I’d been a Freeper for sometime, dating back to the pre-impeachment days of Clinton, and privileged to meet some prominent veteran Freepers (Basil, for one - other names escape me for moment...) at the Salute to the House Managers in D.C. With my much-older sister, mombonn...
On 9/11, I was at my desk in the bowels of Ford’s Product Development Center in Dearborn, MI., now frequently referred to as “Dearbornistan”.
As one of the few in my department to have outside internet privileges, I spent a lot of time on FR, which was even back then my browser home page.
Hasn’t changed...
At the top, it contains links to many of the original threads posted by myself and others on that horrible, unspeakable day.
The national appeasement since then has made the ghosts of Chamberlain, Quisling, and Vichy feel right at home.
My hatred of the evil barbaric bastards and their mongrel 'religion', far from being tempered by time, has only grown.
My oldest son was 17 that year.
Just as I pulled into the MARTA station to take the train into downtown ATL they announced on the news the first plane hit. As I walked to the train a bad feeling washed over me.
As I stepped onto the train there was a couple talking with a young man sitting behind them listening to a radio with ear plugs. The woman said something about Osama Bin-Laden. I tried to remember where I had heard that name before.
As I sat down the dread darkened and I asked the man behind me (we 5 were the only ones in that train car at the time) if he knew what was happening. I called my mom in TX. She did not have the tv on, but turned it on. You could hear her audibly gasp.
After they did a voluntary evacuation of ATL, coming back on the train, it was the most beautiful site I have ever seen. The train was packed! and everyone was talking with everyone else. Folks with radios sharing information with everyone. Everyone was so polite and caring.
The freeway was packed and going 10 mph or so. Again everyone so courteous letting folks in, slowing down for others. The looks on everyone’s face was grim. Some ladies were crying. I held up until I looked over at this older man in the car next to me weeping like a child. The dam broke.
Long story short, like everyone else I came back home and held my two boys.
That 17 year old boy is now with SF (green beret). 9/11 was his motivation. This afternoon I got a call that he will be ‘busy’ for six months or so....
Sign
On 9/11/2001 Listening to the first reports as I was driving to work close to DC. When I arrived - my co-workers were watching TV and we realized that the Pentagon fire could be seen from the 4th floor of our building.
Praying that we don’t ever have a thread that asks “what do you remember about the horror of 9/11/2014?”
Thanks for posting this.
My 9/11 memories will always be tied up with memories of my mother. She was on hospice care and died in my home in Great Falls, MT on 9/2/2001, her 70th birthday. My boss insisted I take 2 weeks off after her death to process everything and grieve so I was at home on 9/11.
I’d had trouble sleeping and was asleep when my phone rang. My sister in Sacramento was on the phone crying and said “Get up and turn on the TV.” When I asked what channel, she said “Any channel” and hung up. As soon as I saw the news I picked up the phone to call my mom......only to remember....
At about 8:40am on that morning, I was walking into the Court building on Adams Street (actually, the Court St. entrance) in Downtown Brooklyn to start serving jury duty. As luck would have it, I had been halfway to the train station before I’d realized that I’d left my Walkman on the kitchen table, so I didn’t bother going back for it. I figured I’d just get a newspaper. Besides, I didn’t know how well I’d be able to pick up AM inside the building anyway.
I sat in a dark room watching a video on How to Be a Good Juror, oblivious to what was going on right across the river. We were told to relax in the room that they have, and I looked out the window at the Marriot Hotel. Traffic on Adams St was snarled, not moving. Must’ve been an accident on the Brooklyn Bridge, I thought. (It was a block away.)
People were standing around outside the hotel. Must be waiting for a tour bus or something. What did I know.
Fire trucks and ambulances started flying by on the wrong side of Adams Street, which had no traffic. Okay, traffic doesn’t come into Brooklyn much in the morning, but something was odd here. I had been facing 180 degrees from where I needed to be looking.
