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...
Right here (albeit under a different screen name). I went next door to tell a co-worker a plane had hit the World Trade Center.
By the time I got back to my desk, the second had hit.
I was getting ready to take two children to preschool when a friend from the homeschool association called with some questions about curriculum. We’d been talking for 15 minutes or so, and I was making “Gotta run!” noises, when she said, “Do you have the TV on? Someone just flew a plane into the World Trade Center?” I said, “No, the TV’s in the other room. Can’t those idiots see a 120-story building?” I figured it was a drunk in a Cessna.
I didn’t know anything big had happened until after I dropped the two at preschool and went to the bank with the other ones. (3, 4, 5? I forget.) There were about 50 people in the bank, drinking free coffee and watching CNN.
I made sure the TV stayed off for about the next three weeks. The children didn’t need to see it.
I was still in bed when my wife yelled a small plane had stuck the World Trade Center and there was a fire. I got to the TV in time to see the second one hit and I knew it was not a accident. I got on FR and turned on the TV next to the Confuser. The story played out from there. Our grand children share a Sept 11th birth day four years apart and we had a party planned that evening. I don’t remember if we went or not...
Being involved in a radio-scanner enthusiasts club, the emails were flying about the mil-air comms, and various public safety radio traffic.
The news reports were confused and confusing. We started to put together the "what-ifs" of going into Chicago to help if Sears or the Hancock would be next. I could only think about how my parents must have felt when Pearl Harbor was attacked.
The next several days consisted of intense morning briefings and contingency plans in case a plane required to be shot down near us over populated areas.
The following night I took my teen-aged daughters out to the backyard deck, had them look to the sky to observe there were NO PLANES....except the air cover and tankers overhead - very unusual since we are in the landing pattern for O'Hare. Over the next few days, we saw fighter planes in the area.
The local hardware stores donated tools, buckets, etc for us to stock up in case we were called.
It was tough to want to help, and holding back for the organized response to New York or DC, yet wanting to stay back in case Chicago was next.
Damn, I thought, now that's something you don't see every day. How could they not avoid that building?
As I was tying my shoes, I saw the second plane come into view and hit. I was as stunned as the TV newscasters as it slowly dawned on me that the odds of this being an accident were exactly zero.
I went on to work in a 20-story building in Atlanta. We spent a lot of that day looking out the windows and talking about it. Looking out the windows, just in case.
I was driving to the base when I heard on the car radio that a second plane had hit. Strangely, the base was not yet on high alert.
Rushed into my manager's office to turn on the TV, people started gathering around, shocked and horrified. When they said the Pentagon had been hit, I almost lost it - our son-in-law was stationed at the Pentagon. Thankfully, my daughter was able to get through to him on the phone within an hour, as she watched the smoke rising from her office in Alexandria.
I was on the last day of leave from active duty. It was a treat for me to drop The Boy off at preschool. Missus was already at work. I had started for home, and the cel rang - Missus told em to get on the Internet and find out what the hell was happening.
I saw the second plane hit the South Tower.
I heard about the Pentagon.
They had grounded all aircraft, but there was one headed for DC, until it plowed the field near Shanksville.
As I watched the South Tower go down, my knees gave way and I sat on the floor, and watched her sister fall.
After I got my legs back, I paced the house shouting useless curses. Then I stopped to think: the unit hadn’t called me. So I called them. No orders yet, stand by, but do not make any long-range plans.
I went into duty the next day and it was like a waking nightmare. And then we struck back in Afghanistan. And then the Left got their breath back.
ping, gotta work, coming back later to share.
Just finishing up morning PT with my troops.
Rolled back into the homefront to see the wife and kids in shock in front of the tv.....and just in time to watch the 2nd plane go in. My reaction was to grab my go bag and, well go.
first day of a new construction project for Morgan Stanley. at about the time the second tower went down I had had everyone rolling it up to head out home and I happened to notice the name at the bottom of my thick set of ‘prints for Morgan Stanley’s home office.... World Trade Center NY,NY. it was right there for the rest of a 6 month build. I thought about masking it out but I decided not to. I wanted the remembrance each morning when I saw that address about what those bastards did to us. I still do.
I said "what?",turned on the t.v. and the second plane hit.
I was working from home and had my 15 month old daughter with me. I took her downstairs to put her in the Pack n Play so I could make some phone calls from my office. Turned on the TV for her, and it just happened to be on Fox News. As Fox and Friends was ending, Brian Kilmeade announced that they had just learned the WTC had been hit by a plane. My initial thought was that it must have been a freak accident with a little Cessna or something like that. Of course, I sat there and watched the whole thing unfold in front of me. When the first tower fell, I was just stunned. And stupid me, I was thinking, well everybody got out, right? Surely the minute that plane hit people evacuated that building. I ran upstairs and called my husband’s office. When I told him, he didn’t believe me.
I remember when the gravity of it all sunk in, and realized the world I thought my little girl would grow up in had just disappeared. That’s when the weeping started and went on for days. My birthday is 9/13, and I learned that one of the pilots of the highjacked planes shared the same birthday as me. That upset me deeply for some reason.
Anyway, may God bless and keep the souls lost on that day, and give comfort to their still grieving friends and family.
