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I'll start,

I started work at 7:00 am CDT. Went to my shop office and was busy checking out how the night shift did and what the latest production schedule required that day. I didn't turn my desk radio on because things were a little busy.

Phone rings and it's a call from my younger brother. He never calls me at work. Something has to be wrong...

Brother - "Two planes hit both of the World Trade Towers in New York."

Me - "What?"

Brother - "Both World Trade Towers are on fire. Both were struck by airplanes"

Me- "Both? Two airplanes?"

Brother - "Yep. The second tower was hit just a minute ago. I actually saw it live!"

Me- "This is straight out of a Tom Clancey or Dale Brown novel. This is like a bad movie."

Brother - "Get to a TV, you won't believe your eyes."

Me - " They actually did it this time."

My next thought was how do I calmly and factually inform the shop and my family? I put my thoughts together and started passing the word...

I was waiting for a bus to work at at stop in Seattle. My friend had a radio on, I was reading. He looked up and told me that a plane had hit a tower in NYC and I recall saying something like "that's the worst navigator in the world." A few minutes later he got this really sick look on his face and I asked him what was wrong. "A second plane just hit the next tower." We just looked at one another silently because we realized that the world had just changed.

As soon as I got to work I was on FR and my colleagues were asking me what was going on. Absolutely nothing got done that day and absolutely no one cared. By the time I got home that evening the television news programs were just catching up to what I'd been reading here hours before.

9/11 is my birthday. It will never be a happy day anymore.
To think of all my birthdays when I was growing up, not knowing what it was going to be...

I was in the car just getting to work.
The radio was going with the first reports.
I logged onto FR at work an turned on my radio.
In minutes, my office was filled with people.
I got MSNBC streaming while getting FR reports.
That was the whole day.

My wife and daughter were traveling with GMa and GPa...in Europe.

It was a lonely horrible night, watching the video.
Lacrimose day. Every since then, I’ve found myself more prone to tears and sorrow when thinking of that day and what might I have done faced with the same choices.

Jump or burn?

The hatred for these Islamofascists is endless. I hate them all and what the demonrats are doing to our country. It’s sickening where we are today because of these islamic mongrels.

I also remember that planes were quickly grounded, and all I heard for weeks were gunboats patrolling the nearby river and fighter jets patrolling the sky.

I knew intuitively it was Al-Qaeda. I was furious when the media announced intelligence had picked up cell phone chatter and located Bin Laden. Had they kept that secret, I truly believe we would have captured him early on.

This morning I read that a group of young Muslims are publicly announcing they are apostates and renouncing their Islamic religion—knowing that it means they could be put to death if caught by the wrong people. In Islamic countries, there is no freedom of religion—because Islam is a government and a culture—it is not a religion as we understand that term in the West. It is analogous to the Spanish Inquisition in many respects.

I am committed to ending faith-based funding, school vouchers, other tools Muslims are legally using to obtain U.S. tax dollars for their schools and social services that indoctrinate kids and people in their darkest hour. It’s especially important, since the Supreme Court ruled that the Salvation Army could hire and fire based on belief for workers to distribute faith-based services paid for by taxpayers. Since that extends to Muslims, we must bring it to an end.

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.

I was on my way to work (San Francisco Bay Area, California). After the initial shock, the first cogent thoughts and emotions I had were anger mixed with the knowledge of how our failed intelligence caused/allowed this to happen. Intelligence as a key component of our national security had been utterly disabled and I blamed it (and still do) on the unbelievable and utterly disastrous liberal policies and neglect of President Bill Clinton and his corrupt administration. His trysts with Lewinsky weren't just the total irresponsibilities of a sexual addict - they were treasonous acts of a Commander in Chief who had abdicated his position creating a leaderless vacuum into which these Islamo-Facsists had basically been invited to invade our country and kill our people.

These were my first thoughts mixed with anger as I rolled down the freeway on my way to work while heroes in the sky were "rolling" to kill terrorists and cause their plane to crash in a Midwest field before another building full of people could be destroyed.

OK, here goes:

At that time, I was freelancing as a webpage designer. I worked at home. I was up until 3:30 AM the night before working on a client's webapge. He gave me the info late so I was playing catchup. I figure I would go to bed and wake up at 11 or so and resume work. It was al,ost 9 AM and Mom woke me up saying a plane hit the World Trade Center, one of the buildings. I thought, "you woke me up for that?" I figured it was some yahoo in a Cessna or Pipercub. Well, since Iwas awake, I looked at the TV in the living room and the hole was much bigger than a Piper Cub. I decided to resume work in the computer room and I turned on my 1964 Sony B&W TV I have there and I saw the seond plane hit "live and in black and white." From then on, I figured something was wrong and I kept glued to the Sony and looking for sources on the internet of what was going on. As Flight 93 crashed into Shanksville, it was a local Pittsburgh area story so there were times we broke off of national news so I remember blogging around telling others what I am gathering from the TV. I also had my police scanners going along with my ham radio too.

