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Posted on 09/11/2007 3:54:06 PM PDT by PsyOp
Where Were You On 9-11-2001?
By PsyOp
There are seminal event in history that imprint on peoples minds an indelible mark never to be forgotten.
Pearl Harbor. The Kennedy Assassination. These are events that no adult American who lived through them will ever forget. All can tell you where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. Many of us who were not around then have heard the stories.
9/11/2001 is another such event. We all remember where we were and what we were doing when we heard the news. But some would have us all forget.
I will never forget the day when a nightmare turned out to be true…
I was asleep in bed that morning. I was having a bad dream.
I was in the midst of a disjointed nightmare about being aboard an airplane that had been hijacked and was out of control (it may sound as if I am making this up, but I am not). The dream was vivid, chaotic, scary.
Was it some freakish coincidence? No. It was the result of having my alarm clock set to a lock talk radio station. When the alarm went off, news of the first plane hitting the towers must have hit my sub-conscience like a jack-hammer.
As I started to wake, as the nightmare began to fade, I thought I must still be dreaming. Hugh Hewitt was talking about a commercial jet that had just slammed into one of the World Trade towers and was speculating that it might be terrorism. A dream within a dream?
It took a moment to realize that I was no longer dreaming, but when it sank in I was instantly awake. I jumped from bed and ran to the TV, turning on FOX news. I was greeted with live footage of one of the trade towers with fire and smoke pouring from a gaping hole in its side. As I sat listening to the commentary, trying to get my mind around what happened, another jet flew in from the side of the TV screen and slammed into the second tower.
I saw it. I knew that it meant we were at war. But it was too surreal. I must still be dreaming. Go back to bed, close your eyes, it will all go away. These and other thoughts flashed in my mind.
The nightmare I had awakened from was real. Granted, I was not actually on an airplane when I awoke, but others were. For them there was no waking up in a warm bed, or the luxury of seeing it all play out from a televised distance. For them there was no option of hitting the snooze button, rolling over, and hoping it would all go away.
Six year later, some in this country would like us all to do just that. To some, that day was just a bad dream we can all roll over and forget.
We must never forget.
Where were you? What were you doing? I’d like to know.
I was on this forum.
At my office. We closed and went home. Then the second plane hit. Watched for the next 10 hours.
Thank you Bill Clinton.
Where was I?
Wampum, PA, at a facility called ALARON. We were doing some maintenance and repair on our equipment in preps to go to a nuke plant near Toronto, Ont.
I was dressed out, complete with respirator, sweating my somethings off. We were called out of containment and informed of what was going on. The facility closed for the remainder of the day.
I remember the surreal feeling of thinking... “They’re diving PLANES? into buildings?. To this day, I hold the passengers of Flight 93 as heroes.
That Canada job was postponed until some time in 2002.
I was asleep in bed. My old roommate, a girl who had moved out about half a year earlier, actually came in to my bedroom and asked me to wake up because “we were being attacked”. I don’t think she ever set foot in that bedroom the whole two years she lived with me, we were so scrupulous about things like that. She was badly upset and I really couldn’t follow what she was saying as she waited outside the door while I got dressed. I thought SHE had been somehow attacked. Then I came out and she had the TV on in the living room, and thats when I saw the replay of the second plane hitting the towers. A few minutes later the towers fell.
I remember Sierra Vista. I was stationed at Ft. Huachuca for 7 mo.
I imagine how difficult it will be for my daughter or her husband to sit their children down and explain why we face this evil when they are old enough to understand
She told me it was a BIG one, and when she said it was a commercial airliner, I said "that's no accident", and I watched the coverage on the TV when I got home.
I went back to my office, and I knew someone had crashed into the WTC on purpose. Not long after, the news of the 2nd plane was on the news and all hell broke loose from that point forward.
.
I think that is why we need to get these experiences recorded. If enough people put their experiences on this thread, it will help with that teaching process. I plan to print it and save it for that day when my granddaughter asks, or is old enough to be told about that day.
We lost two freepers that day; Mike Moran was a NYC fireman, and Barbara Olsen who was a member here also died in the Pentagon crash.
I didn’t see that thread.
I thought it was an accident until the second plane struck.
People gathered around TVs in the exercise facility in the building where I worked and we watched thousands of our fellow Americans die horrible deaths. We all sobbed together as the towers went down.
Don't forget it, folks.
It didn't take long for the traitors to come out of the woodwork, did it? They are not patriots. They are traitors.
I'm not old enough to remember JFK's assassination, but I know exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard about Challenger.
