Posted on 09/10/2007 6:41:30 PM PDT by Milwaukee_Guy
Oh I agree. My parents weren’t formally educated but they were the smartest people I knew.
I was sleeping here in L.A. at a little before 6 am, with talk radio on. Some screaming on the air started to rouse me. Something about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. In my half asleep state, I thought “They really should not do this; somebody’s going to think it’s real, like War of the Worlds.” Then I heard the screaming eyewitness say that ANOTHER plane just hit the OTHER tower.
I woke up to my marrow and rushed to the TV. It was true. I was in total shock. My next thought was, wait a second... it’s NINE A.M. IN NEW YORK. Those towers are full of PEOPLE! It was so awful.
I wondered how terrorists had gotten control of such big jets. How had they managed to steal those empty planes? Never did I actually consider that the planes were full of travelers.
When my then-four-year-old son climbed into bed with me to watch, I told him he would remember this day forever, because I had been exactly his age when the President was shot and killed, and I never forgot that day.
You’re parents did a good job. :^)
I went upstairs and quickly dressed for my meeting. Just before I headed out to the car, I had a random thought "What about Washington DC".
I started the car and the radio reported that the pentagon had been hit.
I went to my Soroptimist meeting. We prayed during the meeting, something we never do, but it was the only thing to do. Another meeting with our state rep was also going on at the restaurant and his aide came in twice to tell us when the towers fell.
I left the meeting and went to work. I was a surreal day, don't know if we got any work done, but we did have the radio going all day. The rest of the week, we had my little old black and white TV to follow events, but on Tuesday we only had the radio and the internet.
I found it hard to work for days after without continually checking the internet for news.
I was staying at my brother’s house in Singapore when I got a call from a colleague I was working with in South Asia shortly after 9 pm local time that night. He called to tell me that one of the WTC towers had been hit by a plane and that it was believed to be a navigational error. My immediate reaction was “BS!”. While we were on the phone the second plane then hit the other tower.
I remember desperately trying to turn on the TV set but couldn’t figure out how to work the home entertainment system. I finally figured it out and then proceeded to watch TV all night until around 6 am the next morning.
I also tried checking various US news websites and the Drudge report, but every single one of them timed-out due to the immense traffic. It was fully a day before I could connect to an online US news source.
Interestingly, my brother’s home was on “Embassy Road” in Singapore and was directly across the street from the Israeli embassy. In the middle of the night, the street was flooded with Singaporean special forces and the road was closed. There were also Israeli agents (I assume Mossad) milling about.
The afermath in both Singapore and Indonesia, where I was working at the time was interesting as well, but that’s for another thread.
A night to remember.
I was in the hospital that day. My husband had taken me to Emergency two days earlier because he suspected that something was wrong with my heart. The EKG looked suspicious, so they kept me for tests.
On 9/11, I was scheduled to undergo a stress test. I was in my hospital bed, watching the Today Show, when they switched to a shot of one of the WTC towers burning, and they were saying that a small plane had hit it (not an airliner). The orderly came to get me just as Flt 175 was hitting the other tower. In the testing area, some of us were crowded around a TV set, listening as news came in about Flt 77 hitting the Pentagon, and Flt 93 crashing in Pennsylvania. Talk about a stress test!
All of my tests came out OK, BTW, and I was released later that day.
I was in Kittery, ME. That is also the location of where the TERRORISTS stopped off to buy knives.
Where were you?
I was riding the bus to work and heard the bus driver talking to another passenger about them grounding all the planes. I thought something must have happened. I didn’t have time to find out from them what had happened, because my stop had come up. I went into work and went into the break room where there was a t.v. I was in shock. I know the first two planes had hit. It was either 7 or 8 Arizona time. Not sure if the pentagon was hit yet or not or flight 93. At first I had thought it was an act of China’s government.
I’m glad you’re dad had a dentist appointment. I can’t imagine what your friend experienced.
One of the co-pilots was from our town. We held benefits for his wife and daughter. And a huge vigil at one of the soccer fields. Things changed drastically when President Bush came to the Blue Barn years later.
I woke up to get ready for work and clicked on the TV. One tower had been hit. I called my Mom and then a good friend. Her son was an airline steward, I hadn’t even thought about that when I called her. (She spent much time trying to reach him to make sure was OK.)
The next tower was attacked.
Then I went to school where I taught art. I went and worked in the teachers lounge before classes started and during my planning period, so I could be around others and see TV coverage. It was then the first tower fell....
It was a day like no other.....very heavy and very sad day, and everyone went about their job to teach grade schoolers.
I commute a pretty long way from home to work. Since I don’t listen to the radio or t.v. before I leave, this news reached me on the car radio on the way to work.
I was mad, sad, appalled by all the different aspects. The people trying just doing their daily jobs, the people flying on the planes and the firefighters going to their deaths.
