Posted on 09/11/2010 3:38:07 AM PDT by davidosborne
Where were you nine years ago today?
On an aside, bing has a really nice tribute on their home page,,google not so much.
The Gander airport was featured on the History Channel show.
I hope they show it again - the air traffic controllers were fantastic. After 9/11 the FAA determined that ‘new procedures’ for a similar crisis would be too complex - that by allowing the professionals to make split-second decisions (as they were called to do on 9/11) was more efficient - much like battle-ground instincts.
The term *flying by the seat of their pants* gained new respect.
We have forgotten, and whatever folks think of Pastor Jones, he's surely helped raise the conscious (& conscience) level of us all & what this day means!!!
We have been bowing & scraping to the 'religion of peace' folks for too many years & thus we have an 'Iman' who demands he have the right to build a mosque on or close too the hallowed ground of innocent US citizens!
...yes, we have forgotten!
I was at work, we have TV’s everywhere and we were shocked and transfixed. Some folks couldn’t deal with it and left, most of us stayed but had no real desire to be here.
First thing’s first, David... Thank you for your service.
On 9/11/01, I was in Trig class when I heard the announcement that the towers were hit.
I was home, recovering from a work injury. I had got in the habit of doing internet while watching Fox and Friends, though I hadn’t found FR yet.
I was watching when E.D. Hill said that there was news of a small plane hitting the WTC, and the reportage of this “accident” continued until the second plane went in. I knew, then, and I think so did everyone else. I called my mother, who lives elsewhere in the state, after the second plane to get her to turn on the TV, and we called back and forth a couple of times during the morning.
My sister, who lived in Finland at the time, was visiting our mother; they had just been to visit me, and my sister had brought one of her Finnish friends to try to match up with me (it didn’t take, and she and I are happily wed to others today), and they were back at Mom’s, getting ready to fly back to Finland on the 12th (which obviously didn’t happen...they got out 3 or 4 days later).
This friend was a structural engineer by trade. During either the first or second call, before it happened, she said “those buildings will fall; they cannot stand.” We asked “how will they fall?” Fearing for those caught under them falling like trees. “Probably straight down,” she said. So when it happened we were not terribly surprised, and I was immunized against all of the “deliberate demolition” conspiracy theories before they appeared.
9 years later and we still don't have that f***er's head on a pike outside the UN.
$5000 and a bottle of Bourbon to the troops who finally nail bin laden.
My boss, a major, came and got me to see the first tower burning. He asked if this had ever happened before - I said yes, once in bad weather in the mid-1940s. He then asked if this was an accident - I said no way in H. What pilot would deliberately fly into a building in broad daylight.
About this time the second aircraft hit. I turned to him and said we are now at war and have between two and six years to win it. He asked why and I told him that it would take that long to turn the war into a political battle within the US just like Vietnam.
I wish today that I wasn't right on both counts.
At home with 2 of my young children, one at school in kindergarten. I was watching FOX news, thinking we are under attack, where will they hit next and should I go get my other child. Crying and praying for the poor families and angry. I had not seen the first plane hit, just heard the news about it and as the news was talking about it the second plane hit.
Yes! Thanks for that reminder about it being on the History Channel...would like to see it again.
I was at work at AgFirst Farm Credit Bank in downtown Columbia, South Carolina, sitting in my cubicle, grumbling because I was at work early on my 35th birthday instead of home enjoying it with my wife of two months, ready for another exciting (/sarcasm) day of programming on whatever project they had me working on.
On the way back from my usual morning bagel run to the commissary, one of the loan processors casually said to me, “you heard a plane crashed into the Empire State Building, right?” I was gobsmacked, but I remembered the B-25 crash from 1945, so I figured it was something similar—spectacular, but not earth-shattering. So I went back to my cube and got on the Internet.
CNN.com, unreachable. MSNBC.com, unreachable. All the network news sites, unreachable. Everything was timing out. So I went to my last resort...Free Republic, which had been blocked by the company a month earlier for no reason (they used an automated service that classed FR as a “hate site”). Amazingly, on the morning of 9/11/2001, FR was not blocked.
FR was slow. Dog slow. But it was the only news site that was reachable. And so I was on the first live thread when the second plane hit. I was refreshing, pictures were only occasionally coming up. My next-cube neighbor cranked up his radio and we listened to the coverage live...no TVs around in the building, that we knew of, so it was all we had.