Doing a bathroom job and listening to my morning rightwinghateradio when news broke about a plane hitting the WTC. I went down stairs and asked my customer to turn on the TV and we watched the second plane hit. Later we heard about flight 93 going down in Somerset, PA(early reports)my Brother and his family live there so I spent the next frantic hours of the 11th trying to get a hold of them. Our Citizen Soldiers fought the fist battle against Islamic fundamentalism and won, 10 miles away from my brothers home.
It’s been 6 years and I still tear up.
I was watching when E.D. Hill said that there was news of a small plane hitting the WTC, and the reportage of this "accident" continued until the second plane went in. I knew, then, and I think so did everyone else. I called my mother, who lives elsewhere in the state, after the second plane to get her to turn on the TV, and we called back and forth a couple of times during the morning.
My sister, who lived in Finland at the time, was visiting our mother; they had just been to visit me, and my sister had brought one of her Finnish friends to try to match up with me (it didn't take, and she's newly wed today), and they were back at Mom's, getting ready to fly back to Finland on the 12th (which obviously didn't happen...they got out 3 or 4 days later).
This friend was a structural engineer by trade. During either the first or second call, before it happened, she said "those buildings will fall; they cannot stand." We asked "how will they fall?" Fearing for those caught under them falling like trees. "Probably straight down," she said. So when it happened we were not terribly surprised, and I was immunized against all of the "deliberate demolition" conspiracy theories before they appeared.
What I find amazing is that 9/11 was such a momentous day, that I have recollections of the day before too! I remember that President Bush was to meet with President Fox of Mexico. I also remember watching a show in PBS, in which they highlighted the lives of two families in Chicago who were trying to make ends meet. One couple's son had just finished his basic training in the Navy. At the end of their story they mentioned he was stationed at the Pentagon. I always wondered how he fared on 9/11.
We can cross link the threads.
My girlfriend who works at Yokota AB called me. It was very early in the morning so I was really half-asleep. She said a plane had hit the twin towers (at first I thought she meant the Akasaka Twin Towers here in Tokyo).
I rushed to the TV and turned it on. Immediately, the first image I saw, was the from below shot of that one surprised guy and the plane hitting the tower.
I couldn’t believe it. This has to be Hollywood... but no...
Life changed then.
Then the horror and anger set in...
That anger has never left me and and a large part of it now goes toward my fellow countrymen who support all those traitorous Democrats!
Didn't leave that place for days.
ping!
I figured that :-)
We returned from a Florida vacation the night before, getting in pretty late. My husband was up when the 1st plane hit. When I got up a little while later, he mentioned a horrible accident, a plane had crashed into the WTC. We sat, drinking coffee and watched, in shock as the 2nd plane hit the other tower on live TV.
He looked at me, said that he had to get to work, but also said: We are now at War. After he left, I let my little guy (3 at the time) have the big TV, Blues Clues and Bob the Builder were on. I spent the next few hours watching our small TV in the bedroom, talking to my dear MIL. Towards the end, I remember crying and begging for it to stop.
Finally, I took my little guy to preschool and a young girl asked me if it was true: Is the WTC gone? I said yes, she started crying. The next few days are a blur of sadness and anger.
MOgirl
My office and two others of our multi-office real estate company were attending a breakfast and ongoing training seminar at the Waterview Pavilion in Belmar, New Jersey.
At about 9:15 cell phones and pagers started going off. That is not uncommon in a room full of Realtors, but the number of calls was unusually high. Most left the room to take the calls, and hardly any returned. Ten minutes later the usually attentive staff had disappeared.
I overheard one of the agents at another table who had returned after taking a call tell someone that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.
When we had a break I walked towards the mens room, passing a closet or coat room. There was the wait staff and some of the kitchen crew, crowded around a small TV set.
By that time they were replaying the collapse of the second tower.
BTT FL
I was drying my hair at home. I live just outside Washington, DC, and had heard and felt something that made me think maybe a large truck had hit a phone pole nearby.
Then my husband called to tell me not to go to work at my job in DC because we were under attack, that a plane had hit the World Trade Center, and there also had been a major explosion at the Pentagon.
I turned on CNN and was watching as the second plane hit the WTC. I also saw President Bush become ashen when he was notified as he read with schoolchildren.
I’ll never forget.
