How about we have a 9/11 Memories Thread

11 Sept 2018 | US Navy Vet

[Guenevere]

I was with my husband in LA on business......We had flown there.....On 9/11 Our hotel secured all doors ....everyone was very scared

The church we had started attending in Santa Monica was filled to the rafters the next Sunday.......people wanted answers, peace and hope.

We decided to go home.........surprisingly found a rental car and travelled across America to get home.......American Flags were everywhere!!!!!.....draped over bridges.....flying from every house and business!!!!!!

Images I can never forget......
....when we returned our car at the airport.......security swept under it for explosives, things were that volatile!!!!

[lp boonie]

Changed my life. Because of it I volunteered for Iraq and went in on the invasion. Still pissed.

[bigbob]

At a trade show in Houston, just out of the shower...ended up sitting n the edge of the bed in my underwater for over an hour, staring at the TV. When I finally did make it downtown (to the Enron Center!) everyone was in shock, the only crowds were where a couple of exhibitors had gone out and bought small TV sets. Show closed early but with air travel frozen didn’t get home til Saturday.

[jaydubya2]

I remember going to church the Sunday after 9/11. The priest that gave mass that day said "We should not hate these people (the jihadists), we should love them".

I was extremely pissed off by his remarks, as were many of the parishioners.

[Married with Children]

I was working at the main FedEx hub here in Memphis Tennessee at the age of 24. One of the managers came around and told us they were grounding all the planes and that if we got near any of them we would be shot. Then another manager came by and said that we would not believe our eyes when we finally got to the break room to see the images on television.

Fed ex stops for nothing. With the planes grounded they were bringing in 18 wheeler trailers from out of nowhere. The hub was littered with 18 wheeler trailers and everything that would normally go on an airplane was now being loaded into these trailers for delivery.

[Daveinyork]

I was doing my morning workout, watching the Fox News Channel, and the headline story was some California Congressman caught cheating on his wife. It bored me.

When I got to my office, I turned on CNBC for business news when the first reports came in about a plane crashing into the Trade Center. Details were limited until the second plane hit the second tower. “We are under attack,” was what the announcer said, and they were getting telephone reports from Maria Bartaromo from the Stock Exchange.

Then the towers collapsed, and we heard about the attack on the Pentagon, and the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania.

I closed my accounting office and kept it closed for the next day.

My girlfriend, now my wife, called from her Baltimore office and asked if we were under attack. It was particularly chilling for her because when she was 16, she and her family were flying home from Israel when some Palestinian terrorists led by Lila Halid attempted to hijack the plane.

It was defeated by a combination of airline personnel, Israeli security agents, and angry passengers. It had been just that previous Saturday evening that she told me about it while we were having dinner in a Persian restaurant in Baltimore.

[alloysteel]

In Phoenix that day, for an organizational meeting. The meeting had just started, when an alert came, “Vacate the building IMMEDIATELY!” Only when we were outside did the news come that an apparent terrorist attack had occurred, and perhaps all of America was under attack. At that time, there was no way of determining just how widespread the attack would be, but as the news of the strike on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon spread, tensions were high. The program that we were supposed to be attending was cancelled outright, but there was no air transport back home. I had a rental car, which was technically mine for the next five days, and when it was learned that there was NO air transportation anywhere in the US, I got permission to drive the vehicle back to the point of flight origin, Reno, Nevada, some 900 miles. Drove it in 12 hours. Most of it was desert driving, not much traffic. Even the big trucks were relatively rare.

[SomeCallMeTim]

It was on a Tuesday, just like today.

I was working in the same building I’m in today, only now I have a MUCH bigger office, with windows.

My first indication that something was wrong was, the internet just FROZE up. (Seriously) I came HERE, to FreeRepublic to see what was happening. It was one of the only websites that was still getting bits of information. After reading, I went to my secretary’s cubicle and we listened on the radio. It was simply awful.

I called my wife and got some updates as she was watching on TV. She was distraught. My two sons watched on TVs provided at their High School and Middle School.

Our company has people traveling many places all the time. All were grounded.. most in unusual places. We had several people grab rental cars and drive back to Louisville from Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Chicago, even from Dodge City.

One thing I will never forget is: I left work at noon. Driving from this office, I have to pass a slum area... an old government project of sorts. As I was stopped at a redlight, a couple of older men were standing on the corner, waiting to cross. Normally, I would barely see them. But, that day... we made eye contact. For quite a long time. And then, one of them put his hands together like he was praying and nodded at me. Tears welled in my eyes... I nodded back, then drove away.

I had such a feeling that the country would be united, at least for awhile. I wish it had lasted longer.

[Guenevere]

PS
With a 3 hour time difference ( California) we woke up and I turned on my computer......not the TV

The headline....ALL FLIGHTS CANCELLED struck my husband as a joke, he didn’t believe it

We turned on the TV.....realized what had happened.....turned it off...
...and started praying.