I worked (and still work) at the Pentagon, but on that day I was dropping off my car to be serviced at a dealership in Tyson's Corner. The TV there was tuned to the ABC channel, showing Good Morning America. There I learned about the fire in the first Tower, and about the report that it had been hit by a plane, but the newsman apparently didn't believe that. On an unexpectedly long trip on the shop's shuttle, I heard nothing more. At the Metro station (this must have been about 9:15 EDT) I put in a hasty call to my team leader; I didn't get him but left a message on his voice mail. I wondered later whether anybody would hear that message, but in fact he did get it. The first information that anything more had happened came in the form of a Metro announcement that the Pentagon station was closed because of a terrorist act; I think "act", not "incident", was the word used. Of course I was bewildered; so was everybody. But I took the train to the Arlington Cemetery station, and there I caught my first glimpse not of the Pentagon, which is hidden by a rise, but of the smoke rising from it.

I guess I was in shock. I remember a desperate feeling that there was something I should do, but I couldn't think what it was. After a while I decided to call my sister, my nearest relative. I had to wait a while for a pay phone, and in the end I couldn't get her. I then tried walking to the Pentagon, but I met people going the other way who told me that the building was being evacuated. They also told me about the second plane crashing into the other tower, and that whatever had happened to the Pentagon had happened well away from my own workplace. Eventually I walked home (fortunately not too far) where I found my sister waiting. By the time I got to a TV again, both towers had collapsed (on the whole, I'm glad I missed that).

I was at work when the office manager called to me that there were “bad things” going on. I got a TV on in time to see the second plane hit. I got finished with what I had to do and went home. And loaded both guns. And waited for the rest of my family to get home from school. And watched the TV and paced. I don’t think we ate dinner that night. We finally went to bed but didn’t sleep much.

On a side note, after the ban on air travel was lifted, I was in the boiler room at work when a cargo plane flew over and I ducked down under a shelf. Took me awhile to get used to hearing planes without checking to see where they were.

NEVER FORGET

The History Channel’s stunning 9/11 TV Special titled:

‘The Man Who Predicted 9/11: RICK RESCORLA’

...re-airs tonight @ 8pm Pacific- 11pm Eastern Time

Just for the LOVE of it..!!!

NEVER FORGET

I was at work (in the Midwest) and a co-worker announced that he’d heard on the radio that “a helicopter” had hit the WTC.

I immediately called my buddy who worked in SoHo and he verified the story — told me that his co-worker was on a smoke break and had watched it hit and that “it looked like a 747.” For some reason I knew this was big... closed the door to my office, got on my knees, and prayed.

Then I called my old college friend who lived in CA — his best friend (whom I also knew from college) worked in the WTC for Marsh & McLennan (I think on the 98th floor). I left him a message to call his friend ASAP.

I called my buddy in SoHo back and he was obviously shaken. He told me he and his co-workers were watching people jump from the building.

When the second plane hit, I gathered with my co-workers in someone’s office who had a television. One of the anchors was talking about the WTC when suddenly he said, “Oh my God we now go to the Pentagon!” There was a collective gasp of disbelief and horror. We all felt like anything in the country could be hit next. Many felt like WWIII had begun.

When the towers came down everyone in the office was dead silent. One woman was tearful and panicked but mostly we were all walking around like automatons.

Went home, called a friend on the way and organized a prayer vigil. It was a strange drive home — everything looked different. I’ll also never forget the quiet skies after all the planes were grounded.

Oh and as it turns out — my friend from college who worked in the WTC just so happened to have called in sick that day. His co-workers perished.

In the living room of our new house, waiting to take my daughter to work.....The first tower had already been hit. I saw the 2nd tower hit. I then knew it wasn’t an accident. When I got back home from taking her to work, and found out about the Pentagon, I was in complete shock. I thought it was untouchable. I realized then, and now to NEVER take anything for granted, and that I need to pray more for guidance wrt:taking anything for granted. It’s still a horrible feeling.....that I can’t describe.

I still remember the first day I saw an airplane after they were allowed to fly again. I was crossing a bridge, over a major highway...it was the strangest feeling. It was hard to stop staring at the airplane, let alone ignore it. I think about that day every now and then as well.
God Bless all....

I was at work and once in a while I could hear someone in the main room saY the word “airplane”. I slightly got the drift a plane had crashed. I went out there and asked someone reading about a plane crash and I learned enough to go upstairs to the break room where there was a big TV set up and I saw the first tower burning and then the second one and then they told about the Pentagon. They closed the building at 10:30 a.m. and I came home to keep watching tv. The train station was packed as everyone was trying to get home. The destination sign on my MARTA bus said “PRAY FOR AMERICA”.