"...It's time we recognized the nature of the conflict. It's total war and we are all involved. Nobody on our side is exempted because of age, gender, or handicap. The Islamofacists have stolen childhood from the world." [FReeper Retief]
"...That the totalitarian force pitted against freedom wears a religious makes this civil war among mankind all the more difficult to engage. Loving freedom as we do, it seems reprehensible to deliberate against a religion. But this is no ordinary religion as it demands absolute obedience of all to their religion at the cost of freedom itself." [FReeper Backtothestreets]
I was on my way to visit my mother and was on the Rumson-Sea Bright bridge (that’s in New Jersey) looking at the NY skyline and at the plume of smoke coming from it. It looked surreal against the calm ocean and clear blue sky. The first plane had just hit.
I then quickly drove to my mom’s house and ran to the beach. Standing on the sea wall, I had a clear view of NY. The sky was getting darker and darker around lower Manhattan.
I then ran to my mom’s house yelling to turn the tv on. That’s when I found out that the second plane had hit. We watched the collapse of the buildings, then ran back outside. There was nothing to see, but a thick brown/gray/black cloud. We smelled the burning of the buildings for a very long time. One of my co-workers lost her only son, 23 years old. It was his first job out of college. They never found his body. Her grief was/is unberable.
I will never forget and I will never forgive.
I am. Port side, 01 deck, USS Vulcan (AR-5), scraping paint and contemplating weekend liberty.
As for Challenger, that must have been a Tuesday; I was driving a carload of co-workers on the post-meeting caravan of our new listings for that week.
I came home and my husband said, "the Twin Towers are burning!" I logged on to msnbc.com and saw the tower on fire. I turned on the radio and heard: Oh my God! Oh my God!!!! just as the second plane hit.
JFK: I was in 8th grade and school had just let out for the day. The Principal was standing in the middle of the hallway shouting, "The President is dead! He was shot! Now go home."
Challenger: I was driving home from class at local university, and heard "major malfunction" on the radio.
Asleep like you, until my wife woke me up and said a plan had hit the towers. I watched the second hit live on TV.
We obliged by turning our monitor on to CNN (we had a couple of news channels and the weather channel available) a few minutes prior to the second plane hitting.
When the second plane hit, the news bimbo said something to the effect of "what a coincidence - another plane has hit the second tower." My reply, aloud, was something to the effect of "that's no accident, that's an attack, you @^(^$% bimbo!" I can't fully describe the feeling I had when I saw that second plane hit. It was incredibly overwhelming. Shocking. Both scary and angering at the same time.
We spent the next several hours re-assembling the power grid, with one eye on the news. We weren't sure how big this thing was going to be, but we knew immediately that we didn't need any additional vulnerabilities in the power grid.
That evening when I got home from work, still in a bit of shock, I pulled the AR-15 out of the safe, loaded 4 magazines and taped them into pairs so that I could flip each 30 round mag for another 30 rounds. The rifle stood at the ready in my house wherever I went for a month.
I flew the flag daily for 2 years afterwards, shredding 2 of them through wear and tear on the front bricks of my house.
Now, I'll never forget that day as long as I live. The planes hitting the towers. The Pentagon. The people jumping. The people cheering in some obscure third-world middle-east country. And even the cheerfulness and 'blame America' attitude of certain leftists in this country.
I will NEVER FORGET!
I was watching CNBC Sqwak Box at 5:30 AM, getting ready for the day’s trading, when it all started. They said the first plane was an accident, but I didn’t believe it. The second removed all doubt!
On a small street named Gosnell. A guy came running out of his house ( knew me by sight/aquaintance ) yelling, “ They`re blowing up New York, they`re blowing up New York!”
I thought he was going crazy.
Perhaps, after the many, many stories are collected, they could all be assembled into a single thread by some kind moderator. This is too important!
I write and don't get into my groove until later in the day so I was home when my oldest called to say he was OK. I had no clue what was going on until he told me what just happened across the street from his office.
I turned on the TV and knew immediately that it was terrorists. I told him...'This is an attack, get as far away as you can as fast as you can'.
He hesitated, mesmorized by the scene of jumping/falling bodies that he was describing to me from the street. I knew where he was standing, right at the entrance to Brooks Brothers.
I told him again to get out when the second plane punched through 2WTC from the west and the fireball exploded out the east, right over where he was standing.
I had no time to warn him. I heard the explosion in my ear as he dropped his cell phone and ran. I didn't hear from him again until the afternoon.
At the same time my wife was a few blocks away. She did get away fast and far. She ended up being rescued from the waterfront by a friend (cop) in a private boat as 2WTC fell behind her. She got through to me later too.
