Pregnant with our second. Had a 2-year-old.
Got up that day and took out the trash. Remarked, to myself, that the sky was sooooooooo Azure Blue and that Fall was in the air. I don’t think in my lifetime....I’ve ever seen a sky so surreal.
Thanked God for such a beautiful day!
Husband getting dressed for work.
Phone rang and it was my mom. Told me to turn on the TV and what happened (the first strike). Thought it was an errant aircraft to begin with.
We watched the second strike. I was frightened.
Tried to call my sis’ who lived outside of Philly. Circuits down. Kept trying. Got through. She was panicking. Her son and a German exchange student were on a school trip and were to be at the WTC at that time.
Found out that the bus was delayed due to traffic.
She needed help relaying a message to the exchange student’s mom that he was OK.
Contacted a relative in France who was an interpreter to relay the message.
Visited my sibling at the family business. He was shaken up. Went to my mom’s.
Watched coverage.
Dawned on me that we didn’t have an American Flag (because we had only just moved from abroad).
Dressed my son in a flag t-shirt and went to Wal-Mart to buy a flag.
Unfurled it in front of our home.
I was at work on a construction site in Freehold NJ. A co-worker hit me on my Nextel radio and said “A plane just hit The Trade Center’’. Years prior to 9/11 I'd worked in Manhattan in the construction industry and used to commute in on the Path trains to the South Tower. On a clear day and a day so clear with such a brilliant blue sky as there was that morning(never before or since have I ever seen such a sky) you could see The World Trade Center towers for miles on any point on the compass. So when my friend told me a plane had hit them I remember thinking “That's dumb, who the heck can't see those two things?’’. One of my younger brothers saw the whole attack from across the river in Jersey City. He saw people jumping. “Like wax dripping from a candle’’ he said. He still has nightmares. My youngest brother lives in on the Lower East side, he's a chef. Friends of his were killed in The Sky Box Cafe in the South Tower. Some of them he had trained to be sous chefs a year earlier. They were developmentally-challenged adults trained in a partnership with with the State of New York, the Port Authority and The New York School of Culinary Arts. He say's sometimes at night he ''see's their faces'' They're calling to me to help them and I can't''. My father lost a friend, a retired architect who had been in Windows On The World that morning seeing his broker. Called his wife to say good-bye and then went out the window. I'll never forget 9/11. And I'll NEVER forgive the barbarians who bought this horror to our country.