Pentagon 3E1034
I was at my local community college, Manchester Community College, Manchester, CT, USA, getting ready to go to work in the Mac computer labs that day and talking to my mother on the phone when she told me for the first time of a jet plane having crashed in one of the WTC towers. She thought it was a movie.
I was home, recovering from a work injury. I had got in the habit of doing internet while watching Fox and Friends, though I hadn’t found FR yet.
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 and I are happily wed to others 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.
Just arriving to work in Roswell, GA when I heard it on the radio. Went inside and watched it unfold live on t.v.
I was at work, listening to the radio and reading FR. When the news first broke, I was commenting to co-workers about the B-25 hitting the Empire State Building in 1945.
Then I was listening to 700 WLW while they interviewed an eyewitness about the first impact. He was giving some nice details about what was going on. Then, all of a sudden, the interviewee started screaming about the second impact, and we new it was deliberate.
I was on a tour bus between Blarney and Waterford in Ireland. All of a sudden our Irish guide and the bus driver stopped their continuous banter and started talking in Gaelic. Then the guide turned around and walked straight to my husband who was sitting about 3 rows from the front and whispered what had happened and asked, “What shall I do?”
My husband replied, “Tell them.”
And so the guide criss-crossed the aisle as he worked his way to the back of the bus telling little groups of Americans, 3 and 4 at a time, about what was transpiring in NYC. In one voice they demanded that the driver turn up the radio so that we all could hear.
The rest of our trip was overshadowed by the terrible events, as we did not know if we were going to make it home at the end of the week. We did, and we were on one of only two planes that got out of Shannon on 9-15-01.
Working, mid town Manhattan. Ran to nearest hospital (St Claire’s) and reported to the surgeon on duty in the emergency department (during times of disaster management, surgeons are in charge). He assigned me a station and I and other doctors and nurses waited.
When it was clear by around 6 PM that no one that survived the collapse would be coming uptown, he sent us all home after we left our telephone numbers. He also said no drinking since we might have to return.
At work in physicians’ office - Kensington, MD, watching TV reports in the patient waiting room. We could see the Pentagon smoke from the 3rd floor office window.
Will always remember that surreal and tragic day.
At home caring for my mom. Early morning, tv turned on one of the morning shows, they were showing the first plane having crashed into the tower. They were still trying to wrap their brains around what happened, still talking about what kind of plane it might be and why it would do that, when, as I was looking live, I saw the second plane hit the second tower.
Knew then it was what it was.
Stayed with the tv all that day except for brief, necessary pauses.
Had trouble explaining to mom how such a thing could be, what it was all about, because of her limitations in dealing with it.
I so remember President George W Bush that day and subsequently. I remember once again thanking God that algore was NOT in the Oval Office.
I was at Offut in the 70’s - Air Force Global Weather Center. We tore weather observations off a teletype and plotted maps on paper with a rapidiograph pen.
In ‘01, I was walking through the prepress area of the print plant I worked in. I heard someone laugh. When I asked him what was up, he replied that some idiot had flown into the WTC. Of course, that was the very first report. Went back to my desk, turned on radio, then television.
Pulled from my classroom in upper rural Michigan. News was on TV all day in main office so we could check in and watch.
NEVER forget that very moment I was told and the eyes of the person who told me...
Heard of? More like heard.
Well, at least I wasn’t dumb enough to run over to the WTC and gape up at the fire like two guys I knew. You never saw two guys run so fast when the second plane hit.
But I was still completely covered with dust as I made my escape under the Brooklyn Bridge through Chinatown. The funny thing is, once you got to Canal, the vendors were selling fish and vegetables from stalls like it was an ordinary day. I went in a Chinese deli and bought a big diet Pepsi, then continued my hike north.
Working as a courier in San Diego. I had been laid off from my aerospace job. Heard it on my car radio. I remember fearing there could have been 10,000 people killed in the WTC. I knew right away it was those damned A-rabs and not George Bush.
I was here, on Free republic. Was getting ready for the day, having just gotten the kids off to preschool, husband was off to the base and I read this exact headline. Reading it again tonight made me jump.
I read on and as the realization of the situation set in I went downstairs to turn on the TV and I watched the second plane go in.
I watched and as the buildings went down I shook.
I tried to get through on the phone. Five siblings, grandmothers and aunts, my brother, who had worked there, but not then.
The phone was so dead. It wasn’t like in a storm when the power goes out. It was dead.
I finally got in touch with my fabulous and tough great aunt, whose late and senior husband had worked on Wall Street since 1910.
She asked, “what the hell kind of a world is this you kids are inheriting?”.
Later I spoke with another Aunt whose two sons had witnessed it from two different points. I told her my legs were just giving way. She said she could see the smoke from Rumson, way down the coast of NJ.
Then my sister, whose husband, a lawyer at City Hall, who was on his way back home out on Long Island, having called her to tell her he was turning around, “something very F U’d was going on”.
Other worldly things also happened.
Then, a few days later, I got in touch with a cousin, of the firefighting side of our Irish family. He said he was there when Pres Bush came onto the scene and, “what a shot in the arm that was! What a shot in the arm”, he said.
Then he said he’d have to buy a new suit. He’d have about 15 funerals to attend in the next week.
My brother said they weren’t saying if anyone was dead. Many families waited weeks finally giving up and sending the second son to go retrieve the car from the train station.
And that’s where it gets sad.
My sister told me that our/my boy next door was missing.
He was so full of life. Perfect family, wife, home, sons.
Two weeks later they gave up and sent his little brother up to the station to get his car.
We had twenty-two funerals in our parish, of the Catholic school we had grown up in.
Father James had to hold 22 funeral Masses within two weeks.
Never heard a peep from hubby til around 6 PM. Comm out. From the moment the planes hit, the Ari Force was in. Not a plane over my backyard for the first time ever.
That quiet was eeriest of everything.
Giving breakfast to my 2 & 4 y.o. kids. They were at the dining room table eating Cocoa Puffs and I was going back and forth to he basement to watch CNN and read FR on dial-up.
Had just dropped the kids off at their little Christian school, heard it over the radio while driving home, turned on the tv and pretty much sat and cried for 3 days.
Driving to work (a defense contractor) when the radio newstation broke in and said a plane hit one of the buildings. My mouth formed the words ‘Osama Bin Laden’ but no voice. I ran into the building, informed as many in management as I could to turn on the radio..the internet was jammed. Headed to my office (shared with other managers) told them we were under attack. A few minutes later, our administrator heard about the 2nd plane. My best friend at work came to me and asked to leave..his brother-in-law was supposed to be attending a meeting in the Towers that morning. That’s when I nearly lost it. A number of us headed to the gym, where there was a TV. Thought we were looking at Central Park..then the news showed it was D.C. and the Pentagon had been hit. Headed home early to meet my 3rd grader at the bus...along with every other mom in the neighborhood.
Well, I recall the LIE westbound being shutdown so the emergency vehicles can make their way to NYC.
#ing Islam.
Sitting right here at my computer in my home office, learned of it in Breaking News on Free Republic.
This led to me running back and forth from my office to my bedroom, where there is a TV, until I finally pulled the TV out of the bedroom into the office, so I could get info updates from FR and TV news simultaneously.
I was at home, off work that day, 7 mo. pregnant with our oldest daughter. I turned on the news after the first tower was hit. My husband was working for DoD at the time very close to D.C. I was on the phone with him and saw the second tower hit. When the third plane hit the Pentagon, I called and told him “please come home NOW”.
A terrible, surreal day.