Not thinking very clearly, I guess, I just went on to work. The traffic as I got closer to downtown was horrific. I was worried that maybe downtown was being evacuated as a precaution. While sitting in the non-moving traffic, afraid of what was happening..I ended up next to a fire truck. I’m not a crying kind of person..but I was bawling my eyes out. In that fire truck, a fireman was doing the same thing. I rolled down my window..and we made an effort to touch.
Thanks for this thread.
FLY YOUR FLAGS TOMORROW!! NEVER, NEVER FORGET!
Every year it’s one of the spirit days. Odd this year, nothing. It’s a Catholic school. My kids would remember if they didn’t have to wear their uniform. I think I’m gonna send them with a t-shirt over it. We usually get those slips too as reminders.
DOWNLOAD FOR FREE “THE BALLAD OF MIKE MORAN” - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1894406/posts
I was active duty Air Force stationed at Edwards AFB, California.
I had just finished getting my uniform on and while I was sitting on the couch in the living room of my house on base eating breakfast they broke to say that a plane had crashed into the WTC.
I woke my wife up to tell her and when the second plane hit I told her “I better get to the office”. I knew right away in my mind we were under some kind of an attack.
I was amongst the very first military members in theatre. I volunteered because I was mad as hell. I was at an air base in Oman in just a couple of weeks. My unit was part of the first wave of air attacks on Afghanistan on the night of October 7th. We killed a whole lot of Al Qaeda and Taliban over a couple of months.
I would do it again in an instant. Monsters do not negotiate. They only understand brute force.
The View From the Bridge
Like everyone else here, I turned on the television yesterday morning and couldn't believe what I was seeing.
But it was another working day. I tried to call, to find out what might be running. Didn't get through. I didn't try very hard to contact them - I knew there would be a train to run. So I left for work on my regular time.
When I got to the crew room at New Haven, I found that many of the daytime trains had been canceled, including mine, #173 on Tuesdays. In the chaos, the tunnels into and out of New York had been closed and then inspected before traffic would be allowed through. However, some trains were starting to run again, so I waited around to be available in case they needed me for something.
#149 was going to run on time from Springfield (to D.C.). That would be mine. I asked the Motor Storage engine dispatcher for my engine: the 915 - it was only one there. It's one of the last "old-time" AEM-7's, not rebuilt, no ACSES, and still has the old-time cab signal display. It's an engine that remains a pleasure to run, rather than a contest. Indeed the 915 has changed very little since my first trip on it many years ago.
The inbound train arrived on time from Springfield, and we left on time as well, but waited at South Norwalk for a Metro-North extra heading up the Danbury branch. Their schedules had been disrupted as well, and they were running what they could trying to get things back together.
We stopped at Stamford, finished the run down the New Haven line with clear all the way - unusual. Then headed down the Hell Gate Line for New York.
Perhaps the most spectacular view of Manhattan island and the boroughs of New York City is one that most people will never witness: from the cab of a locomotive on the Hell Gate Bridge. You're up in the air, but not so high that you lose the breadth and magnificence of scope. You may get a similar, fleeting glimpse from the Triborough Bridge, but on the Hell Gate you have more time to appreciate what's before you.
Back in 1986 when I first got a computer, one use I found for it was to keep a database record of all my jobs. At first, I kept only essential data: engine numbers, terminals, mileage, times, etc. But then I decided I should include something more, a place to record comments about the day's trip.
The View from the bridge was one of my first experiences on my first trip over the road as a promoted engineman back May 1981, and it has earned entries in my "comment log" through the years. Here are a few:
October 28, 1990 (Conrail):
"Saw a complete rainbow stretching from the Bronx to Long Island - the most perfect I've ever seen"
July 1, 2001 (Amtrak):
"Saw a bolt of lightning hit the World Trade Center just before going into tunnel on the trip in"
Two days ago, Sunday, September 9 (Amtrak):
"There was no one to run 57, so I took that instead of 163; on the way back, NYC looked very nice under clouds overhead"
Coming westward on the Hell Gate Line, you pass by Oak Point Yard on the left with the elevated Bruckner Expressway on your right. You're down below street level here, but at the west end of the yard you start the climb. You're slowing down here, from 60 to 40 for the sharpest curve, as you leave the South Bronx. You turn right, go across the Bronx Kills bridgework, then continue upward past the toll booths of the Triborough Bridge. As you climb towards the 50mph curve at the east side of the main span, that's when you really see it. The View.
And of course, they were gone.
We arrived at Penn Station with 6 cars, 2 trainmen, 5 passengers, and no one on the platform waiting.
When I don't see him, I'll leave a note for the outbound engineman, saying how many cars, and condition of the brakes and engine. But last night I added:
149
6 cars
Brakes OK
Eng OK
A sad day.
Penn Station was very quiet. I walked out to 8th Avenue and 31st. Looking downtown towards the darkness, I saw what might be flashing lights far off, couldn't tell how far. I walked eastward on 31st Street, the taxi stands were blocked off with police vehicles; I heard they commandeered the taxis for emergency service. 7th Avenue was closed south of 34th Street, being used as an "emergency vehicle corridor". It was eerily quiet in midtown, almost no one there.
