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Where were you when 9/11 happened? (1 Viewer)

I was home getting ready to head out when my wife's ex-husband called me to get her a message that he was all right. 

He was supposed to be on one of the flights from BOS to LA but with light traffic got to the airport early enough to catch an earlier flight. 

Talk about your total roll of the dice, your time isn't up scenarios. He has his original boarding pass in a frame in his house. 

To the best of my knowledge, he is the only person that switched off any of the ill fated flights. 
Seth MacFarlane was supposed to be on one of those flights but was out partying the night before and got to the airport late, missing the flight. 

 
I set out that morning from Columbia, Missouri heading to Pine Bluff, Arkansas to do some work at a weather site near a paper mill.

About an hour into the trip the rock station I was listening to broke in with the story of a small plane crashing into a building in NYC.

As the story slowly developed into something more serious I was unable to find a good news source on the radio, so I called a buddy who lived in Phoenix (who had previously worked in the Pentagon).

He was still in bed so I just told him to turn on the news. The memory of his confusion and shock is still vivid.

Over the next hours he would call with updates; a second plane has hit, the first tower has collapsed, the second tower fell, etc.

I stopped in a Macdonalds for lunch just before I hit the Ozarks. Everyone had gathered around a TV, and I watched with other travelers in silence for a bit.

The thing that stands out once I got to Pine Bluff was the panic at gas stations. Lines were long, people were hoping curbs to cut in line, yelling. Just crazy.

That night around 7pm was the first time I had extended time watching the news. Sad, sad day.

 
I was working for a law firm in mid-town Manhattan (W45th Street). The girl in the cubicle in front of me was talking on the phone with some one from our Process of Service company located downtown. She says the woman just hung up on her saying "I have to go....a plane just hit the WTC". We were kind of shocked - I was thinking one of those small planes accidently hit. A bunch of us went into the kitchen and turned on the TV and while we were watching saw the second plane hit. We then realized what was happening.

A short while later, the woman partner came in and told us all to go back to our desks and work since "there's nothing any of us can do right now". I started listening to my clock radio at my desk and tried calling some friends I knew that worked in the tower. One was on vacation in North Carolina, another had arrived from out of the subway station after it hit looked at the tower and saw some people jumping out and ran back to the train station to get on an LIRR train as fast as he could so that he could get home. When I heard the news on my radio that the first tower fell I yelled "####" at my desk. My mom called a few minutes later frantically as she wasn't quite sure where in NYC I worked and in a typical mom way said "I hope I didn't get you in trouble by calling at work...."

After around noon time we were all sent home, and told not to come back the next day. I lived in Weehawken, across the river, so I went to the ferry station. The line was like Disney World, but after about an hour and a half, two hours, I made it on a ferry. While on the river looking back at where the towers were and just seeing huge billows of smoke rising up through the air, it was so surreal. Some one stood up on the ferry and yelled "I'm going to kill the next ####### Arab I see" - chilling.

Made it across the river and walked slowly to my condo. I lived on a cliff right on the river's edge and had a view of the entire NYC skyline and sat on my balcony just looking at the smoke coming from "ground zero" and seeing the huge trail over the skyline. I still have some great panoramic pictures that I took. My buddy Steve was waiting outside my place for hours since he got out of work well before me and finally got through on my cell and came up with some beers. Another friend came by later and the three of us went to a sushi place down the road to eat, get pissed drunk and watch Bush's speech on TV. The place was packed and dead silent throughout the speech. You can't imagine a packed restaurant being so quite except for the sound coming from the televisions.

It was something I of course can/will never forget.

 
on my way to work bob and brian sort of mentioned that a small plane had hit the trade towers and then pretty quickly it was news channels breaking in and we all know how it went from there that day changed me a lot because i asked myself there cannot really be that many people who believe that life is so worthless and that there is nothing worth living for except to die and i went through a rough patch after that but then the usa was so together in one place for a while it was pretty awesome actually just one country under the big kahuna from down under upstairs being good to one another of course it wore off but i try to live now in a way that at least i hope encourages everyone to try and get back to that place where we were all together without a horrible tragedy happening to get us there take that to the bank brohans 
They were talking to Czabe and it quickly turned serious. Then they brought on the Baraboo Rifle (Ted Perry) and all they did was news that morning.

