Posted on 09/10/2007 6:41:30 PM PDT by Milwaukee_Guy
Might be a good time to revisit how we all heard about the the attack on 9/11 and how we reacted to the darkest day in American history.
What emotions were strongest for you on that day?
How did you find out? Did you stay at work? Did you go Home? Who did you call?
My son and daughter-in-law just had a baby boy three days earlier. Even though they lived in Seattle, they were planning to travel to New York for the bris. I had already bought my airline ticket and I was planning to travel to NY on Sept. 13.
I just got home after dropping off my daughter at school and my son at community college. My radio was tuned to a music station so I didn’t hear any initial bulletins.
My husband said, “The Twin Towers are on fire!”
I logged on to msnbc.com and saw smoke pouring out of the North Tower. I turned the radio on just as the second plane hit.
9am, I had just come home from taking the car in for service. For some reason I did not put radio or tv on, and 9:30 my mom called to see if I’d heard from my husband (he works near Lincoln Center so he was nowhere near it, but he also works for a major network so there was a lot of chaos where he was). Cell phones and land lines both weren’t working well, so I had not heard from him.
Mom asked if I knew what had happened downtown; I didn’t so I turned on the tv. I said, “Mom, that’s the Pentagon, not WTC.” She insisted I was wrong so I said “Mom, I know what the Pentagon looks like and that’s what’s on my screen.”
I was talking to her again when the first tower fell. I couldn’t process what I was seeing and I said “look at all that debris.” I really thought it was debris falling from upper floors. Mom must have known I wasn’t getting it because she hesitated and said, “yes, it’s terrible.” I’d say it was a full half-hour before I could wrap my mind around what had happened, after the second tower fell. In many ways I still have trouble with it.
One of my husband’s tv friends was working at the PBS transmitter that day. An extremely nice guy, he was. From the very first strike the station tried to contact him via phone and on his cell and never got a response. I also have a friend, a former co-worker whose son-in-law worked for Cantor. His daughter, over a year later, only got a fragment of bone (id’d by DNA) to bury. They had been married less than a year. She’s doing better but even now is still putting her life back together.
July 4, 1976 we went to the observation deck on WTC and got some good photos of the view and of the towers and lobbies. That was over 30 years ago but I still can’t bring myself to look at those photos. I took the PATH into WTC to work for several years and unfortunately it always seemed so routine.
The evening of 9/11/01 my brother-in-law who lives in southern California called. He told my husband “I know you were nowhere near the WTC, but I just had to hear your voice.”
FReepers are incredible! I am awed by the insight the posters showed, all the correct info, way before the MSM figured anything out! Hat’s off to you all!
God bless and protect American because the democrats sure aren’t. Susan
“You know, this absolutely sickens me. Yours is just 1 of the last such references I’ve seen on this thread. I’m sorry, but I’m sick of these disgusting liberals who hate this country so much. I really wish they’d get the hell out if they hate it so much. Maybe they’d help the enemies pull the trigger? I wish we could trade them all for a bunch of poor foreigners who would LOVE to be here and don’t go for the socialist crap they pontificate, to boot.”
****
My favorites are those who think 9/11 was a big Bush and/or Republican conspiracy. My cousin who lives in DC has a friend who is a civilian employee at the Pentagon. She had been offered a different job with the Pentagon which would have put her on the side of the building that was hit, but she had turned down that job days before 9/11. Don’t tell her that this was an explosion from within and that there was no plane. She saw the plane and the bodies. Last I heard my cousin’s friend still suffers from survivor’s guilt.
Carolyn
And yet, these are the same damnfools who say Bush is very stupid. (rolling eyes)
Then I realized that the plane had flown into a second tower.
I watched the coverage for a few minutes, completely shocked and knowing this was no accident. Called my sister’s house in the Bay Area..her daughter answered the phone: She was frantic and worrying about her mom, who works in a highrise in downtown SF. So, I called my sister on her cell. The first thing she said when she picked up was “Those Bastards”. She told me there had been a bomb threat, and they were evacuating the building. Then I heard her say: “ Oh Sh*t”, and then I heard a clatter, then nothing. I yelled her name into the phone a few times—I was certain something had happened to her building, and to her. Then she came back on and told me she had dropped her phone. Phew.
My boss contacted his team (I worked for a DOD contractor) and said that if we needed to stay home, to stay home.
I took my kids to school, and went to work, and watched the towers fall on FR.
I had just moved the week before and was in an interview for a job. My future boss had the radio on and she said a plane hit the trade center in New York. We finished our interview. I went home and the second plane had hit by the time I turned on the TV. My first thought was relief that I wasn’t being deployed away from my family as I knew my unit would inevitably be. A week and a half before I had ETS’ed from the army on August 31. Then I immediately felt guilty for thinking that. My unit did go to D.C. and pull security. They have since been in Afghanistan and Iraq. I still wonder how my life would be different if my contract was later or I had re-upped?
We were flooded in our home in 2001, and had the men who were working on our home just setting up for the day. Our son and his family had temporarily moved into out home while they fixed his home from the flood also.
That morning my husband called me from work and told me to turn on the TV to see what had happened to the WT building. (It was the first one.) As my daughter-in-law Connie and I watched the coverage, suddenly, the second plane hit.
Connie thought it was funny (a nervous reaction - I think) - But - I realized right then, the U.S. would never be the same!