Back inside, there was no eastbound work for me. All earlier trains were gone and the ones coming later would have crews arriving, available to work back. So I could deadhead home.
There weren't going to be any eastward trains from Penn for a couple of hours, so I decided to take Metro-North back to New Haven. I walked to the 7th Avenue Subway entrance by the Long Island Rail Road side, with money out for a subway token, but the clerk at the booth waved me through the open gates. There was no service south of 34th Street - downtown trains were terminating there, then heading back uptown.
Waiting in the subway car to leave, I listened to a gentleman who worked for Jersey Transit. From his window he had seen it all: the second plane hit, the first collapse, the second collapse.
Grand Central was all but deserted. In the quiet there, one can take in what must be the greatest public space in America. I caught the 10:17pm for New Haven. The guy running it had hired out one man behind me.
The ride home in a deadhead car gave me time to consider the day, turning everything over inside.
In 1941 about 3,000 lives were lost at Pearl Harbor. We went to war, against known enemies, known countries. Yesterday we lost ... well, who has ANY idea yet of how many? Certainly thousands. Could it reach 20,000?
But this time, our war must be not against a country - it must be against a CULTURE. We must fight it and do whatever it takes to win. If we are not willing to do this, we will certainly face a greater Hellfire NEXT time.
I got home 3 hours' behind my regular time.
I have yet to finish my timeslip for yesterday, and then enter it into my records. I'm unsure what I can put into my comment log to fully represent yesterday's events.
I didn't sleep long last night. The televisions keep looping videos of the planes slicing into the buildings. How many times can YOU watch it? There are going to be more videos, perhaps more chilling than before. At once, the most awful and compelling sight I've ever seen. I am hard-pressed to keep my composure when I stop to think of those hundreds or thousands of doomed people in those buildings. Those who chose to jump rather than be burned alive. May God have pity on their souls.
Last night just after sunset on the bridge, I looked in the distance and saw the ashes of their lives floating up from Manhattan and across Brooklyn.
Tuesday, September 11, 2001:
"The view will never be the same."
- John
(AMT/ex-CR/ex-MN/future CSX? - but not NS [or Acela] - engineman)
20 minutes later, the sounder fired again, and we got the news about the second plane. The senior of the two husbands said, “Now, that was no accident”.
I dropped them off at the airport, and as I pulled away from the curb, my van radio told us that the airport was being closed. Some driver called back “Which airport?” The dispatcher practically yelled “All of them!”. Thirty seconds later, we were advised that we didn’t know how long this was going to last, but we should continue picking up guests, just in case this was a short closure. I got my next assignment, 4 stops out of North Seattle, and headed north.
By this time, the news station I was listening to was simulcasting the CBS affiliate out of New York City. I was headed north on I-5, just coming into view of downtown, when the Breaking News sounder (the two stations used the same one) went off, and the female newsie said “Folks...it gets worse..” That’s when I heard about the Pentagon. I literally screamed in my van.
I pulled off at the Starbucks at Olive Way. I got on the phone with my wife. She’d already heard, because her clock radio went off at about the same time the first bulletins were coming. I continued up to north Seattle and decided to call my guests to see if they still wanted to go to the airport. All of them declined, and one had no idea what had happened. I climbed back into my van and was about to call the base to tell them, when the radio came on...”All vans..if you have guests aboard and inbound, turn around and take them home, then report to the airport.” Traffic was as bad as I’d ever seen it, and I ended up taking Aurora Ave back to the airport.
I remember sitting in that hellacious traffic, on that gorgeous, cloudless day, looking at the skyline of Seattle, and wondering if, in the next instant, I would be blinded by the flash of a nuke.
After a couple more runs out of the airport, I finally went home. I sat and watched replay after replay of the crashes, and the collapsing of the Towers. I didn’t go to work the next day, but did on Thursday the 13th,. even though I made exactly zilch in fares...no one wanted to fly.
I didn’t feel anything about the whole disaster until the day of the memorial service from the National Cathedral. I listened to the whole thing, sitting in my van. It was when they began to play “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” that I lost it...and I cried on and off for most of the day.
I didn’t have that responsibility to contend with but I knew we were being attacked. Work was vanished from my mind. The Country needed help. There was nothing I could do. I have never been so helpless and angry in my life.
ITA :) I say if I can be half as good as a parent then I’ll be damned good. Thank you. It’s coming up to the one year since my mom died and 8 since my Dad. They were amazing parents and grandparents.
I called him and he had actually not heard anything yet. He got very quiet then said “Within a year I will be going somewhere”. It actually took about 2 years for his unit to be called up.
I don’t remember doing much work that day, though at a hospital work just can’t stop so I must have continued.
Scariest day of my life.
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