Posted on 09/10/2008 6:07:02 PM PDT by truthingod
On my way to work (phoenix) when the first plane hit. By the time I got there, second plane. My co-workers and I were crying when we heard about the pentagon
What went through your mind when you saw that plane?
Thank you so much for your very real story—this is what being an American is about. Freedom—to love, to care, to remember. WE stand together.
I was on the golf course with 3 of my friends, one of the rangers came out and told us about the attacks, me and one of the other guys blurted out simultaneously “Bin Laden”, we all agreed this was the perp.
A couple of holes later a ranger tells us, they hit the Pentagon and the White House too. I said wait, the White House? Are you going to sit there and tell me you saw the WHITE HOUSE in flames? He said something like “that’s what they’re saying” or something like that that backed him off his statement, as I wasn’t ready to believe someone could get the White House. I had been trying to get to my friend who works in the city and couldn’t, finally talked to his wife and she told me the one tower was DOWN.
Finally got to the clubhouse and saw TV, one of the local NY stations had a scroll on the bottom about estimates of at least 30,000 dead in New York!!!!!! Thanks again, lib media for your “journalism”.
On 9-11, I was at Bolling AFB (accross the Potomac from the Pentagon) at 0730 in the morning. I was working as a contractor with the USAF Surgeon General’s office, and was scheduled to present a briefing at the Pentagon at 0900 that day.
When I arrived at Bolling, I was told that my brief had been re-scheduled for 1 pm that day (1300 for us old military types). I was well and truly po’d...I was going to have to “waste” half a day waiting around to give my brief.
As the events in NYC began to unfold, those of us there at Bolling realized that we had been attacked, and that we (in the metro DC area) were a prime target.
A few minutes later, I (along with the others in the office), while looking across the river at the Potomac, actually saw the plane hit the Pentagon.
Without going into details, I (and the other medics at Bolling) were heavily involved in the response to the attack on the Pentagon.
I did not see my family for almost a week (my wife was/is an active duty doctor with the US military): thank G-d for our family, our nanny, and our friends.
As someone said earlier, NEVER FORGET, NEVER FORGIVE!
Get some!!!!
Dustoff 339
Well, it’s my birthday and the phone rang. It was my best friend Jill since the 6th grade and I thought she was calling to wish me a happy birthday. She called screaming to turn on my TV. I was shocked and didn’t have any idea what she could have meant or what could be so bad for her to be screaming at me.....
So we screamed and cried together over the phone for a long while.
Then I started missing my kids real badly and went to school to get them. I just wanted my family with me. (We homeschool now). It was the quietest week I can ever remember in my life. No traffic and no airplanes over head. Everyone was at home watching TV. I miss all the flags people put out.
Thanks for remembering about the flags! What a sight it was!
Later on that evening, I went to Wal-Mart with my family. As we walked across the parking lot, I noticed a jet flying overhead, which really caught my eye due to the flight restrictions. To this day, I wonder if this might have been Air Force One bringing President Bush back to Washington from Omaha.
I had just pulled out of my driveway with my daughter in order to drive around a bit to get her to take her morning nap. I work midnights as a police officer so I was in need of some sleep. A friend of mine (state trooper) pulled up next to me and told me what had happened. I went around the block, back into my house and laid my daughter on my chest to fall to sleep. It terrified me to think of what the world was going to be like for her from that day on. My television never left Fox News for the entire week.
Here is a tribute video that I watch everyday. The words to the song fit very well in my opinion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pyLQbFLxF4
The whole time watching it with my wife and kids on the bed I thought and said “this changes everything”. It is truly a miracle that more weren't killed - I was thinking it would be in the tens of thousands based on the capacity of the towers.
And I thought with all of the financial companies, etc. that our economy would be in tatters. A true testament to the capitalist and entrepreneurial spirit that backup files were stored elsewhere, and the come-together spirit with companies helping each other, and firms stayed committed to their employees and the memory of those they lost.
My “this changes everything” thought did not come to pass thank God. At least not in how I thought. I'll never forget the days afterward and going out late at night and hearing the lone plane passing north-south over the house every hour or so as it made its way patrolling the coastline. And I'll never forget the picnic dinner up at the grade school with all the kids and parents when one child looked up in amazement after a week of quiet skis and exclaimed - "Look! An airplane!" Every head turned to look at this airliner flying through a perfectly blue sky. I think some of the kids might have even been a bit afraid. I was taken aback by how such a common thing (a plane in the sky) became the center of attention.