Finally, they had made an announcement. America was at war, under attack. The World Trade Center and the Pentagon had been destroyed. They were trying to get coverage on the TV sets in the jury rooms. I don’t think they succeeded. Even if they wanted to, only CBS would be available because it still broadcast from the Empire State Building.
People were beside themselves, many broke down, everyone was rushing for the payphones. I met a woman who had been listening to her radio. She let me share her earbuds. She was shaken and needed a cigarette. I don’t smoke, but I walked her to the smoking room. (There was one on the floor. Quite a few people were there.)
We were dismissed. Not much was going to get done in the Court building that week. Groups of people huddled outside with questions, comments, gossip and hearsay. Some of the lawyers said they saw it happen. What kind of plane was it?
Does anyone know if the trains are running? What about the buses? No trains. No LIRR. A few buses and they’re all packed. It was time to start walking and no one wanted to walk alone. We walked in groups.
Dust was falling from the sky in downtown Brooklyn like a dirty snow that was covering the cars. Papers fell too. We started walking up Atlantic Avenue. People were wandering around with their cell phones out trying to get a signal. no luck.
We took a turn down Third Avenue. I needed to. I wanted to stop at my mother’s house. It was a good resting point for me. The group I’d tagged along with decided to join me. One guy stopped in a hardware store for masks and passed them out.
When we passed Third St and reached the Gowanus Canal, we had our first real look. It was like a scene out of a bad movie. The skyline was there. But the Towers were missing. Just a terrible column of smoke and a cloud drifting our way.
We didn’t stay long. We kept walking. I made it to my mother’s house and said good-bye to the others. Some were walking all the way to Staten Island. One who had joined our group had walked over the Brooklyn Bridge — after having walked down 50 floors of Tower 1. God was looking out for him.
I watched some of the coverage until the trains were running again. I took one that left me about a mile or so from my inlaws, the meeting place for the rest of the family. I stopped in at St. Athanasius on the way. I hadn’t been there since a wedding about 15-20 years earlier. I stayed for a little while and walked the rest of the way.
Thankfully, my wife, who worked at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge on the Manhattan side had evacuated immediately before the trains had stopped running.
It’s not a walk that I’ll forget ever forget.
TS
It was just a normal morning...till I saw the 2nd plane hit the tower on the TV.
Then...the whole world changed in a heartbeat.
For me, on 9/11/01, I had just gotten to my job at the local community college when after giving my mother a call, she told me that she saw what she thought was a plane crash at the first WTC towers or was a movie scene. We never thought it would be an a attack.
Don’t forget that one month earlier, brilliant actor (my favorite) James Woods was on the same flight from Boston to LA and was very alarmed by the behavior of four Muslim men on the flight. He summoned the pilot in fear that these guys would try a hijacking.
Here’s a link to read about it, where the news came out that Mohammed Atta was on that very flight. The dry run.
http://michellemalkin.com/2005/04/24/report-mohammed-atta-was-on-flight-with-actor-james-woods/
I spent the entire day watching this unfold on FR. Thank God I had a T1 line.
Another NEVER FORGET ping...
Here is another for your list. It was one of the first I remember.
I was on vacation and only had a dialup connection. I kept it open for at least two hours and feared mightily that the cottage owner would send me a terrible telephone bill.
It is a rare A+bert initiated thread and did not display his sometimes caustic thoughts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/520333/posts
Coming back from an Alaskan Cruise to belatedly celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary (married 66 years now). We were on Amtrax, approximately in Chicago, when the National Guard boarded our train, checking people, looking for terrorists. At that point, every thing and every one was suspect. People were trying to get tickets for the train as their airplane tickets were useless. So glad to get home to family.
Exactly three months later, hubby underwent a 10 hour cancer operation and I spent the entire day watching repeats of 9/11 broadcasts in the waiting room of Leahy Clinic. That also was a very chilling and depressing day.