[laker_dad]

I was at work, and though I normally didn't get on FR back then until lunch time, for some reason I logged in just before 9:00 am. I was reading about the first plane when the second hit. No one else in our office knew what was happening. We eventually found a TV and rigged a makehift antenna (no cable TV in the office) to get the local ABC station. We all sat in stunned silence and watched the towers fall.

[Loyolas Mattman]

I was at the hospital with my son, who was born some 10 hours earlier. The hospital is only 20 or so miles from the Pentagon, and probably less than 5 miles from Dulles Airport (Reston, VA). My wife had to be moved from the room she was in to another room because the hospital had to prepare for victims if the situation worsened.

It was truly horrible to have to deal with the reality of seeing your city under attack on little sleep and coming off the emotional high of your first child's birth. As I held him, I thanked him for being born when he was so I didn't have to be downtown that morning. (I commute past the Pentagon twice a day.) At the same time, I couldn't help but wonder what kind of world he was born into.

Making the situation worse, the nurses at the hospital were spreading the worst rumors imaginable. At one point, I thought we had lost the Capitol, the White House, and the State Dept.

That day was an emotional rollercoaster I would never wish on anyone, and have little desire to relive. Thankfully, to date, we have not had to...