Heard it on AFN Radio in Germany. I thought it was an accident when they announced the first plane hitting. When the second hit I knew what was happening.
Yet I know a dependent husband who spouts the “inside job” screed...
My husband is a firefighter in a neighboring town (not NYC). He was called in to work that morning to provide mutual aid to other NYC firehouses since their apparati and staff were all heading down to the site. It was the first time I had ever seen his hands shake as he left the house. I knew he had to go, and I never thought about him not going. He came home safe, and for that, I am grateful. But 343 firefighters never made it home that day.
Sleeping in a midtown hotel I woke to a call from my sister saying the WTC was on fire ... turning on the TV I could see both towers had been hit and the replays of the 2nd plane were endless.
Taking the elevator to the roof and looking south all you could see was the smoke heading south-east. My hotel was tiny amidst the forest of the surrounding modern skyscrapers. So back to my room I went to watch the final collapse.
Heading out I walked downtown, listening to the radio, directing traffic here and there (tunnels and bridges closed) bonding with other NYers ,
glancing at Palestinians on TV dancing in the streets (hey .. this was their Christmas!!)... and finally down to West Bway south of Canal st., evading the NYPD to make it that far. Standing with a group a little after 5 pm, looking south to the smoke rising high into the sky, astonished as WTC #7 dropped before our eyes (and no .. no audible explosives). wow ....
The night before a heavy rain scrubbed the streets and the air, morphing into the type of clear, crisp, blustery Sept day all NYers love, the backdrop for the tragedy.
I was drinking and watching the Broncos whip the Giants in the opening Mon Nite football game at the Riviera, an actual sports bar right in the middle of lefty, bohemian Greenwich Village. Walking out onto 7th Ave, the towers loomed over your right shoulder just 1 1/2 miles south. Often times I would glance up at them high in the evening sky before hitting the subway and heading uptown.
To this day though, I don’t remember whether or not at about 1 am on sept 11, 2001 I glanced up at them that one last time.
I will always wonder.
- zig
I think that's probably pretty common. Both times a tower fell, I made the sign of the cross...yet, after the first I was still too mesmerised to think to pray for those in the second.
And that was from a safe, comfy sofa in Pennsylvania.
I was at my desk in my office and I heard the sirens. My office is between an ESU squad and the CrossBronxExpwy firehouse. I’ll never forget the sirens. I had WABC radio on and Curtis Sliwa was on talking about reports of a small plane hitting one of the towers. I listened to the radio throughout the day, trying to contact my mom, who was out of the house and saw the smoke from the bronx. She saw on the banks’ tv what happened and she was terrified. I kept on trying to get my son stationed in Japan at the time. I called by brother and he was freaking out because my SIL was going shopping and she goes down there sometimes. By then the second tower was hit. We all knew what it was by then.
I finally got my sister in Staten Island and she was hysterical. Her next door neighbor worked on the 95th floor of tower 2. Minette would never come home to her 16 year old daughter again. The school called my sister and asked her to come and take her home with her. Still I could here the sirens and just wierd quiet. When I got home that night and saw everything on tv I was numb. When I saw the fire trucks I cried. 7 guys from the 2 houses I mentioned above never came back. To this day, everytime I hear them going out on a job I say a silent prayer to be safe and come back safely. Seeing the people on tv looking for their loved ones holding up pics were devastating. There are so many memories. I do have 2 of Minnettes plants that are still growing in my kitchen 7 years later.
The people all swore they would never forget and damnit they have forgotten it and that makes me MADDD!!!!
All Gave Some, Some Gave All.... God Bless them all.
There were a lot of freepers concerned for my safety that day. I'm still touched by that.
I no longer fly a flag on my car--they take such a beating. But there's a lovely full size American flag flying proudly every day in my front yard :-)
We were renting a place close to LAX & his company....
..I didn't turn on the TV that AM when I made breakfast to get him ready for work...
..I turned on the computer & FR (as usual)
The first thing I saw was the announcement that ALL PLANES GROUNDED.