 
The day of the attack, I was driving to work listening to the radio. All of a sudden the disc jockeys started talking about a plane that hit the WTC. Then several minutes later, they were watching a monitor when the second plane hit, and were describing this on the radio. At that time I was a contractor, and that day I was to replumb a house and replace a shower fixture. When I got to the house, the homeowner had the TV on, and we sat and watched for several minutes. He left for work, and was kind enough to leave the TV on for me to watch as I worked. The rest of the day was me in the bathroom, in the living room, under the house, in the living room, etc. That was one of the longest days of my life, and when I got home all I could do was watch the coverage until the late hours.

The next few weeks were unreal. I had all these different emotions coming out. Pain. Horror. Sadness. Anger. Empathy. Sympathy. Rage. Wonderment of why this even needs to happen. And then all of this gives way to getting back to your regular life. You still have to get up, go to work, feed the kids, go to movies, and watch sports.

Fast forward to the week the NFL resumed football. I was lucky enough to have tickets to the game in Kansas City that week, and our opponent was the NY Giants. I have several memories of that day.

1. Pride. I will never forget the ovation the Kansas City fans gave the players and personnel of the NY Giants when they came out of that tunnel. It went on for several minutes, and as I looked around I could see tears in the eyes of my fellow fans, as it seemed like this was the way we could maybe help a little bit here in KC. I remember reading the KC Star the next day and there were several quotes from Giants players about how touched they were at the response they got from the home crowd. I will NEVER be prouder to be a Kansas Citian.

2. The National Anthem. On a normal day this song gives me the chills, so you can only imagine how it felt that day. 78,000 people singing in unison. Normally at a Chiefs game, the fans will sing at the end: "and the home, of the Chiefs", and say the word "Chiefs" really loud. Not that day.

3. At the end of the national anthem, the in house camera focused on a fan sitting on the top row of the stadium. The fan was a firefighter, decked out with his helmet, waving the American flag. To this day I get chills thinking about that moment.

 
I was at work and heard about it from none other than this very site. We found a TV on a cart and watched as the second plane hit. The Internet nearly melted that day. CNN and other news sites were basically down. FBG had a running thread like none I've ever seen.
Could be an interesting read. Anyone know if it's extant?

Does anyone else remember a point in the TV coverage right after the Pentagon was hit where one reporter was chasing a lead of Islamist boots on the the ground in DC?

 
I was a senior in college getting ready to head to classes. My birthday is Sept 10th and I remember it being uneventful that year and commenting I wonder if something eventful would happen that day. I turned on the TV and watched the second plane hit live.

I ended up going to the student center since I had no clue if classes were still on or not, but walked into the main area where typical commotion of campus would be going on and it was eerily dead silent with people crowded around TVs trying to hear the latest.

 
When the first plane hit: In the office in Sao Paulo

When the second plane hit: In a hotel across the street from the office watching it live on CNN

 
Working.  I went home around lunch time because there was no work being done, and the internet was basically broken.  Got called into the boss's office the next day with a couple coworkers and was told they were docking my sick time.

 
Working.  I went home around lunch time because there was no work being done, and the internet was basically broken.  Got called into the boss's office the next day with a couple coworkers and was told they were docking my sick time.
:lmao:  jeezus

 
I was working for Marriott, with a group that did repairs on roofs, exteriors of buildings and parking garages. I was living near Boston working out of my apartment, and my wife was working (I think) in the 111 Huntington Ave building (That's the building next to the Prudential Building) in the Prudential Building and they were terrified that they were going to get hit (because they were next to in one of the tallest buildings in Boston).

The two guys that ran the dept were on a trip to do some investigating at a property on Kauai (funny how bosses go to all the nice places!!) and they were 'stuck' there when the gov't shut down all air travel for a couple days. Tough place to be stuck!!

