Posted on 09/11/2013 4:03:33 AM PDT by US Navy Vet
I'll Start...
Had just dropped the kids off at their little Christian school, heard it over the radio while driving home, turned on the tv and pretty much sat and cried for 3 days.
“Have You Forgotten” - Darryl Worley
Stanza 2:
Have you forgotten how it felt that day?
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten when those towers fell?
We had neighbors still inside going thru a living hell
And you say we shouldn’t worry ‘bout bin Laden
Have you forgotten?
In Hong Kong it was the evening.
I was watching a Singaporean comedy with my wife
Driving to work (a defense contractor) when the radio newstation broke in and said a plane hit one of the buildings. My mouth formed the words ‘Osama Bin Laden’ but no voice. I ran into the building, informed as many in management as I could to turn on the radio..the internet was jammed. Headed to my office (shared with other managers) told them we were under attack. A few minutes later, our administrator heard about the 2nd plane. My best friend at work came to me and asked to leave..his brother-in-law was supposed to be attending a meeting in the Towers that morning. That’s when I nearly lost it. A number of us headed to the gym, where there was a TV. Thought we were looking at Central Park..then the news showed it was D.C. and the Pentagon had been hit. Headed home early to meet my 3rd grader at the bus...along with every other mom in the neighborhood.
Well, I recall the LIE westbound being shutdown so the emergency vehicles can make their way to NYC.
#ing Islam.
Sitting right here at my computer in my home office, learned of it in Breaking News on Free Republic.
This led to me running back and forth from my office to my bedroom, where there is a TV, until I finally pulled the TV out of the bedroom into the office, so I could get info updates from FR and TV news simultaneously.
I was at home, off work that day, 7 mo. pregnant with our oldest daughter. I turned on the news after the first tower was hit. My husband was working for DoD at the time very close to D.C. I was on the phone with him and saw the second tower hit. When the third plane hit the Pentagon, I called and told him “please come home NOW”.
A terrible, surreal day.
On my way to a doctors appointment listening to it on the car radio. I remember there was a live interview of some fellow in a mid-town office building describing what he was witnessing when the South tower was hit. He did not see the plan hit the far side of the building. He believed a massive bomb had been blown.
Wow!
Thanks for your story. I really couldn’t state mine so eloquently. I will say though that the funerals part really hits home. Between our two neighboring parishes there were around 150 of them. They had to close down the kids basketball program to make use of the gymnasium for the overflow.
I was driving to work at the Family Farm Business, reached my office at 8:45am. Dad was already there at the front counter, and said he’d heard on the radio that a plane had hit one of the WTC Towers.
I quickly drove to the nearby Wal-Mart and bought the last 13” color they had, brought it back, set it up, and by then a 2nd plane had already hit. We knew it was terrorism.
I called-in all 28 employees to watch the replays; then the Pentagon attack and Shanksville crash reports were coming-in. We’d anticipated 40,000-50,000 casualties in the WTC Towers, just down from Rock Ctr in Midtown, where I’d worked, in the 70s & 80s, for many years.
I asked everyone to pray, and sent them home to be with their families, lowered the US Flag to half-mast, and closed the Farm, for the day. I sat watching the TV with Dad (WWII Battle of Bulge Vet) in disbelief, for most of the day. My anger/hate/rage piqued all-day long.
We were at war.
In memory of Sgt Maj Larry Strickland, killed at the Pentagon, 11 September 2001.
As I drove home, the skies were filled with what I at first thought were white gulls. No--they were millions of pieces of white Xerox paper freed from their boxes in Manhattan after the towers collapsed. And then there was the unchanging blacker-than-black column of smoke arising at a 45 degree angle into the skies, the kind of smoke which can only come from burning jet fuel.
NYC had become a charnel house, the airwaves endlessly recounting the horror, and I had to get out. I called up a friend in Baltimore, a rabbi's wife, packed a bag and headed there for the Sabbath at breakneck speed. On the way down, I saw a White House motorcade on the opposite side of the highway, heading for NYC.
Working for major telecom company, stopping incoming traffic from hitting the NYC switches due to overload. I remember when I was driving to work that I noticed how red the sky was.
I was at home, just starting to send out resumes in the morning (my first week of being laid off from a job I really enjoyed).
It really put things in perspective for me and I will never forget. My wife called me and told me to turn on the TV just a few minutes before the second plane hit.
One of those feelings you never forget either...
Driving to work listening about the first tower, they didn’t know yet. Second tower got hit about 5 minutes later.
I was reading here on FR. I thought it was a small plane, and so I blew off the story and went out. I lived in PA at the time, and I ended up running into a small group of women, who were crying and freaking out about someone’s husband on a plane somewhere. It was surreal. Walking in a cloud.
I got home, came back to FR read a bit- couldn’t believe what I was reading, and turned the TV on JUST in time to see a plane hit the second tower.
WTHECK!
And I became numb.
I was working at a house in Potomac, MD. One of my coworkers pulled up and said a plane had just crashed into the WTC. As we were talking about it, they announced that the second tower had been hit. A short time later my wife called me and told me about the other planes. We stopped working and were in the house watching tv with the homeowner when our boss called and told us we could go home. I’ll never forget it.
I was on coffee break watching Fox news in the lab lounge when they showed the first plane hit, We all thought it was an accident, then the second plane hit. Still we didn’t comprehend what was going on. When I got back to the lab my son called to ask if I knew what had happened. It was then he told me it was a terrorist attack.
There was a girl in the lab that had a cousin who worked at the World trade Towers. After the plane hit she had called her Mother to tell her she was ok. For a moment everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Unfortunately she was on one of the upper floors and never made it out.
Well, I’m going to the Mass I reserved for my dear friend and 911 victim, in about a half hourl
Strange, I guess. I was just out wrapping things up in the garden last night and, the wind being just right, I heard the 10 PM Retreat, ‘Taps’. I stopped and faced the music from Base and dropped everything else. It takes less than a minute.
I never forget.
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