September 11, 2001 Remembrance

[Anonymous]

Where were you twenty years ago on September 11?

[Anonymous]

In DC, Freshman year of college, in my 8am class, walked back to the dorm to watch the second plane hit and then felt the impact at the Pentagon across the river a few minutes later. Spent most of the morning waiting to hear from my dad who had been (we later found out) late to a meeting in the Hart Senate building, ended up driving a colleague out to the New Carrollton metro stop where his car was because the metro stopped running. He didn’t have a cell phone but he finally got to a landline and called my mom (In California). I remember so many details of that horrible day.

[Anonymous]

I was a senior in high school. I actually had a doctor's appt that morning and remember the news changing live on air in the waiting room. I recall the doctor and staff not initially thinking it was a big deal " Just a random idiot"

By the time I got to school a little over an hour later the vibe was very differen.t We were getting reports of planes being crashed everywhere. At the time the reports were of 5 planes and one headed towards Boston where I lived at the time. I remember how scared I felt, and as a senior I pretty much felt invincible at the time, but not that day. Some classes had the TV on watching the news unfold. We talked of nothing else. In the days in weeks that followed I remember our conversations shifted from college plan to wondering if we would be drafted. Several of my classmates enlisted. My cart class made a memorial tribute to those that lost their lives.

Also, as a brown American with a non-Anglo-sounding name I endured a lot of racist comments by people who assumed I was Muslim.

I recall how trendy it became to be patriotic, kids who never stood for the pledge in the morning suddenly did.

I remember childishly being upset that my favorite TV shows were postponed, I wanted to escape and feel things were normal.

I also had a strange connection in that one of the flights that was hijacked I was on just the year before and that really struck me, how people were just doing a normal thing, like I had been.

It was a very strange and sad time.

In some ways it seems just like yesterday, hard to believe it's been 20 years.

[Anonymous]

I had just started 6th grade in the NYC suburbs. My school did not tell us anything nor let us out early. However, I knew something was wrong because parents were picking up their kids and I saw a few teachers crying. My dad met me at the bus stop that afternoon and told me about the WTC and Pentagon. Being the innocent 11-year-old that I was, I initially thought it had been a horrible accident. I could not believe it when my parents told me it was deliberate. It was beyond my comprehension that the U.S. could be attacked. My mom erroneously told me that Flight 93 had been shot down as we did not know the full story yet. I remember watching President Bush address the nation that night and everyone talking about it at school the next day. I know a few people who lost family (including a very good friend that I met in college) as well as several people who were supposed to be in the WTC that day but thankfully were running late or missed their trains.

[Anonymous]

My brother’s best friend just turn down a job in the world trade center because the company would not add his family to their health plan because he had a son with special needs.

[Anonymous]

Already a thread in the politics forum.

[Anonymous]

Home with newborn near Pentagon. Heard plane and guy outside on motorcycle yelled “Oh my God!” (Must have seen impact?) it was such a terrifying momentous day

[Anonymous]

I had just moved to Europe for a new job. I saw a news report on TV but it was in French which I didn't speak. It didn't matter because the video was awful. This was in the mid-afternoon. I ran to a meeting and came in late. I wasn't sure if I should say anything so I waited until the end.

[Anonymous]

I was in fourth grade.

I specifically remember I was playing a math game with one of my close friends (still a close friend to this day!) when his father came to the classroom door to pick him up.

Also will always remember what a beautiful day it was in DC...which seemed like such a contrast to the awful events.

[Anonymous]

I had gotten up that morning to do some kind of exercise class that was aired early in the morning on one of the networks. Part way into the class the news interrupted the regular programming and reported on how (they thought at the time) a small plane had accidentally hit the first tower. I watched in horror for hours. At one point I heard hammering so I went downstairs to see where the noise was coming from. A neighbor of mine was hanging his American flag on the side of the big house we all shared.

I had graduated from college four months earlier and our commencement speaker was Walter Isaacson, who told us we were inheriting the country in its longest stretch of peacetime in US history and implored us to put that gift to good use. A few months later that peacetime was gone. I’m not sure it has ever come back.

[Anonymous]

Living in Pentagon City. I still remember the smoke and the smell. We had armed military on our high rise apartment for months, plus you couldn't park underneath in the garage without showing your ID. And then there were the armed tanks off of 110 24/7 for months on end.

I remember what I wore to work that day, who first told me about the first plane, my cell not working, having to rush to evacuate the building, not having transportation from my meeting to get home and having to go home with a co-worker I didn't even know who took me in. I remember the weather. All of it.

[Anonymous]

Although this goes without saying, what a horrific tragedy. We must, of course, be sure to remember the many people who lost their lives and honor the heroes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Although this goes without saying, what a horrific tragedy. We must, of course, be sure to remember the many people who lost their lives and honor the heroes.

Yet you felt it necessary to say it. Weird.

Yes, we all remember and think of what was lost. That, however, was not what this thread was about.

[Anonymous]

Had just moved to Manhattan and visited the observation deck of the WTC two weeks before 9/11. The morning of, my boyfriend called from a taxi heading downtown that he heard on the radio about a plane crashing into the WTC. He came back uptown. I turned on the tv. Just in disbelief to see live the second plane hit and the towers crumble. We tried to donate blood at the local hospital but they didn't need it. I just remember the smell in the air, the hundreds of fliers all over the streets and subway stations of missing loved ones, and the collective devastation. People really did try to be kinder in the days that followed.

Another memory - on the one-year anniversary, at the time the first tower fell, all the fire stations in the city turned on their sirens.

[Anonymous]

At work in Crystal City. I was driving right past the pentagon when the plane hit the first tower.

I was in my office when a coworker came screaming down the hall “the pentagon was bombed. Look out the window!”. We didn’t hear the impact and from where we were, we saw the flames and smoke.

I was 31.