I told my husband and he thought it was a joke.
After he looked at the thread, he turned on the TV....
..when the tower started coming down, we turned off the TV and just sat there and cried and prayed.
Our adult children...one in Florida and the other in the midwest both called just to be comforted.
The airport was only about 5 miles away....planes flying overhead constantly.....until that day....
...The silence was deafening.
The next week we started for home (Florida) and drove the distance..
....there were American flags everywhere!..all along the route...state after state, city after city, tiny town, small village...
What is shocking is how quickly we forget...
We are this close to electing BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA for President !!!!
My wife had planned to come into the city on Tuesday night, leave the kids at Mom's, and we'd commemorate our blind date from 6 years previous.
On Tuesday 9/11 at 7a.m.CST I had a meeting with a VP who was from Israel. It was the first time we met. We finished our meeting a little late and I had to hustle to get to McCormick Place in time for an 8am CST meeting. He joined me in the taxi and we began talking...
NL: "What a beautiful day...I love Chicago. Have you been here before?"
Him: "Yes. In fact, last time I was here, the Bulls had just won the NBA title again"
NL: "Isn't that funny; I just read in the paper this morning that Michael Jordan is considering a comeback from retirement"
Him: "Yes. It's incredible. In your country, the headlines are about sports and Michael Jordan. In my country, the headlines are about the most recent terrorist attack"
NL: "Yes. Thank God we don't have to worry about that here"
It was approximately 7:50 a.m. CST (8:50 am EST), almost exactly to the minute when the first plane hit the first tower.
We got to McCormick just before 8am CST. As I was walking thru the hall to get to my meeting, I saw people crowded around the TVs. I eventually walked over to see what was going on, but I was late for my meeting so I just stayed a few seconds. A guy told me 'a plane flew into the WTC. Sounds fishy'. It was probably 8:02 CST or so and kept walking to get to my meeting downstairs. I just missed seeing the second plane hitting the second tower. I got to my meeting late while it was going on. The President of my company was in the meeting and right after I got there, someone came in and whispered in his ear (kind of like GWB had). When the presenter was finished, he asked all of our guests to leave and we stayed.
He knew and somehow a few others knew about the 2nd plane, and the room erupted in a shouting match once we all knew what was going on..."we have to tell the show company to shut this down"..."no way!!!"...F*#! the terrorists!"..."what are we gonna tell our people upstairs (we had a few hundred people there)...etc.
We decided quickly to let employees make their own decisions if they wanted to stay or leave, then we all rushed to go upstairs and get into the booth and meet with everyone.
What a wild mob scene in McCormick! The show opened to the public at 10am CST so everyone was standing around out in the main lobby/foyer area. At least 5,000 people, probably a lot more, all in a frenzy. It finally hit me, "call the wife and kids!"....I heard everyone around me saying they couldn't make a call on their cell.
I then noticed I had 4 voice messages. I called my voice mail and my call went thru on the first try. Thank you God!
1st message: it was little rebel, she sounded normal; "Hi honey, in case you're near a TV,you may want to check it out. A plane flew into the WTC. (I used to live in Manhattan just before I met my wife) It's on Fox and CNN. Love you, bye!"
2nd message. little rebel is very distressed. "Honey, it's terrorists! It's terrorists! They flew planes into the WTC. It's horrible. Are you OK? Where are you? We're worried...please call right away"
3rd message. little rebel, one of THE most patriotic people on this planet, is crying her eyes out. "My God, my God! The WTC just collapsed! Terrible, terrible. Honey, where are you? There's rumors on local TV about The Sears Tower (Mc Cormick is pretty close to Sears). Please call us!"
Message 4. little rebel is worried. "Mark. (That's how I know when she's most serious) Please call us. What's going on there? Are you OK? I know you, please don't try to be a hero! Please call. I love you"
Deep breath.
Call mother-in-laws. Goes thru on first attempt, again. Thank you Lord, once again.
little rebel answers. "Thank God you're OK! Thank God you're OK! Where are you?"
NL: "I'm fine honey. Don't worry about me. Are the girls OK?"
LR: "They're fine. Our 3 year old (no kids names used online) wants to know why I'm crying, and who knocked down the buildings?" I told her that President Bush would take care of it and get those people"
End of Part I.
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