The only news I had of the day was from the radio and the live threads here. I remember the first notification of AAL 77 hitting the Pentagon. And, remember all the crazy rumors flying along the news that day? Bombs at the State Department, six more planes hijacked, no, it was two, no, it was eight. The radio news couldn’t keep up. Heck, even FR couldn’t keep up. Somehow, the site never crashed, though it was hella slow to load at times.
My biggest memory later in the day was walking through a doorway and seeing one of the other loan processor clerks crying her eyes out as she walked by. At that time I had no clue how bad it was. The work Internet basically gave up the ghost about 10:30 and no pictures had been loading for a long time before that. The last I’d heard, a “piece of the top” of 2 WTC had fallen. Then we heard that “part” of 1 WTC had collapsed.
My company announced that we were closing about 1 pm and that everybody, even the overnight computer operators, was going home. We had NEVER done that before. (As a postscript, it caused me no end of trouble...our systems weren’t designed to skip a night and it was hell getting everything untangled the next day.) My wife worked in a lawyer’s office a block and a half down, she didn’t get to go home early. He held her there until normal closing time at 5. By that time, downtown Columbia was a ghost town. All state offices had closed, as had most of the downtown businesses of any size. The traffic going home about 1:30 was typical 5:00 rush hour traffic.
I got home, turned on the TV, flipped it to CNN...and that’s when I saw it. And I sat and watched, stunned and revulsed, for the next three hours until my wife got home. Then we watched some more, until eventually she begged me to turn it off because she couldn’t take any more.
We didn’t go out for my birthday until the next week.
Ever since, I’ve made it a point not to disrupt my birthday plans, whatever they may be, on 9/11. I pause, I reflect, I pray, I remember, I swear that I will never forget and that I will never forgive. But it’s my little, meaningless act of defiance toward the Islamist goatrapers that attacked us on that day...I will not submit.
}:-)4
I remember a couple of days after 9/11, there was a story about the handful of kids that died that day on the CBS nightly news. And they were showing a snippets of a memorial service they were having for a little boy at his school. The kid’s friend, no-more than 10, was speaking and said “He always called everyone “buddy”.” At the end Dan Rather of all people, said with tears in his eyes “This why we fight.”
(I also remember watching the NBC coverage with Brokaw at the time. Some commentator was on and he was talking about how “it’s not whether we remember tomorrow but whether we remember 5, 10, years from now.”)
Was at home before class(college). Woke up, and for some reason, I didnt turn my computer on to check the news. I went downstairs, put a bowl of chicken noodle soup in the microwave, and turned on the radio expecting to hear a talk radio show, instead I got Peter Jennings much to my annoyance.
Then I heard him say a building hit one of the WTC towers. I rushed to the TV...just in time to see the second one hit live.
Dazed after watching for a half hour, I got my soup, went outside and sat on the trunk of my car, not knowing what else to do. It was a crisp, sunny day. I would rather be alone outside than alone in there.
One guy did walked past me up the street. We said nothing to each other, neither of us had to.
The birds went silent that morning. I remember the silence. It was only interrupted by what I now know to be fighter jets flying overhead which were meant to intercept Flight 93. I couldn’t see them, I could only hear them. By that time, Flight 93 had crashed in Shanksville.
I also remember that evening. On the steps of the Capitol Building, members of the Congress sang God Bless America.
I was still hurting over my sister’s death on Aug. 4 and took September 11 off because it would have been her 46th birthday. I didn’t normally watch the morning news but had the Today Show on.
When I saw the 1st plane hit the WTC, I dropped to my knees and saying ‘Dear God’! I just cried and cried...
I worked in the Sears Tower at that time-upper floors.
This is a doubly painful day for my family.
The next day, two more nephews joined the military and still serve. My family has a long and proud tradition of serving this great land.
I WILL NEVER FORGET!
I had just logged onto the Internet and looking at Airliners.net's Civil Aviation Discussion Forum, there was suddenly a fast-moving message thread about a plane crashing into one of WTC towers. I immediately turned on the TV to the Fox News Channel (FNC had just become available on my cable system in Mountain View, CA just a year earlier) and essentially didn't turn off the TV until 10:30 pm PDT that night....
It was many weeks before he was mentally able to lift his head and speak above a whisper (physiological effects of trauma) and 4 years before he could visit Ground Zero or step onto an airplane....
The picures and videos no NO real justice to the actual horror of the day for those that lived it.
He’s Now doing well, with two beautiful children
Praise God
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/620413/posts
David, I thank you for your service. From the depths of my soul, the US Military has my support, gratitude, and love. Now and always.
This is a very emotional day for me.
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