 
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In a construction trailer discussing a screw up by our house builder. That didn't seem so important when we found out a 2nd plane hit.  :sad:

 
I was working for a law firm in mid-town Manhattan (W45th Street). The girl in the cubicle in front of me was talking on the phone with some one from our Process of Service company located downtown. She says the woman just hung up on her saying "I have to go....a plane just hit the WTC". We were kind of shocked - I was thinking one of those small planes accidently hit. A bunch of us went into the kitchen and turned on the TV and while we were watching saw the second plane hit. We then realized what was happening.

A short while later, the woman partner came in and told us all to go back to our desks and work since "there's nothing any of us can do right now". I started listening to my clock radio at my desk and tried calling some friends I knew that worked in the tower. One was on vacation in North Carolina, another had arrived from out of the subway station after it hit looked at the tower and saw some people jumping out and ran back to the train station to get on an LIRR train as fast as he could so that he could get home. When I heard the news on my radio that the first tower fell I yelled "####" at my desk. My mom called a few minutes later frantically as she wasn't quite sure where in NYC I worked and in a typical mom way said "I hope I didn't get you in trouble by calling at work...."

After around noon time we were all sent home, and told not to come back the next day. I lived in Weehawken, across the river, so I went to the ferry station. The line was like Disney World, but after about an hour and a half, two hours, I made it on a ferry. While on the river looking back at where the towers were and just seeing huge billows of smoke rising up through the air, it was so surreal. Some one stood up on the ferry and yelled "I'm going to kill the next ####### Arab I see" - chilling.

Made it across the river and walked slowly to my condo. I lived on a cliff right on the river's edge and had a view of the entire NYC skyline and sat on my balcony just looking at the smoke coming from "ground zero" and seeing the huge trail over the skyline. I still have some great panoramic pictures that I took. My buddy Steve was waiting outside my place for hours since he got out of work well before me and finally got through on my cell and came up with some beers. Another friend came by later and the three of us went to a sushi place down the road to eat, get pissed drunk and watch Bush's speech on TV. The place was packed and dead silent throughout the speech. You can't imagine a packed restaurant being so quite except for the sound coming from the televisions.

It was something I of course can/will never forget.
I love these threads. Brings out the great writers on the board. 

Thanks, Doc Oc., just for the memories of a day.  

 
I was at work in downtown Houston in the tallest building in the city. I worked for Morgan Stanley at the time. We turned on the TV after the first plane hit, just in time to see the second plane hit.

After that occurred, we were told by management to evacuate the building. I drove home and spent the day with my one year old son and wife, watching TV and crying. 

Morgan Stanley had thousands of employees in the WTC, most of whom made it out alive because of the the actions of the on site security manager, Rick Rescorla, who had been an Army officer during the Vietnam war and had made contingency plans for the WTC after the 1993 bombing. Even as WTC building management was telling employees to stay put, Rescorla was evacuating Morgan Stanley employees.

Rescorla died at the WTC that day, but his actions that day and his preparations beforehand saved probably thousands of lives.
Un - ####### - believable how those of us most astute and most prepared suffer Karma's fate. 

 
I was in a large staff meeting on the 23rd floor of the Entergy Bldg in New Orleans.  Someone came in and said a plane had hit one of the twin towers.  I immediately got up and went to that floor's breakroom to see what was going on (tv there) ...and didn't leave for most of the day.  It was weird, no one else left the meeting and I didn't have a lot of people watching with me for very long throughout the day.  

Then I went back to the hotel (Le Meridian then - now JW Marriott on Canal) and got ####-hammered with the bartender Beth while watching more news.  

 
I was at work when I  saw news breaking on the internet  about the first plane. Turned on the tv in my boss office and called my wife to tell her to turn it on as the second plane hit. A few minutes later she calls back and says "My water just broke." Spent the rest of the day at the hospital anxiously watching the Cincinnati skyline out the window and trying not to dwell on the news. My son was delivered via c-section shortly after 1 AM on the 12th.

 
Heard about the first right after physical training with my platoon. We didn't know what to think at first. Heard about the rest while having breakfast with my commanding officer. We had just sent a small group to the national training center who were in the KC airport getting ready to board when they were delayed a few days. 

Things got a lot more real, real quick. 

