who did this? Do they have anything else planned? For the rest of the day, in all my classes all we did was watch the news. And then when I got home that evening, no one in my family was home, and my parents called and told me to go get gas because everyone was speculating that gas prices would skyrocket. So I drove all over town looking for a station that actually had gas left. Finally I found one and waited in line for about a half an hour. The atmosphere was just so...tense. I'll never forget that day.

[baileyboo]

I was working at an animal shelter outside of Philly... cleaning the dog kennels, when I heard. I returned home to CT and visited NYC the next week.

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BaileyBoo
Off-Leash-On (http://off-leash-on.blogspot.com/ - broken link)