Posted on 09/10/2013 8:17:14 PM PDT by carlo3b
Watching market news on CNBC.
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 had to hold 22 funeral Masses within two weeks.
What else?
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.
To me, that quiet was eeriest of everything I was seeing and hearing.
OMG!
I just got chills imagining how our current asshat would respond to such an attack.......
....all the moms went and picked our kids up from school. We all cried together and held each other.
Trying to explain it to the kids was tough. The world changed that day and they'll never really know how it was before that. Post 9/11 is all they've known.
Strange, I guess. I was just out wrapping things up in the garden tonight and I heard the 10 PM Taps. I stopped and faced the music from Base and dropped everything else. It takes less than a minute.
Well, I’m going to the Mass I reserved for my dear friend and 911 victim, tomorrow.
I never forget.
I think you’re seeing it.
I was traveling for business. I am once again. First time since it happened I’ve been away on 9/11.
What I remember is that it was such a crystal clear beautiful day for such horrible consequences. The worst part was watching people jumping from the towers rather than stay in there and burn up. Ghastly. RIP 911 victims, especially the heroes of Flight #93 in PA, who saved our capitol building (or White House) from a potentially terrible fate.
What a horrible day, I remember every moment of it.
As was our routine, the TV was on in the kitchen as I readied my children for school. The first they showed was after the first tower had been hit. My heart sank.
I was torn between keeping the kids home and sending them off to school. Being outside of Chicago, I wondered how safe we were.
ALL flights stopped and never in my life have I witnessed quiet skies here, ever.
I wept the whole day. And still do today.
Every 9/11 I wear my NY fire dept. t-shirt, with the 343 on it, along with ‘we will not forget’....I’ve had so many comments on that shirt, and many thank you’s.
I will NEVER forget.
Now I add our lost men from 9/11/12 and the awful attack in Benghazi. Sleep well Hitlary, you pos liar.
I was at work in a hospital. I couldn’t wait to get home to my kids. I needed gas in my car and the lines were so long at the gas stations that I made it home on fumes! When I got home and saw the news, it really hit me.
I remember a woman I worked with saying, “I think it was the Israelis.” What an idiot.
Here in CA and a son-in-law called from 15 minutes away and asked if I had on T.V. I was still asleep - - so, no.
Spouse had just arrived at another daughter’s in CO, so I was alone.
I watched for about 30 minutes, then began pacing around wondering what to do. Must DO something - give blood?
I’d find out where to go later.
I can remember pacing around, wringing my hands - ‘gotta DO something. . .’
Then it came as easily as anything. THE FLAG - got the flag from a closet, fairly jammed it into the bracket, gave one of those chin-wipe salutes to the sky, and said out loud, ‘there, you dam_ terrorists - take THAT.’
Got out the church directory and called people annonymously and said ‘if you want to do something because of what’s going on in NY, fly your flag.’
A few seconds of confusion, and then the person would agree.
I began to picture flags going up everywhere - those people I called, they then called others.
NOW I felt like I was doing something.
Eventually, over the days, flags were everywhere.
I know that, because if I thought of it, millions of others did too.
As for giving blood, it was so glaring that there may not be many/any surivors who would need blood - - -
We have flown the flag daily since then.
Lighted - around the clock. We’re on our 5th one - sometimes it catches on the roof in the wind, and tears a bit.
The first flag we had lasted for YEARS - flying it only on holidays.
Meanwhile a younger family member was working in Manhattan, uptown from the towers, maybe 2 miles? The wind was blowing the opposite way from her. As we watched TV that first day, the smoke was blowing to the right of the TV screen. I can’t imagine what it was like to be in its path.
She lived on Long Island, so I think she and a few others grabbed the floor that night at a co-workers small apartment. There must be a million or more stories similar.
I have a storage bin of magazines, newspapers, video, from the events that day and the days following. Passing it on to the grandkids.
There’s a flag pin I wear daily - and I mean Daily - since about 2 months later when I found it - it says ‘Remember 9-11.’
I bought several, and embeded one in a new cement walkway out front. Passersby see it, when they look down.
WAKE UP AMERICA - -
R E M E M B E R
9-11
12 years ago AQ attacked us.....now Obama wants us to be AQ airforce.
I would say a lot of people forgot because we elected a muslim.
Left my office in the Pentagon that morning, to go to a conference at the Army-Navy Club. The subject was terrorism. Lots of details to this story, but the one thing I never forget: we heard the plane hit the building. One admiral sitting next to me said “I hope someone has a tight hold on the nukes today,” to which an Air Force general replied “I hope they don’t.”
Laz my man, It still angers me to the core when I visit these threads.. Every emotion comes rushing back.. reading the posts as the events began to develop, and as the news unfolded, I became what I am today, A committed Patriot, with a focus on our future..
Pity is that since that faithful day when We as a Nation came together, as one, that after this short time, we have become so divided.. Thanks Mr. President, you are the worst president I have ever experienced in my lifetime, and that says a lot, considering some of the worst.. FDR, JFK, LBJ, Carter, Clinton..
Funny how everything comes back so clear when you read those comments on the threads.. I remember getting mad, then furious, then calm, and resolute.. Sheesh, it’s still there in my craw..
Hi Carlo!
I’ve loved your recipes over the years and your cooking threads.
I always thought of writing cookbooks in “retirement,” but then 9/11/2001 happened...
I started a memorial/tribute page re the 9/11 attacks (it’s offline now) and found some interesting characters linking to it and commenting on it and -— laughing.
Well now, I never did write those cookbooks, but I don’t think all those characters are laughing now.
Hey girl, good to see ya.. You should do a cookbook, it really is fun, if you keep it simple.. I’m just finishing up a new one, do in November.. “SOUP, SEX, and the SINGLE MAN”.. :)
I should have been finished months ago, but I had a few things that popped up, that took a year to heal.. Drop me a line if you do start a book, I’d be happy to help out.. Carlo
Well, with a title like that Carlo, I’m sure your book will sell.
If I ever do settle down to put together a cookbook; I sure will let you know.
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