[Steely Tom]

Of course I have many memories of that awful day, but a few that stand out particularly:

• A camera shot, that I've never been able to find on YouTube, that was on the internet that morning. It was taken right after the first plane hit the north tower; in it, the camera was positioned in the plaza between the north and south towers, and was pointing straight up. You could see the north tower, which was on the right side of the frame, with smoke coming out. But the big thing, the really striking thing, was the sound. It sounded like a huge engine, a horrible engine of destruction, a continuous roar, unlike anything else I've ever heard. It seemed to be as loud as a diesel locomotive, but different from that, an unearthly, infernal roar of chaos. That was unforgettable.
• Another camera shot that I've never seen again was taken from a helicopter, very near one of the towers. The camera was positioned to show one face of one of the towers from an oblique angle, and was zoomed in so much that you could clearly see liquid flowing in a continuous sheet down the side of the building, over the windows and the vertical support structure. It was either jet fuel or water from the sprinkler system, or a mixture of both. That was unforgettable.
• The third big memory for me was from a friend who lives in Maplewood, NJ. He told me he went for a walk through the village of Maplewood late that night, and in the parking lot of the NJ Transit station there were maybe a dozen cars that were sitting there; normally, by that time, the lot would be empty because all the commuters who took the train into the city would have returned to their cars and driven them home. That night, many Maplewood commuters never came home.

[Hadean]

My father-in-law had worked in the towers back then. Nobody knew if he was OK for at least a day and a half or so because there was no phone service and he couldn't get in touch with anyone. He walked for hours from Manhattan over the bridge into New Jersey covered in soot just to get out.

I also can't stop thinking about the fact that I would have been at ground zero on that morning myself had I not taken some time off to visit family in Boston.

At the time, I was commuting from Jersey to Brooklyn for contract work via the West Side Highway, past the twin towers and into the Battery Tunnel. And every morning I would be inching my way down West Side past the towers during that same time of morning when the planes hit.

I remember sitting at the same traffic light every morning just watching people who worked at the towers walking through the overhead walkway that was there. I also remember the awful feeling I had in my stomach when I had first seen this picture:< p>

[goldstategop]

What I think about are those who gave their lives for our country.

They will always remain in our hearts and God has blessed their sacrifice.

“No greater love hath a man than he who lays down his life for his fellow.”

We are all in their debt.

[bk1000]

“the skies were vacant for seven days in my city. no planes for seven days.”

Same memory here. It was an eerie silence. Its hard to imagine how ubiquitous planes flying over is, until there aren’t any.

[Pollard]

At work in FL with a dick of a boss/owner. He and his family sat in the office watching TV and he would occasionally come out to the shop and ask why we didn’t seem to be working very much. I was foreman and we had one guy with relatives in that area that he was unable to get in touch with. He asked to go home. I checked with the owner and he said no. I told the guy to go ahead and take off. I really wanted to tell the whole shop to go home. The owner finally figured out that nothing was going to get done that day and told me I could go ahead and let everyone go home.

A few days later, anger had boiled up in me and I cussed out a moslem convenient store worker/owner. He was one of those that never smiled, was quite rude and always on the phone speaking arabic. Never went back to that store. Very high percentage of moslem store ownership is on of the reasons I left FL. They were starting to take over grocery stores as well. By now, I imagine they could shut the area down by all of them deciding one day to just not open for business.

Hmm, I have a flag but it doesn’t go up and down on the pole. I think I’ll go out there now and figure out a way to put it at half mast.

[MasonGal]

I was actually here on Free Republic, when I first heard about a plane hitting the Tower. (I say Tower, because it was only as events unfolded that there would be a “First and Second” Tower being hit.). I then turned on Fox News and began to see what was transpiring.

I called my husband who had just left home to travel out of town for work. (He turned around and came home.) Then, the second plane hit the Second Tower. I wanted everyone home! We had just dropped our oldest son, then age 18, off at college for his freshman year...11 days prior. Our other two sons, then ages 14 and 9, had just started their new school year. I just wanted everyone home and together!!! Then I called my Mom...I just wanted to hear her voice to tell me that everything was going to be ok. She said to me, “I cannot live through another ‘Pearl Harbor’”. We both cried, uncontrollably. (Still to this day, watching the replay of that day’s events unfold..I still cry...not just tear up, but I cry. The emotions are still raw, each and every year on this day.). But, as I said...I just wanted to hear my Mom’s voice...to comfort me. Oh, how I wish I could hear her voice, now. (She passed away 3 1/2 years ago...and my Dad...2 years ago.).

I remember the days and even weeks after...signs all over the town said things such as “God Bless America”, etc. - I took pictures of those signs...

I will NEVER, EVER, EVER FORGET!!!

God Bless America!!!!!

[Bryanw92]

>>Is it because we know history we said that? Yet that is not what happened. The pictures disappeared, the rhetoric was controlled, etc.

>>What happened?

We were right. We were at war. We still are.

We just surrendered the next day when the President told us to go shopping and that the RoP was not to blame. That opened the door for the Globalists to get rich off it while surrendering the sovereignty of the USA.

[PeterPrinciple]

Having posted that a friend remembered the smell, Reflecting on that day, I remember the video of the people jumping off the tower, but the vivid part was the thud when they hit the ground. I think this was only shown once?

[sportutegrl]

I was six months pregnant when I saw the second plane fly into the tower. I kept thinking of that verse, “Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days.” She is 16, now.

[goldstategop]

We know Islamic terrorists struck us a deadly blow.

Their creed is as evil and repulsive as Nazism and Communism.

We should never absolve their beliefs and their actions - and above all, we must never forget!

[DickBrannigan]

“When you put your hand into a bunch of goo that a moment before was your best friend’s face, you’ll know what to do.”

I worked in a major hospital in Boston at that time. Probably a hundred people were waiting to give blood. Later in the afternoon, the bulk of us were turned away. I think they knew that massive amounts of blood donations wouldn’t be needed......