At the same time one brother was evacuating his building three blocks north and my other brother was coming up out of the subway and stepping into chaos.
At the same time 12 people I knew were dying.
On the 12th my son and drove side roads into Brooklyn, I walked in from there and made our way down to GZ where we worked the pit until the night of the 13th.
I was working in the law offices. We had several closings lined up, and a pile of stuff from court to go through. I was driving to the corner store to buy coffee, and my cell phone rang. My boss’s son was on a flight that morning out of NYC and we didn’t know what was happening. We’re about 50 mins from NYC.
When I got back to the office my boss looked like death warmed over, we knew there was a crash, and soon we knew it was a terrorist attack. I was busy on phones, screening clients, forwarding family calls, cancelling closings and meetings. All major financial transactions were cancelled pending rerouting through other brokerages.
My brother-in-law works at the state department in DC. We didn’t know he was okay for about 6 hours. Boss’s nephew worked for Cantor Fitzgerald - because cellular and regular phone transmissions were disrupted along the entire mid-atlantic region we didn’t know until after 2pm that he never went to work that day, and when we asked what kept him home he said “I just didn’t go.”
A good friend of mine was a NYC homicide detective. He’d told me he wasn’t going to be working that day, and for whatever reason I wasn’t concerned, but I saw his son online later and asked “Where’s your pop?” He said “He got called in this morning.” I was filled with this terrible dread. It was 2 nights later I was relieved to tears to hear from him.
He was tired, emotional, drained to the bone. His best friend had been a first responder,(ESU) and went missing in the first collapse, and he refused to leave the site for 36 hours until he was ordered home.
I went to the pet store later that week to buy dog food and a new leash. The cashier asked me if I wanted to make a donation to the rescue dogs support fund to buy the rescue/recovery dogs food, crates, boots for walking on sharp debris and eyewash for the constant fog of concrete particles and irritating fumes from the blaze. I gave her $20 and I got all choked up and couldn’t talk anymore.
This is my earlier post but I left out alot.
I have been reading these since you posted this last night and I couldn’t stop reading them. That was such a pivotal day in our Nations History. It was a day that never seemed to end.
I can remember every moment as if it just happened in detail.
I lived in Rockwall, Tx about 20 miles east of Dallas, which is where my husband (dryman) and myself grew up.
I took my daughter who was 6 to school, as I was coming back to the house I commented to myself what a beautiful day it was.
I got home and my husband dryman was ironing and watching Fox. He said some small plane flew into one of the towers.
I sat and watched as everyone was trying to figure out what exactly happened. They weren’t sure if it was a small plane or a larger. As I sat watching the news I watched as another plane flew into the other Trade Center Tower. I was like “oh My God” and screamed to my husband who was getting ready that another “F’n” plane flew into the other tower. He came out and watched with me and said this is no accident.
He had to leave for work so I watched wondering what might happen next. I thought about my neighbor who was a good friend was from Manhattan. I called her but she didn’t answer. I just left a message to come over as fast as she
could because I wasn’t about to leave that kind of message on her phone. She called right back. I told her to come over to my house right now. She didn’t ask why, she just came. When she walked in my living room, I told her what
was going on, not long after she got there we watched the second building come down. We held each other as we cried.
Her son use to work in the towers and was getting ready to
get married. She begged him a month before to move away from there because she had a bad feeling that something was
going to happen. Thank God they moved to Texas before this.
However, Jessica did lose family members that day. They
were firefighters.
I left my daughter at school because I felt it was probably safest there.
The only time I felt comfort was when all the planes were grounded, then I didnt feel like a sitting duck, wondering how in the hell has this happened.
Later that night after I put my daughter to bed. Not saying anything because she was a 1st grader and couldn’t possibly
understand, I went and set outside in my driveway with Jessica and other neighbor moms and looked up at the sky that was still so clear but this time quiet. There were no Airplanes flying to and from DFW. A sight I hope we never have to look at again.
The most surreal and longest day in my life.
634 posted on 09/11/2007 1:40:16 PM CDT by drymans wife (They is nothing like the mind of a TM;’er)
Before my friend Jessica got to my house I fell to my
knees in prayer, quoting the Lords Prayer over and over
and over. I called everyone I knew to tell them, parents
and friends.
After Jessica left my house to try to get in touch with
family members, I drove up to my favorite convient store.
Most of the ones in Texas are owned by Arabs. This one
was owned by an Indian couple, they weren't muslin. When
I got there, an unmarked fed car was outside. When I went
inside the gentleman was leaving. I began at that point
to feel some sort of calm. I knew we were doing everything
we could to stop this. The couple,man and his wife of Hindus that owned the store were in tears as I was. They flew our flag as proud as any of us did.