Amen.
I was sleeping in because I had just returned from out of town late the evening before. My ex-husband called from work to tell me that a plane had hit one of the buildings.
Our sons were homeschooled at the time and I always had them watch important news as part of school so I woke both of them up.
We were all sitting together in the living room watching when the second plane hit and when each building fell.
As a Texan, it was the first time I ever felt a strong kinship with New Yorkers.
That feeling has endured.
I was working for the ‘Bret Schundler for Governor’ campaign in NJ. I remember looking up at the brilliantly blue sky as I was walking into the building. I saw a passenger plane and thought of what a beautiful day it was to be going somewhere. (Not one of the destined planes)
Shortly afterward, it came over the TV (which was always on). What a totally unbelievable scene to watch! I had forgotten my lunch and my husband was dropping it by. As he came into headquarters, he asked me if I knew what was going on at Eagle Rock — which overlooks Mantattan — because the place was packed with cars and police.
One of the volunteers called his home as his BIL worked in the South Tower. BIL was fine and had called home, after the South Tower was hit, to say he was leaving the building. He never made it out.
I see the NYC skyline just about every day and I still can’t believe it happened.
Like most, I was at work. My boss’s co-manager leaned around the cubicle wall and said that a plane had gone into the World Trade Center. Being a historian, I immediately thought of the plane that flew into the Empire State Building. Then we heard that a second plane hit and my boss said “this is that Taliban bullshit!”
There was some chaos in the office. We were on the tenth floor of the Exchange Place tower in Boston. The windows right behind my desk faced across to Logan Airport, where the two planes had taken off, not long before. We watched as plane after plane landed...none took off again for four days.
We got out of there about twenty past ten. I remember seeing an email from my brother. I didn’t bother to reply. I shut down the computer and left.
Saw the second plane hit at home...blew my mind...decided to go in to work anyway to get feedback, a college, and once there saw a crowd of people in shock gathered around a TV monitor, looked up at the 3rd floor..a balcony type structure and saw students laughing...looked closer and saw among them several Yemeni (Muslim) students including one of mine.
I have been a Patriot Act crusader ever since.
I’d been watching Imus that morning but wasn’t in the mood so I muted the TV & turned on the radio. Not long after that the morning guys said that there was some weird news out of New York. They said “it looks like a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. Looks like it might be a Cessna....”
I turned around & saw the smoke billowing out of the tower. Knew exactly what was happening when the second plane hit. By the time there was a report of the plane in Pennsylvania I was ready to go get the kids out of school.
I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday but I remember that day in vivid detail.
It was my oldest son’s first day of kindergarten.
I was getting ready to take my youngest son in to the hospital for a hearing test and listening to WABC radio’s Curtis(Sliwa) and (Ron)Kuby show. The first report I heard was that a “small Piper Cub-type plane” had crashed into the WTC and that there was a fire. I remember wondering, given how spectacularly clear the day was, how in the world THAT had happened. I decided that the pilot had to have had a massive heart attack or something.
I called downstairs to my husband and told him to turn on the TV. When I got down there myself and saw the hole left in the building I said, “That was no Piper Cub. That hole’s 6 stories tall!” I watched for a few more minutes and then got into my car and prepared to battle the traffic on the Long Island Expressway. I was still listening to Curtis and Kuby. Curtis was speculating whether or not this might be a terrorist attack, and Kuby was saying not to jump the gun, that it was probably an accident. When I got onto the highway, an eyewitness caller who was describing the scene live let out the most blood-curdling scream I’d ever heard. Even through the mono reception from an AM station, the whole car seemed to reverberate with the sound. Then the man said, “Another plane! Another plane just hit the other tower!” There was shocked silence as the two hosts absorbed this information and finally Kuby said something like (I paraphrase), “It’s not looking good for this being an accident.”
As I approached the NYC border (I was not travelling all the way in to the City), I could see the column of smoke rising over the horizon. I got to the hospital. By the time I’d secured a parking spot, the Pentagon had been hit. One minute before I exited the car, the first tower fell. By the time I’d gotten signed in at the hospital, they had both fallen.
The ride home that day was surreal. The traffic was bumper-to-bumper, but there was none of the usual “hurry-up-and-get-home” feeling. Not a single horn honked. No one cut off anybody else. And only police cars and fire trucks were going westbound.
I hadn’t seen a single TV image of any of this until I got home several hours later.
Regards,
I was in a meeting at Plano Chamber of Commerce. Someone had come in and said something about the Twin Towers and The Pentagon. I really didn’t grasp what she meant.
It wasn’t until I was driving to my office when I heard on the radio that both WTC towers had collapsed. My eyes welled with tears and “NO, God, NO”s over and over.
At the office everyone was gathered in the lobby, watching the TV monitor. I then remembered that Ross Perot officed two floors above me. Thinking that whoever was doing this might be wanting revenge on him for extricating several EDS employees during the Iran Hostage Crisis, I thought it best to grab my laptop and head home to watch the coverage.
I went to church later, alone in the sanctuary, prayed and cried like a baby.
As for all of us, it was very surreal. Like JFK, it was one of those “never forget” moments.