As I watched it throughout the day - the liberals began to mock the President - saying - Where is he hiding?
They obviously did not know - when an attack on our nation occurs - it is rule that the President and VP are to be escorted to a secret location for safety sake! Jennings was the one who was the angriest because the media could not find President Bush!
What a bunch of idiots! And they still have not changed!
Duncan for President ‘08- A man of integrity and honor!
http://www.ontheissues.org/Duncan_Hunter.htm
Hello Everyone
First off, good luck Wayne you are in our
prayers. I hope everyone is well. We are doing good here in
California, and my folks are fine in Arizona. These
tragic events are a horrible reminder that no matter how
great we are we are not immune to the hateful violence
we see in the rest of the world. Perhaps we have let
our guard down, maybe we have opened ourselves up to
this kind of attack or maybe the bad guys just got
lucky. The one thing that we can be sure of is
that the only way for the enemies of the USA to attack
us is with sneaky, cowardly, and dirty shots like
this, but death and destruction are not the real goal
of the attack, it is the fear they generate with the
attack itself. Our defense against these attacks is to
stand up face the fear and stare it down. Wayne is
showing us all how its done. You don’t run and hide, you
run and help. Not all of us can go help with search
and rescue, but we can go donate blood, we can go to
work and be strong in the face of fear, we can go on
with life because we weren’t in the World Trade Center
yesterday, and those that died there would want us to.
The only way that the terrorists will win is if we
let their actions drastically change our lives and how
we live. They can destroy buildings and take the
lives of our friends and family but we can’t let them
stop America from being the Land of the Free and Home
of the Brave. Let’s all do our part and live
in Freedom with Bravery. God Bless us all and
God Bless America.
I was at work - I managed a couple of Q&A labs in space rented and on campus for Tennessee Valley Authority - the building across the courtyard controls the flow of electricity in and out of the various reactors and dams, so it is a high security area.
Both labs full to overflowing - some folks had not scheduled and there were more bodies than computers and it was hot and loud and 10 people were asking me for things at the same time.
One of the team leads had a laptop and was using the only outside line in the labs (closed network segment). She is a New Yorker. She happened to have her laptop on the Fox News website. She said “oh my God, a plane just hit the Twin Towers”. I turned around and looked and watched as the second plane hit.
After that everyone started looking for internet connections or TVs. Security showed up and checked IDs on everyone. If they didn’t have a security badge for the buidling they sent them out.
The company had offices in the 2nd tower. Fortunately, they were on a lower floor and evacuated immediately.
My son was in basic training and I couldn’t get him on the phone. When I went to his graduation from basic training some months later I took all the newspapers and mags I had saved for him. It was the first time he’d seen what actually happened. They didn’t allow them radio or TV or to view any written material - they knew what happened but had seen not one solitary picture. He was struck dumb, tears leaking down his face. We both figured he’d be sent to Afganistan as soon as he finished AID.
I kept thinking about my months old granddaughter and wondering what kind of world she was going to grow up in. I don’t mind being stuck on angry - I’m not angry the same way I was the first months, but more like a determined angry.
I guess I’m going to logon to MSNBC’s site and thank them for rerunning the coverage. I’m watching as I type.
Many thanks for this thread, Milwaukee. I am reading every single post.
God rest the souls of those murdered on September 11, 2001. God bless their familes and friends.
May God protect our Troops and Vets. GOD BLESS THE U.S.A.!
They said the 1st tower was hit by jet, I thought oh well, tall building, somebody really screwed the pooch there.
then they came back a few minutes later and said 2nd was also hit. I knew at that point that it was WAR and went to the tube and made a call to wife & mother and watched, they collapsed before my eyes...
I was a network manager at the time stopping traffic from coming into the city because out switches were dying....We only allowed outgoing calls.....It was a terrible time for us because our network was in trouble and so many people were desperate to hear of they’re loved ones.
I had visited India in 1995 for my brother-on-law’s wedding, and had come across this attitude toward muslims from many different people there...I was a bit shocked by all the security at the airports (thought I might have to marry a guard who frisked me a bit closely at one point!)and really didn’t ‘get it’—I remember at one point when we were traveling passing a large Christian cemetery and people were *living* in it, they had laundry hanging over the tombstones all over the place—and my husband and FIL complaining about ****** muslims, having no respect, etc. etc.
I ‘get it’ now. *heavy sigh*
That morning, for some reason I was watching Good Morning America before leaving for work at 8:30. When I walked into the office, my staff said ‘get on the internet, a plane hit the World Trade Center!’
Saw the banner headline in another forum ‘Plane hits WTC’ with ‘nothing follows’ as usual with late breaking news. Picked up the phone and called my wife, told her to turn on the tv and tell me what she was seeing. She was wrapped in a towel having just come out of the shower to answer the phone....
‘Yep, a plane hit the WTC, I can see it burning...had to have been a big one....OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! Another plane jsut hit the other tower!!!!”
‘Its a terrorist attack, I’ll be home....’
Got home with the biz partner in ten minutes, and sat there and watched til after both towers were down.
My father in law - since deceased, lived with us. I asked him as we watched ‘Is this what it was like on December 7th, 1941?’
His sad answer was simple...’Yes.’
brother-on-law’s=brother-IN-law’s
Sorry. Bit choked up here reading all these anecdotes. :*(
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