Remember Remember the 11th of September

[Jaxson]

I think everyone has them. Those moments in the past when they remember everything. Every little detail of what happened at a particular time in a particular place. As we are presently deluged with information, I think the people of our country have a collective memory of about 2 months.

With the 9th anniversary of one of the most important events in American history nearing, I thought it would be fascinating to use this forum to invite Storyburners to share what is burned in their memory cells about September 11, 2001.

Here is my memory:

I was working and living in a mid-western city on the morning of 9/11. The building I worked in was one of two identical towers that were among the tallest in the city. I was on the 2nd floor from the top in the North tower. My office was across the hall from a conference room, which had a small television in it that was rarely used. I heard the TV blaring from across the hall and entered the conference room to see one person in there watching CNBC footage of the World Trade Center. From the distance of the shot, there appeared to be a very small hole in the tower, as if a little Cessna had hit it.

Pretty soon there were a lot of people in the conference room and we all starting theorizing what could have happened. Was it a small plane? Was it a big plane? Was it an accident? Was it terrorism? As the footage of the tower zoomed in closer, it became clear that this was no small plane, and this was likely not an accident.

When the second plane hit, I think everyone in the room was pretty much in a state of shock. Digesting this latest event, I thought to myself “The world has just changed. It will never be the same.” Over the next hour or so, we sat there in disbelief as we watched both of the towers disappear.

Eventually, I went back into my office and my mind started to race. Did I know anyone that worked in the towers? How many people died today? My father works in the city, would he possibly be in that part of town today? Imagine if this happened two days ago when I, my wife and our newborn were on a plane leaving the NYC area. What kind of world is my son going to grow up in? I need to call Dad right now.

Being originally from the East Coast and working in the financial industry, surely I just witnessed somebody I knew die.

After a while, I went back into the conference room. There were more reports about other planes; one hit the pentagon, one went down in Pennsylvania. There were planes reported missing in-flight. We were under attack.

As the news anchors started repeating themselves due to lack of new information, I decided it was time to go home to be with my family.

Well that’s my memory. I hope you’ll share yours.

[Othello]

I work for an advertising agency in the city (New York) and was in our midtown office when the first plane hit. We had several televisions in the main hallway of our floor and it seemed like it took ten or so minutes for the news stations to pick up on a problem with one of the towers. We had clients in for a 11am presentation and I was busy preparing for that in my office when I heard people yelling and crying out in the hallway. I looked out and most of our staff (we probably had 150 people on our floor) we watching the televisions. This was maybe twenty minutes into the news broadcasts when it was clear that a plane had hit the tower. I started looking at television, and not a minute later, the second plane hit. That's when people went ballistic. Our president and CEO came rushing out into the hallway to try to calm everybody down. My boss told me to call our client and postpone the presentation. We were on the 23rd floor of our building and didn't take people real long to start thinking that more planes were gonna hit more buildings. My cellphone didn't work, so I used my office phone to call my wife who was working in Times Square. She didn't answer. I did call the client who was based on NY and had to leave a voice mail for the VP in charge of ad spending.

Our CEO told everybody to shore up their daily committments and take the rest of the day off. An email would follow later about the rest of the week. The streets in midtown Manhattan were not complete mayhem but close. It looked like an amped up rush hour. Cars were honking in frustration, more pushing and shoving on the sidewalks as usual. The subway platform was packed, more than I had ever seen. I kept trying my wife on my cell and it refused to work. I couldn't decide whether to walk to Grand Central where I commute out of to go home in Dobbs Ferry, or walk over to my wife's building in Time Square which was a few avenues over. We didn't have any kids then.

I ended up walking over to my wife's building where I had no luck finding her. The security guards wouldn't let me in the buidling. I got my cell to finally work but I just got her voice mail. I figured she was likely out on the streets looking for me.

I ran into a guy that worked on my Tracy's floor and he said everybody had been sent home. As we were talking my cell rang and it was Tracy. We met up and she was hysterical. We ran into a diner which had a television and we watched the towers collapse. People in the city really started to freak then.

[KateP]

I was at the dentist first thing in the morning and didn't hear what happened 'til I got out onto the street.

[gunner]

I was in high school in Northern California at the time and we knew something was up but details were really sketchy until lunchtime. They didn't cancel school or anything, and I didn't get to see the images of what happened until I got home that afternoon. I was in New York City recently and I visited the site which is a HUGE pit in the ground. Not much has been done in nine years

[motherload]

gunner, I too was in High School at the time and I was a senior. A group of us drove to the Best Buy down the street to watch the television reports of the whole thing. It was wild. We WERE given an early out, though

[Julia Angle]

I was in the Dallas Airport when the crap hit the fan. That airport shut down in a heartbeat

[Hangover]

I was camping with my then 4 and 2 year olds up in the Adirondacks. We literally had no idea what the hell happened for about two days after 9/11.

[Rachel]

Hangover, now THAT is funny! You must have felt like you were in a time warp or something. This event was so huge and tramautic for America. I feel for those victims and their families, those poor families!!

[Kevin]

I was in college and slept in that morning. Nobody woke me to tell what had happened and i went to NYU! Kidding, about the NYU part. I'm a Longhorn, true and true. But still, it was quite a shock to wake up to THAT news

[Al Rockford]

Kevin, I was in college also in Virginia, and I remember somebody rushing into our lecture hall and screaming the World Trade Center had been bombed.