This is my earlier post but I left out alot.
I have been reading these since you posted this last night and I couldn’t stop reading them. That was such a pivotal day in our Nations History. It was a day that never seemed to end.
I can remember every moment as if it just happened in detail.
I lived in Rockwall, Tx about 20 miles east of Dallas, which is where my husband (dryman) and myself grew up.
I took my daughter who was 6 to school, as I was coming back to the house I commented to myself what a beautiful day it was.
I got home and my husband dryman was ironing and watching Fox. He said some small plane flew into one of the towers.
I sat and watched as everyone was trying to figure out what exactly happened. They weren’t sure if it was a small plane or a larger. As I sat watching the news I watched as another plane flew into the other Trade Center Tower. I was like “oh My God” and screamed to my husband who was getting ready that another “F’n” plane flew into the other tower. He came out and watched with me and said this is no accident.
He had to leave for work so I watched wondering what might happen next. I thought about my neighbor who was a good friend was from Manhattan. I called her but she didn’t answer. I just left a message to come over as fast as she
could because I wasn’t about to leave that kind of message on her phone. She called right back. I told her to come over to my house right now. She didn’t ask why, she just came. When she walked in my living room, I told her what
was going on, not long after she got there we watched the second building come down. We held each other as we cried.
Her son use to work in the towers and was getting ready to
get married. She begged him a month before to move away from there because she had a bad feeling that something was
going to happen. Thank God they moved to Texas before this.
However, Jessica did lose family members that day. They
were firefighters.
I left my daughter at school because I felt it was probably safest there.
The only time I felt comfort was when all the planes were grounded, then I didnt feel like a sitting duck, wondering how in the hell has this happened.
Later that night after I put my daughter to bed. Not saying anything because she was a 1st grader and couldn’t possibly
understand, I went and set outside in my driveway with Jessica and other neighbor moms and looked up at the sky that was still so clear but this time quiet. There were no Airplanes flying to and from DFW. A sight I hope we never have to look at again.
The most surreal and longest day in my life.
634 posted on 09/11/2007 1:40:16 PM CDT by drymans wife (They is nothing like the mind of a TM;’er)
Before my friend Jessica got to my house I fell to my
knees in prayer, quoting the Lords Prayer over and over
and over. I called everyone I knew to tell them, parents
and friends.
After Jessica left my house to try to get in touch with
family members, I drove up to my favorite convient store.
Most of the ones in Texas are owned by Arabs. This one
was owned by an Indian couple, they weren't muslin. When
I got there, an unmarked fed car was outside. When I went
inside the gentleman was leaving. I began at that point
to feel some sort of calm. I knew we were doing everything
we could to stop this. The couple,man and his wife of Hindus that owned the store were in tears as I was. They flew our flag as proud as any of us did.
I was in midtown Manhattan dialing over and over my wife’s phone number in WTC 7. Finally got in touch with her around 2 p.m. — She managed to ping my cell phone from a payphone off the FDR drive.
When it happened, she was getting coffee on the 45th floor. She heard the thud of plane one and saw debris falling. She headed straight for the exits and a walk down 45 floors. Once on the street, she wouldn’t look at the towers. A friend she met at the exit told her not to because bodies were falling.
I remember my office mate telling me it was terrorism after the first plane hit. I told him he was nuts — then the second plane hit.
“seminal”
heh heh heh he said “seminal” heh heh heh
Ok, seriously, I was in my office and my best friend called and said “MICHELLE- I was watching the Today show and a plane flew into the World Trade Center” and I said “OH MY GOD!!!” She said “NO, I was watching and ANOTHER ONE FLEW IN!!” We (the office staff) immediately brought the TV downstairs, I debated going to get my kids from school, deciding none would really care to hit a small rural town in Georgia, but was still unnerved. Called my Mama and we comforted each other.
That song by Alan Jackson really got to me (still does) because he was right on target. I did 99% of the things he lists.
Also, something I noted that day, NOONE SMILED. It was like NIght of the Living Dead on my drive home. Literally EVERONE was wearing a somber expression. That was the creepiest part of all.
Was making breakfast for my two daughters and was called by a friend who said turn on the news... I asked why and she said “just turn on the news” I turned it on in time to see the second plane hit the building. Right then I knew... I called my brother and spouted some anti muzzie verbage and then was shocked and stunned...Just a sad day...
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