 
They were talking to Czabe and it quickly turned serious. Then they brought on the Baraboo Rifle (Ted Perry) and all they did was news that morning.
yep i remember that i turned over to 620 for the rest of the day after that and we all sat around watching it on a really small tv at work basically nothing got done at all 

 
Driving to a work conference in D.C.  Listening to Stern as he described what was happening.  Conference was right near the Washington Post building.  People came in from all over the country to go to this conference.  They decided not to cancel it and let everyone go home.     Watching the events unfold on tv while sitting in a conference so close to the Pentagon and White House was a surreal feeling I will never forget.  

 
it's assumed 93 was headed to the white house or capitol building... that would have been a whole other level of awfulness had it succeeded.

 
I was only a couple of blocks away when the towers fell. I was past City Hall Park and turned onto Church Street headed to the UWS. I ducked between two cars either on Park Place or Murray when this happened.

 
i'll say this. i don't actively avoid looking at the footage from that day. i don't have nightmares or flashbacks. i also just prefer not to think about what happened on 9/11 and what i experienced. i worked close to Ground Zero for another year or so and found it was a weird place to be around everyday.  when 9/11 and the aftermath does cross my mind then i get a little jumpy.

 
I slept thorough most of it as I went to bed at 8am that morning but I was on here once I got up and saw what happened.   I avoid anything to do with 9/11 myself.  If would put me in a deep depression otherwise.

 
i'll say this. i don't actively avoid looking at the footage from that day. i don't have nightmares or flashbacks. i also just prefer not to think about what happened on 9/11 and what i experienced. i worked close to Ground Zero for another year or so and found it was a weird place to be around everyday.  when 9/11 and the aftermath does cross my mind then i get a little jumpy.
there was a collection of foreign short films about it that was compiled into a feature length... just brutal to watch, because nothing was edited/censored (first time I really saw the jumpers) and much of it was with an anti-american slant. I'm open to all kinds of art- but I had to shut it off.

 
i'll say this. i don't actively avoid looking at the footage from that day. i don't have nightmares or flashbacks. i also just prefer not to think about what happened on 9/11 and what i experienced. i worked close to Ground Zero for another year or so and found it was a weird place to be around everyday.  when 9/11 and the aftermath does cross my mind then i get a little jumpy.
Working at Ground Zero must have been tough. I still remember DC from that era and having had been there for '97-'01, was able to tell the tell difference, both culturally and spiritually.  

 
I was in a hotel in New Orleans and my wife called me and woke me up and told me to turn on CNN.  She was alone back in Tacoma Washington and she was freaking out.  I had just arrived in New Orleans the night before with my minor league baseball  team from Tacoma and we were supposed to play a 5 game championship series starting on September 11th.  The series was cancelled but we were stuck in New Orleans for 3 or 4 days until airports opened again so we could fly home.

The jumpers are still stuck in my memory and I will never forget the images of them falling helplessly off the towers.  I visited the 9 11 Memorial last year in NYC which brought back a lot of memories.   I will never forget.

 
Working at Ground Zero must have been tough. I still remember DC from that era and having had been there for '97-'01, was able to tell the tell difference, both culturally and spiritually.  
it was mostly just very surreal. it went from being this gaping wound next to Battery Park to Graceland in the span of a few months. 

 
I was in Italy on vacation.  Still hard to believe what I saw, I'll never forget that moment. 

I drove back to Germany the next day, was in Afghanistan in December.  It was absolutely the most profound event of my life. 

 
Had a flight to Boston. Drivig to LAX heard of first story of plane hitting first tower. Watched the 2nd tower hit hit at Wallypark. Got the heck home 

 
In the aftermath, the flyers.  Going to New York for work, all you would see downtown were paper flyers everywhere looking for the missing.  

 
it became a tourist attraction essentially not unlike Graceland. people bought t-shirts and other cheap memorabilia while there. it became a spectacle for many onlookers to become gawkers.
ah- gotcha. totally agree.  was true even for locals.

I thought there was something about shag carpet on the walls and ceilings.

 
it's assumed 93 was headed to the white house or capitol building... that would have been a whole other level of awfulness had it succeeded.
I was just thinking about this on Monday... you would've thought we collected intel on their plans in the post 9/11 military operations by now.  Maybe we have and it's classified (or it's been widely published and I've been too focused on the Funnies section of the paper). 

 

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